Day 180 of 365 Days of Writing Prompts: Who are these three?
Shannon: “Toby put your hand down. Stop being a know-it-all .”
“Mark stop protecting him. I’ll teach him a lesson.”
“Pete you just angry when I know something you don’t.”
Erin: Freddy the young and optimistic.
Len the old and protective.
Greg the forgotten and curious.
Who are these characters?
Pelky Sisters 
The school was silent, deathly so, on this particularly dreary Monday a week after a large number of students disappeared from the grounds without so much as a backward glance. Personally, I was just irritated Eloise wasn’t one of them; her image disappearing into the murky mist that could so easily claim her life on the treacherous journey to land would have been a welcome thought. Instead, we were left as part of the handful of students still around for our Obscurity History class. It turned out that everyone who’d taken the class had been in it to hear about the obviously obscure secrets that are hidden within its history. Unfortunately for them, nothing of real interest had been discussed yet, or was likely to crop up, because our professor had only learned about the history from books, herself.
As I sidled into the room, glancing around at the meager number of faces still there, most of which were drooling on their desks or sipping massive lattes to wake themselves up. Jeff, Adam and Liam were chattering to each other in low tones at the front, shooting sideways glances at the professor to make sure she wasn’t overhearing their conversation. Liam always sat in the far corner of the front row with Jeff behind him because he told the best whispered jokes, and Adam beside him because he seemed to know everything from the year every building in the school was built to the names of random native plants. Though, on the plants, Jeff was second to none.
Stepping around the crooked rows of desks, I threw my bag over the back of the chair furthest from the teacher’s desk as I always did. I spotted Eloise’s stunning sunflower hair near the front, just behind Jeff, as she twirled a curl seductively between her fingers. When I had slammed a copy of Clarifying Obscurity on top of my desk, rousing two students from exhausted dreams, our professor at last looked up from her phone. These morning classes were going to be the death of everyone, including her; we all looked years older after a short time in the term.
Jill, the too-young-to-be-a-teacher, sighed loudly as she began a PowerPoint on the establishment of Winter’s Bend University in the same dry tone she always took. After just a few minutes, no one seemed to be paying attention other than Adam, who was studiously taking notes in a scribbled notebook he would reprint in three distinctly different handwriting fonts and sell to each and every remaining student. If Jill didn’t know about this atrocious practise I’d be surprised, but I hoped she didn’t demand a cut; it was because her classes were so boring that no one could pay attention or stay awake for them.
Staring mindlessly at the projection, which was literally a page out of the textbook, I was beginning to zone out when she asked something about the history of secret societies; I only caught the tail-end of the question. For a minute everyone still conscious simply gawked at her blankly, barely able to comprehend the question. Even Adam didn’t immediately raise his hand because he was too busy flipping through the text with his brow furrowed.
“Oh, you won’t find this in the book,” she smiled at the only attentive student in the room. “I’ll ask again, do any of you know anything about the warring secret societies in the town? They are quite prevalent among a number of students at this very school,” she enticed, gleaming as every ear in the room was piqued attentively in her direction. This was probably the best audience she’d ever had. “Come on now, someone’s gotta know something,” she prodded, pacing in front of the boards with her face lit up in the projector’s glow.
After a glance over his shoulder at Jeff, who shook his head sternly whilst appearing to study a completely unrelated chapter in the textbook, Adam raised his hand tentatively. Jeff’s fingers crept onto the back of Liam’s chair, squeezing the flimsy plastic dangerously. When Jill smiled at the upstretched hand warmly and nodded, Adam’s voice trembled slightly as he spoke, “Well, there is said to be two sects of super humans that occupy this particular school, and have so for quite some time. There’s no knowledge of why the congregate here or how they know to come here, but it’s been written of that this is a meeting place for those groups or societies.” He cut himself off, clearly having more information that was attempting to escape his pursed lips, but Jeff was staring alarmingly dark eyes into his skull from a distance. There was an awkward silence where everyone who had been hanging off his every, well-placed word, fell back into their regular stupor.
Chuckling at the fact that anyone knew anything more than the textbooks taught them, Jill clapped her hands before almost shouting, “Very good, very good, Adam! Now, does anyone know what the societies call themselves, or are said to, anyway?” She looked around at the fully-invested class whose eyes she might never have seen before.
