Heathen Series - Changed

Chapter 5

BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!

"Mmmmm."

Stephanie stretched herself across her bed then slowly - painfully - pealed the blankets off one by one. She didn't want to get up and it took her ten minutes to fully wake up. She sat cross-legged on her bed and glanced at her new phone, it was flashing.

'And here I thought you were just a good dream for once.'

She smiled and jumped out of bed excitedly heading to her bathroom to take a nice hot shower; one that seemed long overdue.

***

Hot water trickled down her body as steam rose off, forming droplets on the glass door. The sound of water gushing out of the showerhead was like music to her ears; loud and comforting. Each splash more distracting than the previous one; sending her out of her current life into her head where she imagined she was flying over the ocean again, with waves spraying against her face; cool and calming.

She arched her back and closed her eyes turning her face up to allow the water to run down her front, relaxing all her muscles and joints; which helped her prepare for the events of the day to come.

She snapped out of her reverie and finished up her shower by rinsing the shampoo out of her thick, black hair and off her body.

With the towel wrapped tightly around her, she hopped back into her room while tugging on her underwear - she always loved black, the blue lace that covered it was a bonus. The lotion was rubbed into her skin easily and her school clothes were shrugged on quickly. Her mood dropped from happy-chappy to a what-the-hell-chappy when she noticed the atmosphere change around her.

She walked into the kitchen to find all her friends around the table with a plate of scrambled eggs and a side of sausage or bacon or even both. She sat down and dished up a bit of the breakfast for herself and ate while everyone stared at her curiously.

'What now?'

"What?" she asked with her mouth full.

"Nothing..." replied Xelia with a wicked smile.

"Bullshit! We want to know who -M is." demanded Ntsakela with a devilish smile of her own.

"Ag! You know if I knew, I'd tell you in a micro-second but unfortunately I don't." replied Steph with her own smile.

The conversation started to pick up from there; all the while laughter could be heard from the hallway. Steph checked her emails to see if there were any interesting ones other than the usual Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest reminders.

A new mail popped up as she cleared the rest of her boring emails, this one was from the 'Captain S. Reeeds'. This must be from the General's scholarship thing; she had completely forgotten about that.

'Dear Miss S. Swan

On behalf of the General, and Base-Control-Centre (BCC), thank you for applying for and to our scholarship program.

We appreciate that you were one of the brave students to put your name down to intern, train and study in our program.

Well done!

...

CONGRATULATIONS!

And welcome to the programme!

You have been accepted among the many who have applied and we are excited to have you. You will be sent another email with more and any information you may need.