Alex Clawthorne (The Owl Lady's Daughter)🇬🇧

XII Eda and Alex XII

_--...in the gym...--_

The gym was filled with students of all ages and teachers trying to hold back and stop any possible misunderstandings from arising, to ensure no problems arise.
They were all sitting in their seats and every fourth row there was a teacher, all intent on making the students quiet so they could finally start that damned presentation, intent on making it start at the scheduled time, knowing how their employer, the principal, aka Bump, was a stickler for punctuality and didn't want to risk making him nervous or angry.
There were students from all classes, and teachers from all classes, everyone was there to listen to the principal's communication, and curious to find out the reason for that communication, but they were certainly happy to skip a few hours of lessons.
Alex was sitting on the sidelines, in the bleachers in the gym; she wasn't allowed to be around others and besides she wasn't a student at that school so she was technically worth the same. She was sitting in the stands with the idea of not attracting attention and causing trouble but she certainly created attention, she was the only child, alone, sitting in the stands on her own behalf; There was too much noise for his tastes so he tried to distract himself by drawing, since reading his little book with that noise was practically impossible, he didn't draw specific things, very often he found himself making some random geometric shape or some flowers, and , from an outside perspective they just seemed like drawings by a little girl who hasn't yet learned to hold a pencil but she, if she tried hard, was really good at drawing. She had even had a portrait of her mother done once and it had turned out well, by four-year-old standards.

Bump, trying to stay on schedule, attracted all the attention by making the microphone whistle, disturbing and destroying practically all the eardrums of all the people present.
Bump took an authoritative tone and announced that there would be some special guests that day. Also known as Darius Deamonne and Raine Whispers.  The two entered the scene by climbing onto the stage, one, Darius, did not care about all the looks he received, in fact he was even flattered by them; the other, Raine, was more embarrassed and scared.
He announced that the two of them would give a speech and then they would go to the abomination and Bard classrooms to give a special lesson to the children of those classes. And, as soon as there were moans and screams that communicated the injustice towards the other students of the other classes, Bump hastened to say that soon, in the following days, other external people would arrive for the other classes.
And from that sentence onwards the noises and cries of injustice faded considerably. Alex didn't care who came to the various classes to teach, she wasn't a student at that school anyway, she was just a stranger, a little bird that Hexside had to look after, and put up with for a while, which then, as soon as if he left everything went back to normal.
Nobody liked her there anyway, only the teachers but they didn't count, they were biased, at least that's what Alex thought.

The presentation had gone smoothly, Darius always with his "stay away from being inferior" attitude while Raine every now and then got tangled up and made a fool of herself which made the students laugh, who were immediately silenced by the teachers, and Raine strangely apart from these two moments he had gone smoothly with the presentation and seemed to have become familiar with the stage.

_--...--_

Darius and Raine had finished their presentation about ten minutes ago and the kids had already headed towards their classes. The two, however, were waiting a moment and then headed off to class too.  Raine took advantage of those few minutes to walk towards Alex to finish the conversation that had been interrupted almost an hour earlier...

"Hey... Alex right?" They asked embarrassed realizing they wasn't sure of the little girl's name. Alex, confused by that question, raised her head from her notebook.
"Correct, Alex Skye Claw to be precise."  Alex said smiling as she saw that she had asked the question.
"Nice name, well so you like music right?! ..." They asked Raine for confirmation.
"Correct." She answered.
"And you're a Bard." She said, always smiling, too smiling, Alex.
"Correct." They responded by laughing and sitting next to that familiar little girl.
“What were you drawing?” Raine asked, interested in the notebook that Alex had placed on her lap.
"Nothing much, just some drawings to pass the time..." She replied by moving the notebook further away, away from the eyes of Raine's peoplez in that case...
"Well if you were drawing, it can't be nothing, right?!" Raine asked ironically.
"Correct..." Alex replied avoiding looking into her eyes.
"Well can you show me then?" They asked hopefully.
"Well since you insist..." She said smiling ironically trying to hide, badly, the fact that she wanted to show him her drawings.
Her drawings were mostly geometric shapes and splashes of color scattered across the page, and a drawing of a woman, her mother, Edalyn Clawthorne.
"Who is that?" Raine asked curiously, wondering why that woman looked so much like Eda, her Eda...
"She's my mom..." Alex said hesitantly but at the same time happy at the chance to tell about his fantastic mom.
"If I may... What's your mother's name?"  Raine asked hesitantly and worried.
"Ah, yes, she is ...-"
"RAINE!"

_--...--_

Okay folks, I hope you enjoyed the chapter and I'm sorry to only publish it now but these days, especially this week, have been busy and I haven't had much time to write and think about how to continue the story. So I hope you enjoyed the chapter and until the next one...