The Caged Princess(Book 1)

Chapter - 4

Only a few more hours to go, Nadia assuaged herself.

It was lunch break and she was sitting by herself in the school library.

She usually ate her lunch briskly in first ten minutes and spent rest of her break after that in the library. She didn't want to be the odd girl out who ate lunch by herself. Eva and Emi were too busy to eat lunch in the cafeteria. They stayed in the classroom and ate from their lunch boxes packed at home, 'outside food is not good for your brain', Emi said, whatever that meant.

Nadia did not always have time to make her lunch and her mother had never packed lunch for her, ever. She had work in the morning. So, Nadia would buy the cheapest meal on the menu. Sometimes ,to spice things a bit, she ate an expensive doughnut, but then she would not have enough money to eat anything else so she avoided that.

The library was peaceful. It was one of the reasons she did not entirely abhor this place. At the very least their hard earned money that she was spending on this school, had something to show for it. Its expansive and well decked library. It was massive. It was her only safe place when at times she had to skip her classes or had PE. Nadia felt whoever came up with the idea of making kids run forcefully should be put in jail, what kind of new age torture was that?

She spent most of her time in school reading. She was aware she had no academic future, her mother was not going to allow that. But she found some sort of solace in books. They were her sole ally.  She read any and every book she could come across. Books on reptiles and their origin, books on lost languages, books on what researchers believed was down on the ocean abyssal plains and their mysterious trenches, books on the science of why all living things have a desire to reproduce, any thing she found interesting, she devoured.

It was a pity that there were no books on how to live with your excessively protective mother or how to live in a world were there is a gaping prejudice between rich and poor or about how to stay sane in an oppressive school environment. She could do without the physics but some books should be considered essential to survival and made available to everyone. What a dream would that be. But, of course, a school is supported by a number of people from the higher up. It needs that kind of support to sustain. So you can't really blame the school for that.

Nadia browsed through the section. Her eyes caught on a book about space and planets. With a sudden thud, she remembered the shining stone in her backpack. Her utterly tedious life in school had made her forget about that.

She snatched a book at random, took her backpack and sat in the most secluded section of the library. There were a couple of shelves surrounding that desk so she could be shielded from the view. She put the book up on the desk and took out the glove from her bag.

She then carefully removed the glove to look at the rock. At one glance it looked like a gold pebble if it was not for its sheer weightlessness. She braced herself and touched the stone again for a few seconds, it was still extremely cold. Her finger felt numb at the place it had made contact. She stared at it intensely as if expecting it to hatch or shake or do something. It looked too stunning to be a normal rock.

Her concentration zoned in on the strange rock in her hand. She didn't know why she had bothered to pick it up in the first place. Maybe because her sanctuary was burned to ashes and whatever this thing was, it was all that remained.

There was a sudden noise behind her.

"Oh!" Someone said out loud.

In her surprise, Nadia dropped the the rock and jerked her head backwards.

"I am sorry, did I surprise you? I didn't think anyone would be here right now.... Oh, Nadia!" . It was Olivia Rogers, the class representative of her grade. Nadia couldn't believe Olivia actually remembered her name.