VENEFICA

[04] Pelican Yodels and Donut Gnocchi and Poori

The red clock hung over the back of the seat. Long stringy oily black hair covered the woman's face. The flies swarmed around Rita's still living body as they placed her in the officer's car. Based on the smell of rotten seaweed and dead fish, she hadn't bathed in weeks. Her nose was intentionally cut off, clearly the result of some kind of sharp blade. The dress she wore was covered in mud. What was once a soft pastel blue showed signs of something more sinister and grim. Her lips, dry and crumbled. Despite her fragile and wounded appearance, she moved fluidly, like waves softly rocking a boat on the water. She scratched at scars embedded in her crackled skin.

Thomas watched from the safety of his dorm-room window as the car drove away from the gates of the school with ease. "That's weird" he muttered to himself as he dusted off an old textbook and placed it under the leg of his wobbly writing desk. He looked back at the car driving deeper into the forest. Normally it would take at least several minutes to navigate the intricately woven ward lines protecting the school, but the car moved effortlessly through.

He swung his backpack onto his shoulders and headed out.

The Living Lobby marked the center of the dorm rooms. Thomas was used to seeing the Living Lobby every day, but it still never ceased to amaze him. Of all the places in the academy, the Living Lobby was the most uplifting to be in. The enormous, three story high, open horseshoe-shaped room was enchanted to be a pocket dimension of sorts, a place to accommodate the living spaces for the increased number of enrolled students. It wasn't physically a part of the academy's campus—-It was much too big to even fit on the property—- but it was still connected to the instructional classrooms and offices by a long bricked hallway (that served as the only way in and the only way out), nonetheless.

Encased in a bright yellow glow and covered by a glass ceiling, the lobby was the center of all kinds of student interaction. Almost every student sat and chatted at one of the fifty tables or thirty benches in the center hall at some point throughout the day. The room was truly alive with various conversations and activities going on every minute. The three hundred dorm room doorways lined the sides of the central area, one hundred dorms on each level. On each of the three sides of the room, a wooden staircase connected the second and third levels of dorms with the main floor. Each higher level, enclosed by a golden rail that kept those on the upper levels from falling, could look down and out upon the center of the lobby hall and watch everything happening below.

Eyeing the left, more quiet side, of the lobby hall, Thomas looked around for an open spot to work at. He waved to a friend leaving a dorm on the second floor. Distracted, he tripped. A small open book laid in the skew of his path. Someone must have left it there by accident. He picked up the book and closed it shut, admiring the pristine glossy cover and perfectly crisp pages. "Pelican Yodels and Donut Gnocchi?" he joked reading the title aloud. "Did anyone drop this?" He waved the book up high which got the attention of the many other students who worked around the area. Most of them shook their heads.

Intrigued by its contents, Thomas found an open table, sat down, and opened the book.

Mystic walked through the long brick hallway that marked the entrance to the dorms. She whimpered and sniffled as she made her way to her room. The head nurse advised her to take the rest of the day as a mental day so she could reflect on her emotions about what just happened. Mystic did. She walked into the Living Lobby and toward the stairway closest to her dorm room.

"You okay?" asked Thomas. He was sitting in the lobby hall. "Aren't you supposed to be in potions now?" He didn't look up when he spoke and instead flipped through the book, perplexed at the gibberish printed on the pages.

"What's it to you?" Mystic used her hand to subtly wipe her tears. She didn't need him to pity her

Thomas looked up at her. "I'm just trying to be a good older brother," he said defensively. "If Lily's friend's sad, I should try to at least help, right?" He tussled his rusted brown hair. Surely he wasn't up to anything good. Thomas Reed was never one to help out his sister, and definitely not one to help out his sister's friends. Whenever Lily was around Thomas acted as if his sister never existed. The fact that he even acknowledged Mystic must have meant that he wanted something out of the girl.