Separate Universe

Bellu 1

"Pupils, please copy the passage from the board, immediately!" Madam Rocschki shouted. The long stiff ruler she used for thwacking the board and her students slapped against the bottom of the passage to which half the 60 students couldn't even read. 

All of the 10-11 year olds had learned to read and write at least basic Anukain, the regional language. Master Dobo, when constructing the school, focused upon using all the space possible on the rickety space on top which heaved 4.7 metres above the ground. The History classroom where Madam Roschki was teaching had been shoved into a long avenue of a room since Dobo couldn't hire two teachers and the necessary accompanying wall to split the classroom. Therefore, some of the students sat on musty cushions as great as 50 metres away. It looked like more of a corridor than a room.

Bellu was perched 40 metres from the front, leaning lazily against a rough grey, concrete wall. She was doing her best to sleep through this joke of a lesson. But she had never been able to snooze in uncomfortable places, not like Yusa, her best friend whose jet black hair cascaded over Bellu's left shoulder and arm. They had both worked late into the night, scouring the streets for tossed away recyclable bottles which would help them to earn enough to buy fruit, or maybe some bread. Eight huge sacks worth in one could even buy them two hot broths of stew, which seared their throats at first touch and gave them a rush of warmth and a burst of glorious satisfaction that stretched beautifully into the hours ahead. 

Sometimes, if they were extremely lucky, a food vendor would let them sleep a few hours upon their rock hard floor, spanning shelter over their heads against the mud and pattering rain that so often slammed down upon them. 

But most of the time, the safest place to sleep was in this classroom, where at least they were protected from the monsters that roamed the street in a drunken tornado. Or worse, the non-drunk fiends who Bellu and Yusa had heard stories of. There were many cruel or uncivilized people in Washti, and a lot of the time they were both.  Bellu only had to look at her past to know that. 

She was not a typical 'pest' (the name they were branded with for having no parents and being forced to live on the streets). Most of the Street Pests who lived in this part of the slum had very dark skin, dark hair, dark eyes, and bright hearts. Bellu's skin was extraordinarily pale, and always went red super easily if she walked in the sun for too long. A lot of people commented that she belonged in the Rich Lands to the far North, where apparently most people who looked liked her lived. Additionally, her chestnut brown hair and freckles stood out a billion miles in the ocean of black. 

Not even Bellu knew exactly where she had come from. Some of the older grown-ups who had nothing better and worthwhile to do, particularly at Dobo's School, had speculated that her parents were some of the rich visitors who often wandered along the streets, gawping at its occupants as if they were some kind of Human Zoo Occupant. They thought that she had been abandoned for some reason, or perhaps that her parents had been killed and no one cared enough to relocate her back to the world in which she belonged. No one in her life had ever bothered to investigate, and so she had remained in the slum the whole of her life. 

Bellu didn't know the truth of her past, and didn't really care much. She just wanted to sleep.

But her greatest ambition of the day was sharply ricocheted away from her by a harsh vibration that ripped through the heart of the building. A huge explosion had been set off and the force had blown uncaringly into the school, causing it to rock back and forth upon its spindly legs. 

And then she heard the scream of death. Gunfire.

The entire class stirred from dream or tedium. Bellu felt the weight of Yusa rising off her shoulder, and she saw her friend look around dreamily, wondering why she had been pulled away from the pleasant escape of sleep.

But the crackle of gun shots snapped her into alertness, and she gripped Bellu's hand tightly, squeezing in the safety of the grip. One gun shot was common, and normally it was well-aimed and obscure; one gang member killing another gang member. They wouldn't bother wasting a bullet on a Pest, so it wasn't much to fear. However, multiple bullets meant an open street fight where anyone could get mixed up in. Gunmen in these cases usually didn't care who they shot, as long as they shot someone.

Rumbling could be heard - possibly falling buildings. Men shouting, women shouting, gunshots, more gunshots, a roaring sound like the scream of an angry dragon, and then more blipping gunshots.

With each rip of bullets, the students were becoming more and more uneasy. Children who went home to a pair of parents each day were quickly leaping into a state of panic and there was a rush towards the walls and sides of the room. Being a street orphan finally had one advantage. Bellu felt quite calm, despite the pinpricks of fear rising up her spinal cord. She had been in similar situations of chaotic violence and knew with weariness that panic never helped, and usually the kids who did panic were those whose terror was quenched by a bullet in their chest.

She had to find out what was going on.