elle has always been the good girl in her mischievous, immature and over-the-top class full of madcap mayhem. when the class wakes up as castaways in a strange land of dreams and nightmares, they are thrust into a world full of surprises where even...
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if there were two words to describe all that happened, elle would use before and after. Before was the mundane everyday life, on earth, which previously the occupants of class 'K' so sought to expel. They craved adventure, thrills, danger - but little did they know what was waiting for them.
After was when everything changed, so drastically that Elle was caught up in the whirlwind excitement. It was all that class 'K' relished, yet when they were staring adventure in its face they might as well be plummeting down danger's throat. And with all 'afters', it had to start somewhere. So start it did, in the hull of a magnificent boat, bathed with the radiant glow of the triumphant sun.
***
Elle awoke to the musty, stale air of the hull of a ship. The air was putrid, and carried with it suggestive hints of rotted meat, preserved with salt, and the stink of mildew. All Elle could feel were coarse ropes that dug into her back, along with a gentle swaying motion that was enough to make her head spin.
As she recollected herself, brown irises darting around the hull of the ship, mind actively refusing to form a coherent thought, Elle continued lying down. The ropes, though uncomfortable, seemed to be the only real thing that she could feel, and she took some relief in that thought that there was actually something substantial there.
After all, how could she be in here - a dark, cavernous hull of a ship, similar to that of an old fashioned one, a storybook boat? That was simply unthinkable. Had she ever stepped foot in a boat like this before? No. Wasn't she supposed to be in school? Yes, she was.
Sitting up with some measure of cautiousness, warily, Elle gripped the ropes with a vice like grip, and the thought that entered her mind - hammocks. Gazing around with frightened, threatened eyes, Elle took note of her surroundings. Already around her were the soft murmurs and rustling as some figures sat up.
Elle gaped in astonishment. Was that not Cassa? Tanya? Jasper? Her classmates, from class 'K' in school. There was the steady sound of breathing from the hammock next to her, as she saw some figures still unconscious, and others already up.
Some of them were talking, or lying down, perhaps fiddling, and also still with closed eyes. In this midst of them all, not the first to awake, but neither the last - always in the middle - was Elle, glancing around with frightened, yet bleary eyes.
Her mind was still clouded with the remnants of a sleep-induced haze, yet she felt the acute sense of being a prey, but one that did not know who was the predator. It was a wary sense of danger, hanging all around - a matter of when and not if. An ominus grey cloud of pondering thoughts hung around Elle.
Which lasted for approximately ten seconds.
It was Cassa who broke it. The slight build of Cassa came padding over, making minimal sound on the rough wooden tiles that lay in planks all the way to the ceiling. Elle, her foggy brain briefly registering Cassa, slowly and painstakingly cleared.
