Lohikäärme

Chapter Three - The Man From The Window

Chapter Three - The Man From The Window

          I kept on bumping my fingertips together while walking up the dark stairs. Why was this place so dark? Did the castle really need to be gloomy?

          Suddenly, a door opened, and out came Koshka who pulled me in. She covered my mouth before I could scream.

          "So, what did they tell you?" she asked me quickly.

          My eyes scanned the place. "I'm in my room?" I asked, more to myself.

          She slapped my cheek softly, "Of course, you're in your room, silly. I stayed here and waited for you."

          I managed to say, "Aw, that is so sweet," before I was attacked by a tight embrace. My body tensed at first, but, when I got the hang of it, it relaxed.

          "I love this feeling, Safia," she giggled.

          Confused, I asked her, "What... What feeling?"

          She pulled away from the tight embrace and smiled, "This feeling. It's hard to explain, but maybe you'll understand if I told you that you're the only friend I have." The one and only, I thought to myself. "Yep," she said, as if she heard what my mind was saying, "the one and only." I stretched my arms out and lay on my bed.

          We spent the rest of the hour talking, laughing, and well, talking. I never thoughT I'd be able to spend an hour talking to someone I just met. She talked about her days in Aethelgard and some of her misadventures, as well. She said she has been here for a very long time now. According to her, she came here when she was very young. She was claustrophobic, and the people's shouting at her every time she showed up in town to grab some food to eat didn't help, so she ran and ran until she came across Aethelgard. She said Aethelgard gave her a weird feeling, like she was meant for this.

          And I felt that, too.

          "Safia Kaminski, sit there." Madame Tana, our class instructor, wearing a beautiful dress with her hair put up into a bun pointed to the seat at the back, the rearmost part of the room, "just make sure you will pay attention to everything I say, and you will have no problem with my class." I nodded and took my seat. Luckily, Koshka was my seatmate again.

          This wasn't the first class we had today. Our first was alchemy class. She was my only seatmate in that class, and everything went pretty well. The only thing that made the class a little unusual was the weird snake hissing at me, but I didn't really know what a usual class was. I found it on our table, and nobody seemed startled by the snake aside from me. We spent the whole hour in that class, and an hour was enough to get used to a snake's continuous hissing at you.

          I felt her lean towards me and whisper, "Hey, seatmate."

          "Hi, stranger. I'm Safia. What's your name?" I chuckled, and she stifled a laugh. Obviously, we already enjoyed this game we were playing.

          "It's Koshka, Koshka Katzmann," she replied and offered her hand under the table we shared without looking at me, so we wouldn't get caught by the instructor.

          I shook her hand under the table, "Do you go by Koshie?"

          This time, she failed to hide her laugh; in fact, her laugh burst out from her lips, but she covered her mouth less than a second after. Unfortunately, the whole class was already staring at us, or rather, at her.

          Madame Tana was glaring at us, as well. Soon, she closed her notebook and sighed. Oh, right. This instructor was our teacher in demeanor class. Of course, she would handle things like a lady.