Written: Saturday. April 4, 2020.
Mara did not understand why the people who were with them awhile ago went inside of a room altogether, but she couldn’t, according to Ervagh’s command. She felt quite disturbed with the matter, feeling a sort of irritation because of the defiance towards her personal desires. She wasn’t accustomed to this, being ordered and expected to follow. Somehow she could remember that the tables were turned differently at one point, and that she was the one who made the calls, the orders, the commands. Though she doesn’t know where those feelings, those memories, are coming from.
They were inside of a gazebo, the one that Toby told them to go to while the two waited for their classes to finish. Mara sat on one of the benches placed on the edges of the gazebo. Ervagh was pacing inside of the dome.
“How do suppose they changed their appearances like that, John?” Mara tugged at Ervagh’s clothing. He looked down to her after a second, wondering what it was she was doing. Ervagh was deep in his thoughts when she had started tugging.
“Come again, Princess?” He said. Mara looked at him, confused.
“Why did you call me a Princess?” she asked.
“Oh, it just seems fitting in your situation as of late, Lady Veergha.” Ervagh answered. Mara seemed to have two questions in her head now, he noticed. “That is your Volgan title. Lady Veergha. Given by Lord Veronnogh of the Volgan Empire. You have conquered many worlds in your time as a Warrior Queen. Inherited many traits from various species. Does none of this sound familiar to you? My Queen?”
“None so far.” Mara simply replied. The words fluttered in her head as she tried to grasp a thought and remember what it meant.
“Then you are merely what I feel to title you; A princess. Valuable in your worth. But unfortunately… also helpless.”
“Please don’t get me wrong.” Mara said to him. “I do wish to become this… Veergha that you speak highly of. You say that it is who I truly am, and I trust you. But none of it feels… right. At least for now, I guess. I remember things more in the current form that I am dressed in. And even still, it seems unnatural.”
“That’s because it is unnatural, Princess.” Ervagh said. “This is not your natural form. This is a Terran image. A human being.”
“That’s not what I mean, though.” She replied. Ervagh was about to say something, but he thought differently. Mara continued. “These memories feel… second-handed. Like an outsider’s perspective on another being’s life… for whatever that means.” She looked more confused than ever. “I can’t even understand what it is that I just said right now. I can’t explain it.” Mara looked up to the building where they left Toby and the others to have their ‘classes’. Her eyes had the look of worry in them. “But the constant thing I’ve been hearing in my head… is his voice.”
“Who’s voice, Princess?”
“Toby’s. It’s like he’s always there, in the new memories.” Mara leaned her chin above her hands, her hands leaning on her knees, swaying mildly without her noticing. She had a small smile on her face. “Always there, his voices. Calling me. Protecting me. Making me feel less lonely.”
“So today, class, we’re going to dive into the lesson that we were supposed to have last week.” Mr. Reyes told the class, as he scribbled some words on the blackboard. These were literal scribbles, by the way. Nobody ever had the nerve to call him out on his penmanship. Most of the students rarely needed to pay attention to what he wrote on the board anyway. Most of his tests were never even about the things he discussed anyway. Tom looked to the front left corner of the room, where two of the highest-performing classmates of his section were seated. He tried to see if they were jotting down notes on their yellow pads; they were. Once he knew that, he sort of looked up to see the faces of the two.
They were both girls, the two smart students. Behind them were two large blocks of moving nothingness in the higher region of the brain. Two of the lowest-performing students in their batch; their boyfriends. Tom knew exactly why they were placed near his smartest classmates: to balance things out. Fit the brains with the brawn: Juxtaposition, and all that shindig. He just couldn’t figure out the why part, on them being able to score such double-edged swords. These girls definitely looked like they had a future ahead of them, regardless of whether or not they’re dating anybody. They were also well-off, not really in need of someone to take them out to places and watch movies or just hang out when they feel like it. These bozos behind them, Tom thought to himself, smirking while he did so, are exactly that: bozos who have no future ahead of them, regardless of how rich and athletic they are, cause the world after high-school is way different than actual high school. So what’s the big deal? Might be the size of their shoes.
