The Clepsydra

Chapter 1

I look at her, stunned into silence. I'm just about to open my mouth to ask her what drugs she and everyone else seem to be on but before I do she pushes herself off the floor of the tent and walks out through the tent entrance.

I get up to follow her, but before I even take a few steps my knees feel like jelly and my vision goes blurry. Out of control I fall to floor, my vision going dark before my head even hits the ground.

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A sound pierces the darkness, and my eyes form thin slits as I open them. I see the stone grey-coloured wall of my bedroom, and not that of a tent, thankfully. I look around further to see other bits of familiar furniture, like my cupboard and white desk which holds my open science book and a half drunk cup of coffee.

I turn over in my cocoon of a duvet to gaze at the source of the shrill noise: my alarm clock telling me its 6:00 AM and that I need to get my ass up and out of bed before I'm late for school. A huge sigh escapes my lips as I run my hands over my face, stopping to rub my temples.

"Ok subconscious, I get the picture...no more late night coffee binges to stay awake and study if I want to prevent myself from having dreams about Mrs Simon's history lectures."

I hauled myself out of bed and changed into a pair of dark denim jeans, a soft green top, my rumpled grey knit sweater and some boots before surveying myself in the mirror.

"Hmm....not too bad a train wreck for the first day back at school." I quickly draw a line of eyeliner and place mascara on each of my pale green eyes, then run my fingers though my unruly mass of long, copper-coloured curls.I would have liked to straighten it, but there's definitely no time for that now.

I pick my bag up off the floor, grabbing my science book off the desk and stuffing it in before running into the kitchen and sitting down at the table. My dad sits at the head, finishing off some last minute emails before his morning meeting today while my mom walks up to me with a plate of blueberry flapjacks and whipped cream.

She kisses me on the head and places the plate in front of me before saying "morning darling, excited for your last term in Grade 11?"

I roll my eyes and dig right into breakfast before replying "Yeah, having a science test set for the first day back makes it all the more exciting"

She chuckled at my heavy use of sarcasm, before humming to herself and shuffling off to her room to get ready for work.

I have a few minutes before my dad would be ready to drive me to school, so I took some time to search on my laptop for any link between Cortés and the name Malinalli. I was pretty shocked when the World Wide Web happened to enlighten me on the fact that she was one of the main reasons he had been able to conquer a pretty powerful civilization of the ancient world.

Her ability to speak both Spanish and Mayan had helped him make his way into the Aztec Capital Tenochtitlan and then destroy it...just a teeny tiny detail Mrs Simons forgot to mention during her presentation.

Ok, cool, so now I'm dreaming about dead people....totally what I want to hear when I'm trying to convince myself I'm NOT going completely nuts.

I hear my dad hooting from the driveway, so I close my laptop and run out the house to jump into the back seat. I vow to try and ignore this new development...at least until I come back home.

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The drive to school takes a while...the traffic is pretty backed-up due to all the students in Port Greylet travelling back to school today.