Mount Asteria

Chapter Sixteen

Thanks to Hasnita for the picture above.

"Empathy, girls," was what Professor Burke said as soon as he came into Alexandra's history class on Tuesday morning. The students looked back at him blankly.

"Well?" he said, trying to extract a reaction from them. Alexandra glanced around her, but the other five girls looked as puzzled as she did.

"Would you like the definition, Professor?" Ebony asked.

"Alright," came the response.

Frowning, Ebony said, "Empathy is the ability to understand how others are feeling... It's different to sympathy -"

"Yes?"

" - because you can understand, or maybe have previously experienced, what that person is feeling..."

"Good. Key word there, girls?" He turned to the whiteboard and wrote it up in a messy scrawl. "Understanding." He tapped the marker against the board and began:

"If we cannot understand how others are feeling, how can we ever be expected to negotiate with them? We have to break away from our prejudices and not only put ourselves in their shoes, but walk around in them, to wholly appreciate why they have the opinions they do. Empathy is one of the most important lessons you will ever learn and, I hope, when you leave here, you will know and fully appreciate the importance of empathy."

He began handing out a booklet of about ten pages stapled together with the simple title, Northern Ireland.

"Today, girls, we begin our module on Northern Ireland. We'll be looking at everything – every aspect of it imaginable, so expect some cross-over with other subjects. The idea is that by the end of this module, you will be able to look independently at other cases, like the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and draw your own conclusions.

"We'll get back to empathy in a while, but keep it in the back of your minds. Now without furthur ado, let's look at the beginning of Northern Ireland: We start, ladies, on the sixth of December, 1921."

***

"Professor Burke is mad," Claire said as they emerged from the classroom forty minutes later, brains filled to bursting point with historical details of Ireland in the 1920s. "But I love him to bits."

"This lot will take a while," Ebony said grimly, examining the first page of the booklet he had given them.

Alexandra opened her own, to see what Ebony was referring to. She was confronted with a list of ten books titles, above them was written Recommended Reading. "Do we have to read all of these?" she asked, staring at the page in dismay. She liked history, certainly, but fifteen books on the one topic could be enough to dampen anyone's enthusiasm.

"No, we don't have to read any of them, but most people looking to major in politics and communications will," Ebony replied drily. "I've already read about half of these anyway, so it shouldn't take me too long. I'm going to start now." With that, she turned left and marched down a corridor towards the library.

Alexandra sighed, running over the list again. She was quite certain she had not read any of the books before. Well, she thought, if this is the way this school works, I'd better get started. Muttering her excuses to Claire, Bláithín, Grace and Zara, she hurried after Ebony.

***

Author's Note

So, I made the three updates! Yipee!!

Thanks to all of you who continue to support me in whatever way you can - those of you who are writers will know how important it is to me!:)

Next Update: Wednesday (I'll try to maintain two updates a week.)

I don't normally give teasers or hint at what's coming up, but let's just say that the story will really start to take shape over the next few chapters... There'll be something of a twist...

Question: I am aware my chapters are quite short (as I said, I 'm just working with Wattpad on this one), but even in what you've read so far, do you feel the story is taking too long to get to the point? I have SO MUCH planned for later on in the book, but I feel it's important to get the foundations clear - but I don't want to bore you?!

Hope you all had a nice weekend!