Tom nodded slowly to himself as he looked down. Definitely their shoe size.
“You think they’ll let us copy their notes this time?” Toby asked him for the second time when it was clear Tom didn’t hear it on the first.
“You think my shoes are big enough, man?” Tom looked back to where Toby was seated. Toby raised an eyebrow at him. Tom continued. “There’s this about us guys, Toby, that when at first glance, you know your worth and where you stand from the others.”
“... I’m not following.”
“Of course you can’t. You’ve got average sized shoes. Mine are okay. It’s well within the satisfactory-level, if you dig what I mean. But their feet,” he motions to the front left corner, to where the bozos were seated. “Those are Alpha-level BIG. Like, if I were in their shoes — dude, I’d be scoring all of the chicks around here.”
“Don’t you already do that?” June joined in on the absurd discussion of foot-size and why it matters to boys. “And no, that isn’t true… most of the time.”
“Ah, but you see: this comes with experience, which you clearly do not have, and I do.”
“I most certainly — “ She caught herself before saying another word. June lowered her voice. “That is none of your business, anyway. What I’m saying is that it isn’t always about that at all. I, for one, prefer to look into a person’s character. His personality.” June sat up straight to assert herself.
Tom shook his head slowly, with a smile on his face. “So you say.” He took a deep sigh, and proceeded to draw something on his notebook. He looked back on June, the cynical smile still on his face. “So you say.”
“Shut up. Tom.” June looked away from him. Toby saw that her cheeks were red, her eyebrows knitted.
“Um, I believe you.” He said to her. June’s eyebrows went back to the way they were, and her cheeks slowly went back to its natural color. “I mean, I don’t know exactly what girls prefer on guys. But I guess I could say that I don’t always find the prettiest girl in the room attractive.” June didn’t look at him, but he continued. “Sometimes their bad attitude turns me off from them, you know?”
“You don’t have to defend or agree with me, Toby.” She finally replied. “Yeah, I know exactly what you mean… and how’d we even get to this conversation?”
“I’m just as confused as you are, honestly.” Toby answered.
The bell rang after a few minutes. Mr. Reyes tried to keep everybody from standing up so that he could mention a few more things before everyone headed off to have lunch, but he got nobody’s attention in the process. Most of the groups of students were gone when Tom finally got to ask the two smart girls for their notes. And by the amount of time he spent talking to both of them (which was about 12 minutes filled with smiles and giggles from the two girls), probably their cellphone numbers too.
He went back to his group, with a self-confident smile latched on his face, holding the girls’ notes on his hands; and their numbers. “Told you guys I’d get them for us!” He raised the yellow papers up, and raised two smaller papers towards Drew. “Come on, man. Take your lucky pick! There’s no name on it, which only makes it more exciting.”
“Are you serious, Tom?” June crossed her arms. Her uniform folded up and revealed an accurate shape of her advantages. “Dating’s not a game!”
“It is once you’ve done a lot of it already.” Tom replied without hesitation. “Pick one, man.”
Drew was about to take one, when June took both of the small papers Tom was raising. Tom opened his mouth to argue, but what he saw next surprised him. June tore up a small yellow sheet from her pad and wrote her own cellphone number on it. All three of the yellow pieces of paper looked identical to one another. She raised them up towards Drew. “I can’t believe you were gonna let your friend coerce you into dating someone at random!”
“I wasn’t — “ was the only two words Drew got out, before June interrupted him.
“If you wanna fall into your friend’s charade, then lets up the stakes a little bit, then.” June said to him. “Whoever you get to pick, you have to ask them out on a date. No take-backs! You boys want to play games, don’t you?” Toby was about to correct her, but she shushed him before he could. June looked at Amanda.
