"Voilà. The difference between life and death"

Charles Pike smiled to himself as his class silently watched the small fire he created simmer. The teenagers were, not so, secretly intrigued by how this man had done it, created fire with only the bare minimum. The classes awe struck silence was interrupted by Murphys sarcasm fuelled slow claps which in turn caused the teenagers to chuckle, excluding the girl next to Luna - whom she had worked out was Octavia Blake, a forbidden second child.

"Thank you, Mr. Murphy. Perhaps you would like to tell us the key to surviving on the ground?"

"Not really, no." Murphy sighed in response.

"Ms. Blake, how about you? The key to survival on Earth. What is it?"

Octavia Blake cowered in her seat at the feeling of the whole rooms eyes on her, not having much communication with people for most of your life will do that to you. The people were curious to see the girl talk as she hadn't done so in their presence yet.

"Not dying?" Octavia witted awkwardly, it sounding more like a question.
Luna was the first person to react to her comment by snorting, then rest of the class followed in pursuit by laughing. The whole class giggled at the reply as they didn't expect that sort of answer from Octavia.

"You can laugh all you want, but we've got a lot to learn here. Making fire, tying knots, how to navigate using the stars, how to hunt. You have to learn which plants to eat and..."

"Which ones we can smoke?" Jasper Jordan intercepted.

"Mr. Jordan that is precisely why we had to seperate you and Mr. Green.
Listen, the answer to my question, they key to survival on the ground and on the Ark is to keep fighting at all costs against all odds.
The minute you give up, you're dead"

The words the man spoke chilled Luna, she still couldn't understand why they were here and why they were learning Earth skills. The past week and a half Luna was telling herself that Pike was just a strict teacher but his words seemed more serious than what he was letting on and it caught Luna off guard. She seemed to be the only one realising this though because she heard muttering off the now familiar voice of Murphy.

"Am I boring you Mr. Murphy?" Charles Pike sighed, wishing these mere children could know the truth and actually have a chance.
Murphy shrugged in response and snickered.

"I'll survive."















"Why are we even here." Jasper Jordan groaned, swinging on his chair.

The thirty delinquents had been waiting in the same classroom they had been in for the past two weeks for over ten minutes and they were bored. Luna was curious as to why Pike was late, he was never late, and she did the first thing she thought of and decided to lurk the corridor outside the classroom to see where their teacher was, Lunas gut knew it wasn't  good idea.

The girl stalked her way out of the makeshift classroom and into the unguarded corridor.

Luna was just about to round her first corner when she heard two men having a rather heated conversation. She peaked her head round the corner enough to see Chancellor Jaha and Pike.

tender hearts [BELLAMY BLAKE] Where stories live. Discover now