Level Up

Chapter four

Rah-zah-lehn (Rosaline)

There's a lovely gif on the side of everyone crowd surfing that I just thought was hilarious.

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Chapter four

Collette's POV

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I am over whelmed by the noise.

The room is made from the underground stone like a bite out of an apple. The temperature, again, was perfect and temperate. There is a long dark hallway illuminated only by a few wall lights.

I turn back to Eloise yet she's already disappeared into the thick stone. Thinking, what the heck, I pad down the hallway to the source of the terrific noise.

There is yet another hallway and this one lays perpendicular to my own and I decide to follow the right side of the path until I see an entrance at the far end.

I walk through a tremendous burst of light which conflicts with the dreary atmosphere and come across a room filled with all different shapes and sizes of people, though most seemed older and more developed than myself.

I stared for a while at the group as they all act and react to each other. Slowly I slide along the right wall, still watching everybody as I go.

I stop when I'm about to land a girl who looks to be around the age of ten. The way her face bursts with energy and her rosy cheeks beem with happiness touches me. Her hands are occupied behind her head as she attempts to tame her wild tuffs of hair.

"Let me help," I offer and kneel behind her. She lends me her strands of midnight black hair and runs her fragile fingers along the hem of her skirt.

"What's your name?" I clear my throat and relieve the last bit of pressure from my ears. My cracked fingers glide through her gentle hair and it soothes my skin.

"Rosaline," she announces simply. I gather strand after strand and let the excess silk lay fallow in my lap.

"Are you the youngest?" I hope my question doesn't sound offensive. She shrugs one shoulder and I feel the muscles in her face stretch as she cracks a confident grin, proving my question. "I'm more mature than those clickers over there," Rosaline comments.

"Clickers?" I stow away the stray hairs and twist the bottom frays into a tie. "The one and only," she confirms. After noting my silence, she elaborates further. "The manifesting bugs that live down past the bridge." Rosaline explains to me as if it were as plain as daylight.

My head spins. What's a Lagala or a Clicker and the Bridge? "Did you skip class when they introduced Clickers?" Rosaline scans the fray of her braids over the pads of her fingers relishing in it's soft touch.

"Yeah, something like that," I mutter, more to myself.