“I’ll sit this one out, dude. You go on ahead.” She chuckled a bit and scratched her head.
June looked back to Drew. “Well? What’ll it be — “
Just then, she saw Drew holding a yellow piece of paper in his hand. She looked to her closed up hand, and saw that there were only two pieces left. “How did you — Never mind! So, who’d you get, Drew? I bet it’s one of those pristine Quiz-Bee girls Tom talked to — “
“You weren’t supposed to write your name on it.” Drew said to her.
June’s breathing stopped, her eyes popped wide open. She tried saying something to him, but whatever it was, it just sounded like a bad reception. “I — wait!”
“No take-backs, right?” Drew took a step near her. Tom had the most cartoon-like smile on his face. Toby raised his eyebrows as high as he could. Amanda put a hand over her mouth.
“What’s going on there, kids?” Mr. Reyes called out to them. He just finished packing up his papers. “Kids?”
None of them paid any attention to him. Drew looked into June’s eyes. June had her gaze just a little bit to the left from his, trying her best to keep it together.
“June… will you go on a date with me?”
Before she could even utter a word out from her mouth, Omnius went out of Toby’s bag, jumped out and on to one of the armchairs, and pointed towards June. “Yes!” Everybody suddenly looked at him. “You have to say ‘Yes’!”
“What in the hell is that thing?” Mr. Reyes yelled out from where he stood. The whole world seemed to stop at that moment. Toby and his group had no words coming out of their mouths. They were as shocked as Mr. Reyes was. Omnius just stood there, waiting for the next thing to happen. After a minute of silence and the pure stopping of motion from the room, Omnius looked around to see what his friends were looking at from behind him. He tensed and yelled out a surprised gasp. “Shit! Who’s this guy?”
Toby was about to call out to Omnius, when he heard June say something.
“Yes, Drew. I will go on a date with you.”
Omnius jumped up and down on the armchair, “I knew you could do it!”
Mr. Reyes yelled out to the group once more. “Can someone please tell me what is going on around here!”
Mara did not understand why the people who were with them awhile ago went inside of a room altogether, but she couldn’t, according to Ervagh’s command. She felt quite disturbed with the matter, feeling a sort of irritation because of the defiance towards her personal desires. She wasn’t accustomed to this, being ordered and expected to follow. Somehow she could remember that the tables were turned differently at one point, and that she was the one who made the calls, the orders, the commands. Though she doesn’t know where those feelings, those memories, are coming from.
They were inside of a gazebo, the one that Toby told them to go to while the two waited for their classes to finish. Mara sat on one of the benches placed on the edges of the gazebo. Ervagh was pacing inside of the dome.
“How do suppose they changed their appearances like that, John?” Mara tugged at Ervagh’s clothing. He looked down to her after a second, wondering what it was she was doing. Ervagh was deep in his thoughts when she had started tugging.
“Come again, Princess?” He said. Mara looked at him, confused.
“Why did you call me a Princess?” she asked.
“Oh, it just seems fitting in your situation as of late, Lady Veergha.” Ervagh answered. Mara seemed to have two questions in her head now, he noticed. “That is your Volgan title. Lady Veergha. Given by Lord Veronnogh of the Volgan Empire. You have conquered many worlds in your time as a Warrior Queen. Inherited many traits from various species. Does none of this sound familiar to you? My Queen?”
“None so far.” Mara simply replied. The words fluttered in her head as she tried to grasp a thought and remember what it meant.
“Then you are merely what I feel to title you; A princess. Valuable in your worth. But unfortunately… also helpless.”
“Please don’t get me wrong.” Mara said to him. “I do wish to become this… Veergha that you speak highly of. You say that it is who I truly am, and I trust you. But none of it feels… right. At least for now, I guess. I remember things more in the current form that I am dressed in. And even still, it seems unnatural.”
“That’s because it is unnatural, Princess.” Ervagh said. “This is not your natural form. This is a Terran image. A human being.”
