"Blimey! What are you reading?" she enthused. She rubbed her eyes, having just awoken in her sleeping bag, the Haven's sky still dark before sunrise.
"What? This?" I said, closing my book to show her the cover under the lights adhering to the two buildings' walls of atonal hues. "The Dark World, by Henry Kuttner." It's about a guy who's got a wizard's personality living inside of him, and that wizard happens to be an unscrupulous tyrant ruling a magical dimension, while a witch leads a rebellion against him.
"Yes, I can tell. I'm not blind," she laughed, amazed. "I'm asking why you're suddenly interested in a storybook written half a century ago." Needless to say, she had read the book.
"Well, it's supposed to be our reading material in English. I was halfway through already last week, when Ms. Grey said we wouldn't be assessed on it anymore, with no explanation. I just figured that I should finish the ending at least, to give Kuttner the respect he deserves."
"I guess the word 'rebellion' has become quite sensitive these days, huh?" she shrugged, and looked up at the predawn expanse. "'When I die, I want to die in a Utopia that I have helped to build.'"
"What?" I asked.
"A quote by Kuttner," she smiled, but it sounded like a sigh. "The dark world, we're living in. The dark world."
YOU ARE READING
The Doves that Strut
RomanceWill Peaceman, a seventeen teenager who has got enrolled in a social movement against police violence and corruption with his girlfriend, Claire Everine after the revelation of a journalist's death, attempts to reach Claire who has gone missing, whi...
