❝The universe is full of stars. If it weren't for them, the galaxies wouldn't be bright and the night sky would be a lifeless veil of blue because one can rely on the moon only for so long. The universe wouldn't be itself if all those stars -althoug...
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FRIDAY ARRIVED IN the blink of an eye.
Lyla was perspicacious enough to have set her alarm an hour earlier. She spent a quarter of it stretching and shuffling on her bed. She cursed the academy for forcing her to wake up at six in order to be present in the front courtyard at seven.
Today was the team's first mission.
For the most part, she was thrilled at the prospect of testing her abilities outside the academic grounds, but the tiny speck of anxiety that caused her chest to clench and the butterflies in her stomach to explode into a wild dance had yet to subside.
Lyla blinked away the morning blurriness and rubbed her hands on her face. She pushed her back to a sitting position and stared out of the window. For once, she hadn't shut the blinds. Although it should have been expected, she was quite stunned by the last hues of the night lingering in the sky.
She shot a look of disgruntlement at the clock on the nightstand beside her. 6:15 and she was beyond tempted to fall back on her pillow and toss aside the consequences for later.
Before she gave in to her desires, Lyla dragged herself with a will she couldn't imagine she possessed out of bed. If she continued to laze around, she might as well miss the entire mission.
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It took her a whole forty-five minutes to arrive in the front courtyard. Fifteen minutes were given to her preparation for the day ahead, while the other thirty were gladly spent on the bus.
Lyla couldn't afford the dizziness of the speed train. Under a plethora of other circumstances she would have chosen it for the shake of presenting herself at the academy fast, but today she couldn't wrap her heart in steel and bear the torture in the form of motion sickness.
She had taken the necessary equipment for their small trip. Her backpack consisted of clean clothes, a piece of home-made cake, a pack of chips and two water bottles in case her throat dried, aching for water.
The masters had informed them swimwear would be an obligatory attire under their clothes. It led Lyla to the conclusion they would have to swim somewhere along the way. The fact they would bother to wear a bikini to swim, instead of their actual clothes since they would be getting drenched anyway was a mystery unsolved.
On the bright side, all questions would be answered soon.
A cardigan was resting on Lyla's shoulders with the knot in the middle of the collarbone, the morning breeze nipping her skin. The temperature would undoubtedly rise throughout the day. It was the second week of October, the second and last week where the weather would be exceptionally warm in Astropolis.
However, it didn't rob the city off of the dried leaves that abandoned their green color for the characteristic orange of the season on the trees before they would be swept away, or the need for a blanket during the night.
