Mount Asteria

Chapter Thirty Three

Mount Asteria did not have mid-term exams, though Alexandra did find she had to hand in five written assignments, do oral exams in German, French and Spanish, which she had been taking that term, and complete a lab report on the poduction of paracetamol. She had asked her classmates repeatedly how best to study or how she would be marked, but they always replied with the same: "You'll be graded according to how much you've progressed". It was vague, but she'd come to expect such statements. The formula at the school was simple: working hard for yourself, for your own development, was more important than what any teacher decided. The girls, without exception, were all the keen and motivated sort, so it seemed to work.

"How did you oral go?" Hestia asked her when she entered the common room on Friday afternoon.

Alexandra made a face. "I don't know. Okay, I guess? It's hard to tell. I feel like I've learned as much German in two months as I did French in the past three years. It's hard to retain it when I've learned it so quickly." There were only two other first year students in her beginner's German class and Fraulein Weiss moved through the vocabulary like lightning (because so much of it was like English, she said) so they had completed a lot in just half a term.

"I'm so tired," she complained. "I spent five hours studying yesterday after classes."

Hestia yawned. "I know. I was in the IT room until ten last night."

Alexandra nodded. Mount Asteria was perhaps not demanding, but being there made her demand a lot of herself in order to keep up with the standard of everyone else. In the past week the other fifth year girls had increased their study, leading Alexandra to do the same.

"Will you keep German up next term?"Hestia asked.

She nodded. "Yes, but I'm going to drop French and Spanish for a while because I think I'm at a good enough level for the moment. I want to try a new language." That was the great advantage of Mount Asteria – the flexibility to pick up classes in whatever you wanted whenever you wanted.

Hestia looked excited. "Ooh, what language will you choose?"

"I don't know. I was considering Arabic."

"I wish I was good at langauges. It's such a cool skill to have."

"Says the one who knows how to launch nuclear missiles and goodness knows what else," Alexandra laughed, flopping onto the sofa.

"Actually, we're working on how to dismantle muclear missiles and safer alternatives to nuclear power."

"What do you mean? Like a solar-powered bomb or something?"

Hestia shook her head. "No, no bombs. We're trying to prevent wars, actually. In any case, I'm not quite there yet. I'll have to wait until Dr Strauss gives me my certificate in Chemistry and Physics before I'm allowed into the real nuclear research units here. For now I'm stuck in environmental, seeing if it's possible to stop hydrogen causing explosions so we can use it as a fuel."

"Wow." Alexandra lifted a hand to her face and rubbed her bleary eyes.

"Wow?"

"We're actually going to be doing stuff, aren't we? Like, we're actually going to be involved in this sort of thing."

"If we want to."

And suddenly it seemed so monumental, so profound and so very, very real to Alexandra. "This is actually insane," she said, genuinely in awe, but yawned immediately afterwards, fatigued as she was.

Hestia shrugged. "I suppose so. Come on, we better go if we want to be in London by four."

"Is your brother coming too?"

"No, he's been in London on some work experience in the defence ministry or something like that."

"Something like that. Sure. Why not?" Alexandra laughed and went to collect her bags.