Eulie: The Story

Chapter Three

The next day I was back at Education again, fairly tired but looking forward to seeing Teera after school as I helped out at the distribution centre. I’d barely slept the night before as my dreams were interrupted with vicious scenes of Teera running away and me chasing after him, not able to keep up. The other dream that kept haunting me was me opening my Core to find it empty inside. I tried to shrug these away as I entered Literature class. I loved having this first thing on a Monday morning. One hour of lounging on a squash bag – a large, cone shaped seat that shaped to your body – and reading a book of my choice. The only work it involved was making sure that, by the end of the month, you had written a review of a book.

Lyla had chosen not to take the class. She was far too loud to relax for an hour in silence, becoming indulged in a good read. I was partly pleased she’d chosen Dance instead, as it meant I wasn’t interrupted. It was a bit strange to say that was my favourite subject as it didn’t exactly involve much so I was fairly keen on B.D. class, looking at the lives of pre-humans, but the teacher, Mr Blite, wasn’t exactly the most enthusiastic man and so I preferred learning from Ryad. Cookery was dull as most of it was theory related, and I generally skipped Calculation as it was so boring and I didn’t intend to use anything we did in it. I’d taken basic level anyway, and most of the kids in that class were not exactly going to earn a living adding up a bunch of figures. Education had noticed my absence, but Swin had basically explained that I didn’t find it interesting, and while I was still passing the class, she didn’t see it as a problem. I quite enjoyed The World, but I did find the subject name a little strange seeing as we rarely talked about any place outside Arania other than labelling a map of all the lands, and finally Creation was a good subject as anything you did could be interpreted as good.

Education was fairly fun really, though I’d rather be out on the field relaxing. From what I learnt in B.D., it had not always been that fun for pre-humans, who had constantly been working towards exams at the end of the year, and they were then given grades which determined what they would do in life. It sounded frightfully bad, and I much preferred the method of teachers constantly assessing you, and at the end of the year, you had either passed or failed based on their judgement. The only problem was some Keepers bribed the Teachers with beans to pass their Child and so the system became a little corrupt. As long as you worked hard after Education had ended, everything would be fine.

The hour of Literature was up far too quickly, and there was loud chatter as everyone put their book away and stood up, stretching and stifling yawns. The day proceeded in a fairly normal fashion, and I got a sudden burst of energy when Cookery finished at the end of the day and it was time to go to the distribution centre. I ran through the front doors, down the steps and across several streets, arriving panting and red-faced.

“I’m here for work!” I said, and Swin raised an eyebrow, trying not to laugh.

“Eager are we?” I nodded, smiling. “Get changed out of your uniform. I’ve laid you some clothes out in the office.”

“Cool,” I said, going into Swin’s immaculately laid out office where a baggy shirt and black trousers were hung over her chair. I hastily pulled off my polo top, black jumper and shorts, and took a gulp of water from the flash on Swin’s side before going back outside. “What do you want me to do?” Swin handed me a bucket filled with what looked like mud compressed into oblong shapes. I was puzzled as I took it.

“It’s food for the Hytars. Don’t worry – it’s packed with nutrients. It’s similar to the stuff we eat in the mornings, but not processed so attractively. Hytars don’t care anyway. Feed one to each Hytar in blocks twelve through fifteen and then come back here for more. Eagerly I set off, enjoying seeing each different Hytar’s face light up as I gave them their block of food. It was interesting seeing all the different types and colours, and how they varied in height and build. You could tell the ones that had just hatched who looked feeble and scared, and I couldn’t resist feeding them an extra block of food much to their delight. This was not so good, however, when I found that I did not have food for the last few stalls along row fifteen. Swin would never know if I just used some from the next batch.