“That’s not what I mean, though.” She replied. Ervagh was about to say something, but he thought differently. Mara continued. “These memories feel… second-handed. Like an outsider’s perspective on another being’s life… for whatever that means.” She looked more confused than ever. “I can’t even understand what it is that I just said right now. I can’t explain it.” Mara looked up to the building where they left Toby and the others to have their ‘classes’. Her eyes had the look of worry in them. “But the constant thing I’ve been hearing in my head… is his voice.”
“Who’s voice, Princess?”
“Toby’s. It’s like he’s always there, in the new memories.” Mara leaned her chin above her hands, her hands leaning on her knees, swaying mildly without her noticing. She had a small smile on her face. “Always there, his voices. Calling me. Protecting me. Making me feel less lonely.”
* * *
“So today, class, we’re going to dive into the lesson that we were supposed to have last week.” Mr. Reyes told the class, as he scribbled some words on the blackboard. These were literal scribbles, by the way. Nobody ever had the nerve to call him out on his penmanship. Most of the students rarely needed to pay attention to what he wrote on the board anyway. Most of his tests were never even about the things he discussed anyway. Tom looked to the front left corner of the room, where two of the highest-performing classmates of his section were seated. He tried to see if they were jotting down notes on their yellow pads; they were. Once he knew that, he sort of looked up to see the faces of the two.
They were both girls, the two smart students. Behind them were two large blocks of moving nothingness in the higher region of the brain. Two of the lowest-performing students in their batch; their boyfriends. Tom knew exactly why they were placed near his smartest classmates: to balance things out. Fit the brains with the brawn: Juxtaposition, and all that shindig. He just couldn’t figure out the why part, on them being able to score such double-edged swords. These girls definitely looked like they had a future ahead of them, regardless of whether or not they’re dating anybody. They were also well-off, not really in need of someone to take them out to places and watch movies or just hang out when they feel like it. These bozos behind them, Tom thought to himself, smirking while he did so, are exactly that: bozos who have no future ahead of them, regardless of how rich and athletic they are, cause the world after high-school is way different than actual high school. So what’s the big deal? Might be the size of their shoes.
Tom nodded slowly to himself as he looked down. Definitely their shoe size.
“You think they’ll let us copy their notes this time?” Toby asked him for the second time when it was clear Tom didn’t hear it on the first.
“You think my shoes are big enough, man?” Tom looked back to where Toby was seated. Toby raised an eyebrow at him. Tom continued. “There’s this about us guys, Toby, that when at first glance, you know your worth and where you stand from the others.”
“... I’m not following.”
“Of course you can’t. You’ve got average sized shoes. Mine are okay. It’s well within the satisfactory-level, if you dig what I mean. But their feet,” he motions to the front left corner, to where the bozos were seated. “Those are Alpha-level BIG. Like, if I were in their shoes — dude, I’d be scoring all of the chicks around here.”
“Don’t you already do that?” June joined in on the absurd discussion of foot-size and why it matters to boys. “And no, that isn’t true… most of the time.”
“Ah, but you see: this comes with experience, which you clearly do not have, and I do.”
“I most certainly — “ She caught herself before saying another word. June lowered her voice. “That is none of your business, anyway. What I’m saying is that it isn’t always about that at all. I, for one, prefer to look into a person’s character. His personality.” June sat up straight to assert herself.
Tom shook his head slowly, with a smile on his face. “So you say.” He took a deep sigh, and proceeded to draw something on his notebook. He looked back on June, the cynical smile still on his face. “So you say.”
“Shut up. Tom.” June looked away from him. Toby saw that her cheeks were red, her eyebrows knitted.
“Um, I believe you.” He said to her. June’s eyebrows went back to the way they were, and her cheeks slowly went back to its natural color. “I mean, I don’t know exactly what girls prefer on guys. But I guess I could say that I don’t always find the prettiest girl in the room attractive.” June didn’t look at him, but he continued. “Sometimes their bad attitude turns me off from them, you know?”
