Chương 38: Day Thirty-Eight

Dear Diary, I'm not in a great headspace right now, and I'm glad I've got this notional diary to turn to. The day started out okay. Saffron woke me up, and I stood on tiptoe before I swung the door open just to see her reaction. Her gaze lingered just below my breasts for an endless moment before she snapped it up to meet my own, and I dropped back onto my heels with a chuckle.

"Damn, girl. You've got some impressive abs going on there."

"I know, right? I can't really see them, but they felt like they'd been getting firmer." I grinned at her.

"Wanna touch 'em?" That got the blush I'd been looking for.

"NO!" she snapped, clearly lying and equally clearly unwilling to admit any such thing.

"Your loss. I'll see you at breakfast." That got me an eyeroll before she turned and walked away. I slipped on my uniform and hurried after her, catching up right as she got to our table in the Dining Hall. This morning we had sriracha eggs and scrapple with jalapenos mixed into it. Not exactly Camden food, but pleasantly spicy and familiar enough to feel like comfort food. I was real careful not to vacuum up all of both plates, leaving enough for the ROTC and gobbos to have a try.

Bill wasn't into it, and Fred spoke up to agree with him, but Angel, Saffron, Raven, and Bonita all complained that they didn't get seconds. Go Team Spicy! We got another platter of sriracha eggs, but no more spicy scrapple. I only managed to get like a third of the eggs, too, because Angel snatched the tray away before I could devour it eggs and all, then gave each of the Cadets who wanted some a heaping helping before returning the denuded tray to me. It's like she thought I wouldn't leave any for anyone else.

I mean, I wouldn't have, but still. So we got to Geography and World Cultures and I realized Raven had the same class as the four of us ROTC kids. I realized why I hadn't noticed her when she slid into a desk at the back corner of the room, popped open a sketchbook, and started drawing. Today we focused on Norfolk. I think it's the same place as Norfolk back in the Eastside world, but I'm totally uncertain about whether the history of the town is the same, similar, or completely different.

Folks from Scandinavia settled it, hence the name, 'North Folk'. Phileo City tangled with them once or twice, since they're a port city right on the ocean, and they've tried to shut down the river ports like Phileo and Calverton City. Not just those two, but I didn't really register the others as the list got longer. Apparently the ruling family of Norfolk has a tradition where every Prince or Princess who wants the big chair goes out and attacks someone they consider 'competition'.

I raised my hand about then; when DeLeon called on me I asked, "don't the folks living in Norfolk get a little ticked about that? I mean, it's not like they've won any of those wars." DeLeon nodded.

"Fair question. While the Gormsson dynasty is significantly more aggressive than their kin back in Scandinavia, they've kept on most of the old ways as regards looting and division of loot. As such, they call for volunteers when they've readied their ships, and to date have never had to levy troops from their commoners."

"Okay, so they've got enough rich sorts to mount an actual war?" DeLeon shook his head, chuckling.

"No, nothing quite so bad as that, although they do have more overlap between 'wealth', 'nobility', and 'Heroic status' than any of the Cities we've studied thus far. However, since most of the noble class marries to consolidate wealth, and commoners who survive a campaign often come home with a fair chunk of wealth and, occasionally, the title of 'Karl', which is also their lowest noble title, they've always wound up with enough commoner volunteers to fill their ships." I pursed my lips.

"But... they still always lose, right?" The teacher held out a hand and wobbled it in a 'so-so' gesture.

"It depends on your definition of victory. While they've yet to subordinate a single City to themselves, not even their closest neighbor Calverton City, they always sail home with ships loaded with as much loot as they can pack after burying their dead." You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

"So the commoners are rolling the dice on coming home rich?"

"That's about the size of it." Norfolk had more races living in it than any other City we'd studied so far, although apparently they all came from Scandinavia, and the City wasn't particularly friendly to people moving from other Cities. They had Humans, of course, as well as some Aesir and Vanir Hybrids, most of whom were Jarls. They also had 'Dwarves', 'Elves', 'Trolls', and 'Jotnar', who according to the teacher were genuine giants, averaging around sixty feet tall.

