Rise from the ashes (an elemental tale)

No Time To Die

[Day 251]

{Log 15} 13:54 - Fridays.

School-goers view Fridays as a taste of freedom. It marks the beginning of the weekend, which is made up of 2 and a half days (technically). These school-goers then decide that these 2 and half days should be spent doing the most unhinged things.

These include wild parties, more wild parties, and, oh, even more wild parties. This brings us to the reason for this train of thought.

There's a bright red piece of paper in my locker with my name on it. My name is spelt wrong, mind you. On this bright piece of paper is an invitation to a, apparently, well renowned party, courtesy of a fellow named Luke Hannis.

It's stupid to put your name and surname on an invitation to a party that is surely not going to be legal. Then again we come back to the point of school-goers wasting their weekends by partying when they could be sharpening weapons instead, like me.

There's a bang of a locker door and I look up to see Valencia glaring at, who I'm guessing is, Luke Hannis down the hallway. To emphasise how much she dislikes him, she rips the bright red invitation up to shreds in front of his very eyes.

By the way they look into each other's eyes, with not only anger and disgust but understanding as well, I can tell that there's deep history between them. Obviously a bad history if she's acting this way in front of him.

Valencia doesn't insult just anyone, she insults people worthy of insulting. If this Luke Hannis has made the cut I don't doubt her feelings on the matter, I would just like to know the reasoning behind it.

After all I did get the same invitation, and since I'm new here I'm not sure what I should do with it. I don't want to cause a scene like Valencia did by ripping it up, but I don't know what else to do.

I look to my left and see a set of kind blue eyes staring back at me. Connley is holding the same invitation in his hands. He seems to understand my dilemma and motions with his hands to the invitation and my backpack, silently telling me to put it in my bag.

I do as he says and instantly feel a weight lift off of my shoulders. Was that weight called anxiety?

No. It was just Alexander stealing my backpack off of my shoulders. Cue the quizzical look.

Alexander saw my look and tilted his head, confused, and asked, "What? Can't I do something nice for you Phoenix?"

"Not while your name is Alexander, no. What do you want Alexander?" I asked in response.

"Nothing." was his response.

I raised my eyebrow.

"No-thing." he said, even going as far as to break up the word.

I raised both of my eyebrows.

"Fine! I'd really appreciate it if you could help me go through a few hand-to-hand combat moves." he finally confessed.

I didn't know what to say so I opted for silence. Alexander took this as an opportunity to continue speaking.

"After seeing you and Connley go at it the other day it really made me question my own combat skills. I mean, I can proudly say that I've sparred with Connley about a hundred to a thousand times, but I've never gotten as close as you did to beating him. Phoenix, I don't think you get it, Connley is one of our strongest undefeated warriors and you almost managed to beat him. That's quite something, which is why I'd really appreciate it if -"