“You don’t have to defend or agree with me, Toby.” She finally replied. “Yeah, I know exactly what you mean… and how’d we even get to this conversation?”
“I’m just as confused as you are, honestly.” Toby answered.
The bell rang after a few minutes. Mr. Reyes tried to keep everybody from standing up so that he could mention a few more things before everyone headed off to have lunch, but he got nobody’s attention in the process. Most of the groups of students were gone when Tom finally got to ask the two smart girls for their notes. And by the amount of time he spent talking to both of them (which was about 12 minutes filled with smiles and giggles from the two girls), probably their cellphone numbers too.
He went back to his group, with a self-confident smile latched on his face, holding the girls’ notes on his hands; and their numbers. “Told you guys I’d get them for us!” He raised the yellow papers up, and raised two smaller papers towards Drew. “Come on, man. Take your lucky pick! There’s no name on it, which only makes it more exciting.”
“Are you serious, Tom?” June crossed her arms. Her uniform folded up and revealed an accurate shape of her advantages. “Dating’s not a game!”
“It is once you’ve done a lot of it already.” Tom replied without hesitation. “Pick one, man.”
Drew was about to take one, when June took both of the small papers Tom was raising. Tom opened his mouth to argue, but what he saw next surprised him. June tore up a small yellow sheet from her pad and wrote her own cellphone number on it. All three of the yellow pieces of paper looked identical to one another. She raised them up towards Drew. “I can’t believe you were gonna let your friend coerce you into dating someone at random!”
“I wasn’t — “ was the only two words Drew got out, before June interrupted him.
“If you wanna fall into your friend’s charade, then lets up the stakes a little bit, then.” June said to him. “Whoever you get to pick, you have to ask them out on a date. No take-backs! You boys want to play games, don’t you?” Toby was about to correct her, but she shushed him before he could. June looked at Amanda.
“I’ll sit this one out, dude. You go on ahead.” She chuckled a bit and scratched her head.
June looked back to Drew. “Well? What’ll it be — “
Just then, she saw Drew holding a yellow piece of paper in his hand. She looked to her closed up hand, and saw that there were only two pieces left. “How did you — Never mind! So, who’d you get, Drew? I bet it’s one of those pristine Quiz-Bee girls Tom talked to — “
“You weren’t supposed to write your name on it.” Drew said to her.
June’s breathing stopped, her eyes popped wide open. She tried saying something to him, but whatever it was, it just sounded like a bad reception. “I — wait!”
“No take-backs, right?” Drew took a step near her. Tom had the most cartoon-like smile on his face. Toby raised his eyebrows as high as he could. Amanda put a hand over her mouth.
“What’s going on there, kids?” Mr. Reyes called out to them. He just finished packing up his papers. “Kids?”
None of them paid any attention to him. Drew looked into June’s eyes. June had her gaze just a little bit to the left from his, trying her best to keep it together.
“June… will you go on a date with me?”
Before she could even utter a word out from her mouth, Omnius went out of Toby’s bag, jumped out and on to one of the armchairs, and pointed towards June. “Yes!” Everybody suddenly looked at him. “You have to say ‘Yes’!”
“What in the hell is that thing?” Mr. Reyes yelled out from where he stood. The whole world seemed to stop at that moment. Toby and his group had no words coming out of their mouths. They were as shocked as Mr. Reyes was. Omnius just stood there, waiting for the next thing to happen. After a minute of silence and the pure stopping of motion from the room, Omnius looked around to see what his friends were looking at from behind him. He tensed and yelled out a surprised gasp. “Shit! Who’s this guy?”
Toby was about to call out to Omnius, when he heard June say something.
“Yes, Drew. I will go on a date with you.”
Omnius jumped up and down on the armchair, “I knew you could do it!”
Mr. Reyes yelled out to the group once more. “Can someone please tell me what is going on around here!”
End of Chapter.
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