"Miss Stewarts!" a voice scolded, jerking Mel out of her daze.
"Sorry?" she said sheepishly, looking up at the teacher.
"What are the names of the four rivers in Eden?" Mrs Grace snapped, raising a brow at the girl.
"Pishon, Gihon, the Tigris and the Euphrates," she retorted.
"What are the names of the five angels?"
"Abbadon, Beelzebul, Gabriel, Michael and S-" she shuddered when she found the boy's dark gaze boring into her. "Lucifer," she finished.
The grandfather clock at the back of the old classroom chimed loudly.
"Class dismissed," Mrs Grace muttered, giving Mel a final glance.
Sat joined the girl as they walked out of the class, chatting about constalations she imagined in the room and the stars that danced around Mrs Grace's head as she spoke.
They reached Sat's dorm and stepped inside.
It has been several weeks since Mel first came to Grace and she and Sat became close friends.
"Earth to Mel?" Sat waved a hand in front of her face. "Let me guess, a vision?"
Mel smiled. "I just zoned out this time."
"Riiiight." Sat gave her a look. "I've seen how you look at them, you know. I might have bad sight without these--" she tapped her glasses "-- but I'm not blind."
She regarded the red-head for a long while then dropped her satchel at her feet.
"We have homework."
"I knew it!" Sat grinned. "You like them!"
Mel groaned and sat beneath the large window. "It's complicated."
"Oh I'm sure it is." Sat dropped down next to her. "How to choose?" she swooned. "Kind or mysterious? Canvas or leather? Sunshine or rain? Light or dark?"
Mel rolled her eyes at her friend's antics, but took the bait all the same. "I mean that I don't feel the same about both of them."
She sighed. "I can't explain it."
Two hours later, she was outside her room, biblical literature homework finished.
With a happy sigh, she pulled on sweatpants and a tank top before dropping onto her bed. She stretched and felt her joints pop.
She fell asleep and felt herself being wrapped in a vision.
Mel was in the library, on the edge of realising her fate.
Suddenly the flames roared upwards and an all too familiar figure stepped out of the heat.
She scuttered backwards, fear rolling off her in waves.
"Don't!" she shouted.
The figure laughed. "Don't worry, my child. I have other ways to hurt you."
He lifted his hand and the doors on both sides of the library flew open. "Mel!" Jess and Luce cried as one.
Mel reached the figure before his flamed hands could touch them. Without speaking, she lifted her arms and wrapped them around the figure.
He disintegrated with a soft hiss and the flames spread across the library.
Luce managed to dodge the inferno, but Jess fell beneath a falling bookshelf.
YOU ARE READING
Grace Academy
FantasyEvery time Mel Stewarts goes to bed, she makes sure to place a can of black paint at the foot of the bed, knowing that once the dreams were to take hold, she would be painting them one way or the other. After one night of harrowing events, her paren...
