Legends of Mirandis Academy

Chapter 54: Best Laid Plans

It was not 5:30pm on a Tuesday, but Luna was still in the auditorium, anyway. There were important matters to attend to. Plots that required thickening. Luna took a fortifying breath of the dusty stage air and nodded with satisfaction.

Next to her, Iridia did not look so satisfied. They were seated onstage, on a couple of the school's metal folding chairs that Iridia had obligingly carried out. With her right hand, Iridia fiddled with a spot on the chair's leg, tracing over a patch where the paint had worn away. Her left was covered in graphite, and was pressing a hardcover notebook very firmly into her lap.

"Iambic pentameter sucks," she announced, without any prompting.

"You're expanding your creative horizons," Luna said. "It is always uncomfortable to grow."

When she heard the word 'grow,' Iridia made a small sound in the back of her throat. Luna shot her a warning glance. "Don't even think about saying it."

"I wasn't," Iridia choked.

Luna rolled her eyes. "You are a terrible liar. How is the sonnet coming?"

"I don't know what to write or what to think," recited Iridia, "this format really, really, seems to stink."

Luna fixed her with a stern expression. "I thought you wanted to write something for Brielle."

"I do!"

"And you think she's gonna swoon at those lines?" Luna made her voice high-pitched and fanned her face. "Oh, dearest Iridia! Your perspicacity with poetry has me simply... flustered!"

"She doesn't sound like that!" Iridia shoved her, scooting Luna's chair back several inches. To the untrained observer, Iridia would have seemed quite fierce. But Luna saw the gleam in her eye, and grinned in response.

Iridia mumbled to herself, counting syllables on her fingers. She stopped. "Fuck. What rhymes with 'myself'?"

Luna hesitated, unsure. "Why would you choose such a hard word to rhyme?"

"I don't write poetry." She pulled her sweater sleeves down over her hands—Luna couldn't blame her, the theatre got very cold sometimes. "She liked my last poem so I wanna make another that she'll like, but... ugh, why does it have to be a sonnet?" whined Iridia.

"A sonnet is the most romantic of the poems! The Bard himself wrote sonnets," Luna reminded her. She trailed her outstretched fingers before her and pictured conjuring a poem, or a performance of a play, or perhaps even Shakespeare, alive and breathing.

"Shelf," said Iridia. She tapped the pencil on her chin. "Shelf rhymes. How do I work that in?"

With a muted squeak, the middle doors to the auditorium opened. Kelam entered hesitantly, his tall frame uncharacteristically hunched. He kept his gaze carefully away from the stage. Which was a shame, because Luna was waving enthusiastically at him.

Iridia saw Luna waving, looked up from her poem, and caught sight of Kelam. Sudden alertness crossed her expression. "What's he doing here?"

"I asked him to be here," Luna said.

Iridia squeezed the pen between her fingers. "You asked him." Her nostrils flared, and she said, more forcefully, "Why did you ask him?"

"Well, I have important business to attend to, Iridia." Luna patted her knee. "Not, of course, that this poem isn't important. In fact, they are both important things, and so I must multitask."

Iridia appeared to be considering what to say. "You do realize—" she began, and then stopped. "Luna, are you sure about this?"

Kelam, too, was doubtful. He hovered a distance from the stage, facing vaguely forwards but still refusing to look at its occupants. "Well, I'm here," he said, addressing stage left. Had Luna not known he was a public speaker, she would have thought the boy to have never learned to project his voice.