Darkness of the Woods

Chapter 3

Elfrida

After the meeting Elfrida, Cammi, and Akili had decided to try their best to speak English for the rest of the year, this was going to be a bit hard. None of them were the best at speaking it, even Akili, which is surprising in it of itself. But still the experiences they will have will be well worth it. Or so they thought.

This was the newest of languages they had to learn. All the others were languages their parents had taught them, all of them being Welentan languages of course. Has she mentioned before that her parents are big on learning and that she was been homeschooled. All fifteen of them. Elfrida had complained constantly whenever her mother or father would start the lessons, saying "Why should I learn every language that I don't even need to know."

Their answer was always the same, "What if you end up needing them? And even if you don't need to know them, don't you want to be able to travel and meet new people?" When she would inevitably nod, one or the other would say, "Then you need to know them."

Elfrida would then pout all through the lesson. But still did her best to learn them. She was five then. Her father was one hundred and six and her mother twenty-five then. They were considered young parents, at least by vampire standards. They were young and madly in love.

That was what Elfrida wanted. To be like them in their love for each other. And maybe she will. Maybe she is, she thought, thinking of the man she met a long while ago.

Elfrida had decided to make her way back to her room while Cammi and Akili went exploring. The walk down the hall was lonely, but peaceful. With little to no people in the school it was silent, making the hallway a cold empty place while she walked to her room-her new home.

What she hadn't noticed before about the corridor was that there were these beautiful painted murals on the walls. When Elfrida said beautiful, she meant they were stunning, breath taking. Each one looked real, but were still, unnaturally still. Each was of the gods and goddesses, some just with one of them in the painting, while others as a group of other gods, or of a magnificent landscape scenes. Right underneath each painting was a plaque with the name or names of whoever or whatever was above.

Elfrida stopped in front one near the grand staircase. It was of Goddess Ethel, goddess of revenge and bad luck and such. She's one of Elfrida's favorite gods, the one that inspires her most. Not just because of what she's the goddess of but because all the other gods don't understand her. It's written in the Book of Ethel all the trials she had to go through before the other gods accepted her due to what she was born as the goddess of.

Her portrait visualizes her perfectly. It showed a young woman, yet eternal looking, with long raven black hair and black eyes with no whites, some would mistake her as one of the demons of the Vella Nation, but she wasn't. Ethel wears this long necklace with all the unlucky symbols from all the worlds on it and a long blood red dress made of the finest material.

She looked so real that Elfrida thought she could reach into the painting of the goddess, who looked beautiful but deadly like she'll strike at any moment, and shake her hand. Elfrida backed away from the painting that looked startling real and went up the stairs and down the hall, feeling eyes following her the entire time. She didn't want to look back to see if any of the paintings were really watching her.

Back in her room she looked at the loathsome pale blue walls of her new home. She needs to do something about the paint or she will never finish unpacking her stuff. Luckily, Elfrida had asked one of the workers to get some dark red and black paint last night almost immediately after she had entered it for the first time. After she had changed into her painting clothes, Elfrida grabbed the buckets of paint and began painting vertical stripes of black and red.

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Several hours later, Elfrida was just finishing up the second coat of paint when she heard a knock at the door. She dropped the paint brush to the floor, not caring about the mess it would make, to let whoever it was in. Sigh. It was only Cammi with Akili down the hall a bit. Coming to say she and Akili were going down for lunch and they wanted to know if Elfrida wanted to join them. After Elfrida said that she would be happy to, they left.

Cammi and Akili led her down a corridor off to the side of the grand staircase, and then turned down another corridor. At the end of the hall was a big door, almost as big as the entrance hall's door, and inside was the dining hall.

The dining hall was gigantic, bigger than the entrance hall was. There were tables and booths all over the place and had these long tables that were lined up against the far side of the wall filled with food from both worlds, Earth and Welenta. It was amazing in detail focusing on the God of the harvest, Sunete, the colors focusing on red, light blue, orange, and yellow. A bit like a sun puking on the room, in Elfrida's opinion.

Elfrida, Cammi, and Akili weren't the only people already at the school, which was a bit of a surprise to Elfrida. I didn't know the teachers were already here, I thought just the Headmistress was here. From what she could tell, there are twenty-five, not counting the rest of the staff, teachers. The rest of the staff consists of five cooks, ten waiters, ten grounds keepers, fifteen maids and twenty guards. In total eighty-five people working for the school. That was a lot of workers. Many were humans.

"Hey, Cammi? Why are all these humans here? Do all of them live here and know about us?" Elfrida asked, curious.

But Cammi didn't answer her, she led them to a table that looked out a window and they all sat around it. Then a teenage human waiter came up and passed them all menus. After they ordered their drinks, Cammi looked around to make sure no one was listening in then said. "Well, no, they don't live here. The humans can't live here. They don't know what we are. They just think're rich snobs sent from our homes to be taught here."

"How many of them are humans?" Elfrida asked.

"About thirty-seven of them. The rest are a mixture of vampires and werewolves." Akili answered this time. Elfrida wonders how they get all their information so quickly, they've only been here for almost a day. But then she remembered, they were part of their own little club.

The waiter came back, gave Cammi, Elfrida and Akili their drinks and took their orders. All the while the waiter was giving them strange looks when they ordered food from Welenta. Must be because she's never heard of these foods before or how to pronounce them properly either.

"So why are the waiters teenagers?" Elfrida asked, as she glared at their waiter. I mean seriously learn how to pronounce them correctly, it's not that hard to learn.

Akili looked at all the passing waiters like she just realized they're all around their age. "Probably because then the school can say that their giving back to the community by employing their youths."

Cammi, Akili, and Elfrida didn't talk for the rest of lunch. They did have to go up to get their real drinks that would actually give them nutrition, blood, for her kind and especially for the vampires too. They don't want the waiters to get suspicious of what it was, but from what Elfrida heard from her sisters was that the Headmistress is going to be making their drinks a lot easier to get by calling it by a different name instead of something as obvious as blood

After lunch, Cammi and Akili went in search for the library, leaving her alone . Nerds! She thought angrily, besides Elfrida had better things to do then look at big dusty old books.