That kind of forestalled me asking why nobody had retaliated against Norfolk. If they could fight the other Cities long enough to fill their ships with loot without any giants, who wouldn't fit in the ships in any case, trying to fight them when they had the fortifications and giants to boot would be a fancy form of suicide.

I still kinda had an urge to smack them around, though, especially when I got my hands on one of the class textbooks during the second half of class and read how Camden Yards became a client-state to Phileo City during a particularly bad Norfolk raid. As DeLeon dismissed us for lunch, I wandered back to look at what Raven had drawn, since she never stopped doodling during class. That's when I snagged the textbook to double check; Raven had drawn a better-than-perfect rendition of the map from the book.

Where the book illustration had like one tree for 'forested' areas, Raven drew in a forest, lots of trees all intermingled, and they looked almost like a photograph rather than a shitty woodcut. When I checked again at the end of class, she'd doodled in pictures of the races Deleon went over during the second half of class. At dinner I cornered her as she came into the Dining Hall.

"For fuck's sake, Raven, why are you here instead of an Art school?" She clutched her sketchbook to her chest, looking anywhere to avoid meeting my eyes.

"No Art schools in Camden Yards. One here in Phileo, but they don't take Camden kids." I shook my head and put one arm around her for a sideways hug.

"Fuckers don't deserve you. Have you shown any of that," I nodded to her sketchbook, "to the teachers here?" She shrugged, coincidentally scooting out of my hug at the same time, "Nah. Not like they've got Art classes here." I followed her over to the table, saying, "you really ought to tell one of them; it'd be a shame if you got your hands or eyes busted up or some shit and they didn't do whatever it took to fix them right." At that point, we got to the table and each sat down to eat.

Being an advocate for my fellow Cadets felt well and good, but I'd spent hours in a classroom since lunch, and needed to get me my eat on. Tonight we had beef; enough steaks for each of us to get one, some hamburger patties in gravy, and some shredded beef with enough pepper in it to burn nicely. We didn't get a second tray of steaks, but I put away four loaves of bread making hamburgers out of the patties and some bits from the salad they put out to fill out the 'vegetables' portion of our dinner.

After dinner, I went back to my room, stripped down, and went to sleep. I don't know long I slept, but I woke up whimpering. I'd had a nightmare. I'm no stranger to those; growing up in Camden had plenty of fodder for scary shit that might happen. This one, though... It started with me teasing the sharks at the aquarium. Just fucking around while cutting school, like you do. Then I was on the catwalks between the enclosures, looking straight at the motherfucker who shot me. As he shot me.

In slow motion, I felt the bullet drill a hole into my forehead. Then it yanked me off my feet into one of the enclosures as it shattered the back of my skull, still in painful slow motion that let me feel each chip of bone tear its way free. I sank through the water forever, watching the sun get smaller and dimmer as I drifted deeper. My lungs kept trying to breathe, filling themselves with burning salt water.

My back finally touched the grainy silt at the bottom of the tank, and more agony ripped through me as a few skull shards that hadn't pulled free were torn away when the 'rock' my head finally landed on pulled itself out from under me. The octopus' arms wrapped around me and pulled me backward across the bottom of its tank, headed for a clump of assorted decorations in the deepest corner of the enclosure.

A few rocks piled up on each other, some plants that moved like real plants instead of plastic, and the classic 'half buried treasure chest' with a thin stream of bubbles trickling from its corners. My cephalopod savior held me to the stream of bubbles, but my lungs had already given up. He pulled me around, or maybe pulled himself around me, until one of his big round eyes stared into both of mine. I just lay there, being dead and all.

He pushed me into the gap between the chest and its lid, prying it open so I fit. When he let go of me I fell into the chest; he tucked my legs in when they caught on the edge. I kept falling away from him, while seemingly getting no further from him. Then he shoved the lid shut, trapping me in darkness. They say that no matter how long a dream seems to last, it's really just the few seconds before you wake up.

I call bullshit on that right now, because I fell through darkness for an eternity, screaming with water-filled lungs until my voice gave out, leaving me whimpering in pain and terror as I fell through endless nothing black as pitch. I woke whimpering and couldn't stop. I don't think I'm going to get back to sleep tonight, either.