Since I have the time, why not got in for a little character introduction, then? First actual chapter!
Chapter One
‘Revision hour’ after school hours for the normal folks, those poor souls oblivious to the strange realities of the world around them, was a time to either bore themselves silly, or, in the absence of the teacher, catch up on normal scandals involving their fellow normal mates, actually consider opening a book to study something, or just let loose and play the general fool.
For Saffa, it was a chance to plan her next move, or take down mental notes on every new detail that she encountered in RAF and beyond, and the things that slipped from that world into this one and vice versa.
Like her and her sister, Rose.
Today, though, in her usual place at the far-right back corner of the classroom that always reeked of cats, she contented herself with the newspaper instead, which held nothing remotely interesting. Apart from an article about a plan to reintroduce tigers in the reserved forest part of the woods next to the school (like
that would ever happen), there was the usual petrol-price hike, corruption, scams, murder, rape, protests, incomplete drainage work, and the Indian cricket team doing what they did best these days: losing. She put the boring paper down and looked around the class.
Guys were having a paper-ball war in the front of the class (maybe she could supply them some ammo?); various cliques of girls were hanging around exercising their tongues; her cousin Jason was looking for something under the cupboard; and Austin, in a suit and jacket, was sitting in the centre listening to the croons of two groupies.
Normal stuff. Stupid stuff. A bit of a refreshing change, really.
She looked at Austin again. He was in the suit for a wedding party he had to attend later. Saffa knew more about him than any of those attention-deficit groupies did, thanks to a secret weapon of hers they would never perfect: actual, sensible conversation with the man.
Austin was new, having been dropped two weeks late into boarding school, not least in the last school year – twelfth grade – by his extremely busy military-based parents. His background explained the standard-issue Army rifle and the 16mm Colt* Rose had found in his cupboard (completely by accident). And why he always walked around with an air of uncertainty, like the enemy was right behind him in a tank.
Yet otherwise, he was a nice, normal teenage boy. Nothing out of the ordinary whatsoever.
Jeez, you think you’re weird, huh, Austin? she thought. For a while, she let the feather patterns draw themselves on her skin, imagining herself fly through the clouds, riding a warm, plump thermal.
Well, you ain’t seen nothing yet.“Will you come to the party with me?” a soft voice said suddenly.
Saffa nearly fell off her chair, and the feather patterns
schlooped back into her hand as she looked up to face the tall, well-built boy with soft, dark hair and serious brown eyes behind glasses, giving him an almost elfin appearance.
“Say
whaa?”
“The wedding party. It’s gonna be bloody boring, and I’ll need someone to talk to,” Austin said.
“What about Ashley and Payal?”
“Are you crazy? Those girls will drive me off the rocker if I’m with them for more than five minutes. Besides, you have much more interesting things to say.” He smiled.
“Uh-huh. If you say so,” Saffa said, smiling back. “I’ll go change then. See ya.”
“Okay, see you down at 7.” He left.
Saffa burst out laughing as she walked up the stairs to her dorm, as some girl stared at her.**
Much more interesting things, he says! He doesn’t know the half of it… not about the whole other world that had been coexisting with his own normal one since the 1980s, and the strange folks that now kept it under control somewhat – the RAFians. He didn’t know the girl he was about to take on a date was a human-slash-red-tailed hawk morpher, the master of all things South African.
Poor boy.
She rummaged in her suitcase, looking for something that was at least point-nine-nine percent formal. “So? It should be nice, doing something normal for once,” she said to herself as she changed into jeans and a dress shirt of sorts.
“Normal? You? Really?” a voice laughed.
Saffa looked up. Rose had entered the room. “I didn’t see you come in.”
“No,
duh, you didn’t see me come in.” Invisibility was Rose’s modus operandi: she could make herself, the clothes she wore, or an object she was holding disappear at will. And she was now, having silently slipped into her sister’s individual dorm-room away from the madness of the tenth-grade common one downstairs. “And where are you going to be normal? All dressed up?”
“Oh, Austin asked me to join him at the wedding party.”
Rose looked in wonder at the rather bland expression on her sister’s face as she mentioned this. “No kidding! I’d have thought you’d be more excited.”
“Yeah, well,” Saffa pulled on her Converse as she explained, “I’m a RAFian. I’m a warrior. Gotta keep my emotions in check.”
“Oh, please.” Rose sat down firmly on Saffa’s bed. She might have been two years her junior, but she was her intellectual equivalent, and partner in crime. “You are going out with a boy who, in a radical first, has actually paid you special attention, Jason excluded. Relax, girl. Let loose. Have fun.”
“Still, it would be nice if you could watch my back…”
“Eish. You’re seventeen and you still say these things. Anyway, I’m going to be s***-bored tonight, no midnight pranks or some such. We’ve actually decided to let the warden get some sleep today, so, what the heck.”
“Thanks, coz, you know,
something always happens when I’m out on my own.”
“And how do you know this night won’t be different? Without distractions? Controllers? The Pootang, say? Or creatures that are crosses between, I dunno, Pokémon and Inferi catalysed by Medusa?”
Saffa raised an eyebrow.
“What? I’m supplying examples.”
“And you have a truly wild imagination.”
“Hey, I’m exercising it. That way, I can expect anything terrifying. No surprises.”
“Okay, then, you can tell me that the next time we meet Visser Three,” Saffa said sarcastically. She ran her fingers through her shoulder-length dark hair. “But I have this funny feeling
something will happen.”
“With your luck, you can count on that hunch,” Rose said dryly.
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* - Okay, I don’t actually know if they make that particular class, but I didn’t want to Google weapons just to find out. You know, Big Brother is watching and all that.
** - Reference to #27 – found it?
