The Apprenticeship

Dreams

About twenty minutes after Gen leaves the room, I fall asleep on my bed.

Where am I?

'Avery, welcome to the Archive of History. We've been awaiting your arrival.'

This is strange. The ceilings are about thirty feet tall, and all over the walls are books. The hall, on either side, goes farther than I can see. There's a few tables in the middle, and some have computers, something I've only seen in the archives. It's sort of cold, but not. I can't quite explain it.

'Avery, please follow the arrows on the wall.'

The voice sounds masculine. After he's done talking an arrow glows on the wall. I decide, it's in my best interest to follow.

I jolt up and breath heavily. What was that dream? I look at the clock next to me and realize I'm going to be late.

Running down the hall, I hurry and put on my shoes. They're untied but, that really doesn't matter. I'm ten minutes late already.

I run through the door and see Owen there writing something.

"I'm so sorry I'm late-"

"Sit."

I sit down in the chair across the table, there's a paper sitting there with my name on it.

"Read."

The paper is short, not a lot of writing.

Avery, the council seeks your attendance at twelve seventeen tomorrow.

"What is this?"

"A summons Avery. The council wants to meet with you tomorrow, please don't be late."

"Twelve seventeen, that's oddly specific."

"I don't control what the council does. They meet with a few kids each year, you may be a random one."

"Why?"

He looks at me with a stern look. "Maybe this will be a good thing for you."

"What do you mean?"

"What I mean, Avery, is, you still don't understand why I'm here. I get it, I'm closer to your age, I like to joke a lot but, I'm still the one in charge. The sooner you realize that, the better."

"I understand."

"Do you Avery? Do you really?"

"I do...not. What's wrong with standing up for what I believe in?"

"It goes against our beliefs."

"Your beliefs."

He looks at me again and starts talking, "The point is, it's against the law and systems we have today. I don't want to sound mean here but, if you can't understand that, I'm going to have to be."

"I just don't understand."

"And that's okay Avery, you will one day. Hopefully that day comes before your meeting with the council."

I look over the paper in front of me again. I don't want to mess this up but, I'm afraid I'm going to.

Owen gives me stuff to do to occupy the time we have together. A lot of it is review from the other day evidently, I know what I'm doing. There's a couple I still don't understand and after about thirty attempts of explaining, Owen finally puts it in the right words. Okay, so maybe it was technically part my fault too. At this point the day is wrapping up. It's around 5pm, he dismisses me for dinner.

At the cafeteria, I sit alone and eat. Anne notices and sits next to me but, I don't talk to her.

"Hey Aves." I remain silent, she tries again, "How's training?" Still, no reply. "Okay, let's eat in silence."

After dinner, I hurry back to my room. On the way, Aila appears again.

She touches my nose and whispers, "you've been blessed," then proceeds to swan dive out the window. I'm not in the mood for this, I'm dreading tomorrow.