The Girl of Many Floods- Linh Song

IV

Over the course of the next day, Linh decorated Tam's room.She added a touch of pink, mostly to annoy Tam,and a touch of blue, her favourite colour and within a few days, she was done.

She sat on her bed, examining the room. She had to admit, it looked....stunning, much nicer than she actually expected it to look. The black was still there, just that it was mixed with blue streamer-like decorations, creating a gradient from the darkest of blue to the palest of blue. And around Tam's bed, where it looked the bleakest she had added a lot of pink glitter and posters and paintings. She had also taken the opportunity to get rid of some of Tam's black coloured items and replaced them with colourful ones instead. Linh smiled, satisfied with her work.

Linh went to fetch Tam, who she had kept out of the room while she worked. She walked to one of the other rooms where Tam sat on a beanbag chair, reading. Linh saw Tam tugging on his bangs as she approached, and she grinned. Looks like he did care about his room.

"Ready to see your room?" Linh asked, her smile nearly reaching her ears.

"Let's just get this done and over with, shall we?" Tam replied, as Linh took his outstretched hand. Linh led the way and opened the door.

The moment he stepped into the room, his mouth fell open in a perfect 'O'.

"So do you like it? You look surprised."

"I...well, it looks better than. I expected..."Tam started, then scowled as he added, "but the pink's not staying."

"Great! Anyway,the pink was just to annoy you so that's fine." Linh giggled as Tam scowled again.

Linh sat on her bed and looked around the room again and sighed. She didn't really have much decorations on hand and after the incident a few days ago, she dared not go to her mother's studio to make anything,not that she was usually allowed there anyway. She also did not want to go to Atlantis for a shopping trip, not after the incident there. So Linh had made do with what she had and the room actually looked quite nice.

Linh glanced at Tam who had gone to his bed and was frantically trying to remove all the pink stuff around it. But Linh had used a super glue of some sort and had made sure that all the pink stuff were really stuck. She smiled, that was going to take Tam some time to remove.

'Who knows,' Linh thought, 'those posters may be permanently stuck to the wall.' She grinned slyly and propped her legs on the back of a chair. Linh sighed contentedly, who knew she had such a mischievous side?

*

Three years later

*

"Are you ready?" Tam asked, holding out his hand.

Linh grabbed his hand and it felt clammy, and she gave a small smile,she knew he was nervous,despite his claims that he was not. At the moment, she could see him tugging his bangs.

"As ready as I'll ever be," she replied. With that, Tam pulled both of them into the light beam from the leapmaster, and they leaped away, their parents right behind them.

When the family reappeared, Linh was on the purple grass of Foxfire, looking at the glass pyramid for the first time, and she gasped, she had seen pictures or Foxfire and all, but she never expected it to be quite so beautiful. Tam and Linh were here to take the Foxfire entrance exams and Linh was nervous, even though she had spent so much time studying that Tam had to force her to take breaks, she still could not bear to think of the consequences if she failed. Tam on the other hand, seemed like he could not care less and claimed that he did not bother, though he obviously did.