The Mirror Key

Chapter 6: Elemenstix Ednoesr!

Chapter 6: Elemenstix Ednroesr!

[Recap: Xanthe had begged the Headmistress to let her go home, but ultimately accepts her fate of becoming a student in Deliorn High. She is given a rulebook (more like the Oxford dictionary), and she is accompanied by a white haired girl named Azlin Revas, who is experiencing a crushing headache for "breaking the rules".]

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The Deliorn High Institution was formed by Kaleth D’eli and Liane Thornne a few centuries ago, when Shadows started appearing after the Djinn Wars…

“You’re still reading that book?”

Xanthe looked up to see Azlin peering at her, confused. The pale girl was chewing on a bread stick- or at least, that’s what it looked like.

Nurse Ageli had brought a tray load of those a half hour ago because of Azlin’s pleading for something called Elemenstix, and Azlin had practically sobbed when she received it. That kind of frightened Xanthe, so she just asked for another bottle of water instead, despite the rumblings in her stomach, craving for more food- a side effect of the krues, if the brunette remembered correctly.

“I just started reading this book,” Xanthe corrected her. She flipped the book in the snow-haired girl’s direction so that Azlin could see what page she was on. She jabbed her pointer finger at the phrase ‘page 5’. “For five pages, I wasted fifteen minutes of my life reading paragraphs that just turned out to be dedications to the translators, scribes, donors, and who knows who else in the making, editing, revising, publishing -and other words that end with ing- of this rule book.”

“Why bother reading that then?” Azlin asked, tucking a white lock of hair behind her ear. “You could just ask about the rules.”

Xanthe facial expression brightened. “So can you tell me why I can’t escape from here?”

“That one’s easy. There are barriers that surround the school-”

“Like Camp Half Blood,” Xanthe murmured.

“-and it prevents us from leaving.”

“So we can enter through the barriers, but we can’t leave?”

“Pretty much,” Azlin said, taking another bite of her food.

Xanthe furrowed her brows, slowly closing the book. “Why?”

“Well…” Azlin paused, clearly thinking about it. “I can’t really explain that.”

“How about the school’s history? What are Shadows?”

Azlin just sighed. “I change my mind- just read the book. I’m sorry, but explaining things that have been retold over and over in school- it’s kinda annoying to repeat.” She looked at the other girl apologetically.

Xanthe chuckled, reopening the book. “Yeah, it’s okay.”

After the Headmistress had left with Ronald, Xanthe had taken to conversing with Azlin- and she was pleasantly surprised to find that one of Azlin’s traits was her brutal honesty.

It was refreshing.

Sure, her former schoolmates were neither snobby nor uptight, but they still wore masks that hid their true colours, and that was suffocating.

Fast forward to a few hours later, and Xanthe and Azlin actually got along pretty well, disregarding the fact that they met under pretty strange circumstances. But Xanthe was already getting used to it...