Again, Adam’s hand rose, with Liam now appearing uncomfortable under Jeff’s stare. Jill grinned broadly and Adam began his regurgitation of information again, this time with a louder voice, “Well, the first is said to be older than the hills; the White Rose Society is what they call themselves.” When he paused, the whole room drew a collective breath with him. “Of course, when they were first established, they were a sort of cult for people without these powers, who wanted them badly.” If I’d had my wits about me and a permanent record, I would have slapped him; that wasn’t what it was about. There was great power within the society that couldn’t be accessed with normal abilities. But he continued, his voice full of anger and pain, “I mean, they would have done anything at all to gain mystical abilities that had only been doled out to a small number of people. They met in a secret room somewhere in the school, it was said, that protected them from the likes of their enemies and was a base for their apparent dark magick dealings.” This time, the pause was filled with nothing but silent, perfectly still air that vibrated with anxious anticipation. From where I sat, I could swear Jeff was about to explode. “They were called the Apple-Lovers because they had codenames that were the names of apples; there aren’t any writings about why they used apples, but it’s as close to a fact as you can get with a secret society like that. They covered their tracks very well.”
Jill was leaning against the chalkboard with a look of deep interest, but there was a hunger in her eyes that spoke to deceit; I figured she didn’t know any more than the names of the groups and was just phishing for more info. Of course, Adam didn’t care if she was on the receiving or giving end of the information flow, he just wanted to tell someone what he knew. “The other group, a supposed sanctuary for non-human or supernatural peoples, is the Dryad Society,” he explained, his lips curling around the name of that stupid other group. “They have no record of their beginnings, but the rumours are that they started here because of the White Rose Society, as a sort of antidote to the poison that they malicious group poured into the school. The Dryad Society took in anyone who had powers and gave them a place to learn about their abilities and control them in a safe environment. It has apparently spread throughout the world, now, helping people in post-secondary institutions for ages. This is all speculation, though, as they’re very private,” he concluded as Jeff finally managed to snap the back of Liam’s chair into pieces.
“Adam,” she cooed, completely ignoring the vandalism beside him, “you are completely correct. Though, there are some recordings of why they were apple-lovers; it was said that both the rose and apple signified the number five. Because there were thought to have been five elements to the world, and five abilities humans could have, they used both symbols for their society.” Her voice was rough, as though she hadn’t been prepared to say anything at all, but she knew her stuff.
It took the classroom a few minutes to settle back into the near-death emotion that was so thick in the air it was almost suffocating. But Jill jumped right back into her lesson as though we hadn’t just heard of secret societies, so everyone was back under the blanket of stupor in no time.
When class was finally over, denoted by the complete lack of sound coming from the front of the room and Adam’s excited humming as he packed his bag, I stretched quietly and shoved the books back into my own bag without taking my eyes off Adam. Yawning, I got up and lugged the heavy bag onto my shoulder with more effort than it really required and slumped toward the door. As Adam was standing up, Jeff gripped his shoulder painfully and yanked him back down into his seat, Liam looking on with wide eyes. Slipping into the nearest unoccupied seat and searching my pockets for my phone, I strained my ears to hear the muttered conversation that was happening on the other side of the room.
“-don’t care if you were speaking in hypotheticals or not, Adam, I told you that in confidence and you can’t just go about blabbing to whoever you like. Especially when there’s-” Jeff cut himself short, glancing pointedly in my direction just as I began typing studiously into a notepad; I couldn’t let the rumoured high-ranking Dryad member know I was eavesdropping on his conversation. When he was certain I wasn’t paying attention to him, he leaned back and growled, “You know she’s with them, right? Come on, man, use your head. She might bring you before their council or whatever just for knowing about them. You’ve got to be more careful.” His scolding seemed to work, because the next time I glanced up Adam’s face was crestfallen and Liam was playing on his phone in an effort to avoid the tense conversation. “Alright, up you two get, we’ve got another class, right?” he asked as he headed out the door, his bag swinging against his leg.
It took me a few minutes to realize Eloise was still in the room, hiding her face in a romance novel without moving her eyes. Fearing she must have heard the whole thing, I silently rose and followed Jeff, pretending to still be reading through some texts. But, before I’d made it five steps, a claw-like hand was sticking into my shoulder, making my eyes water painfully. When I turned, molted caramel irises dripped from her pale face as she pulled me aside by the arm.
Regarding the students milling about in the crowded hall, she whispered, “I’m gonna tell Mira, so don’t even think about doing it before me. That idiot just gives out our secrets like candy; he’s definitely going to pay for that,” she murmured in a feral kind of tone, her eyes still flitting about for any eavesdroppers.
After a minute of her hot breath in my space, I wrenched my sore arm out of her iron grip and muttered back in a nonchalant voice, “Well, he’s no giving anything important away. Besides, he probably knows more about the Dryad-” I stopped mid-sentence when it hit me, “Of course; he knows all about the Dryad’s plans because he’s a know-it-all and you want to bring him to Mira so she can interrogate him. Look, they’ve already made a bunch of their targets leave, why can’t they just do their plan and be done with it?” I asked, feeling the heat rise in my cheeks like a fire.
“Because they really did need some of them, Aydan, otherwise the plan can’t work until at least next year, if not longer. That’s why they were trying to be sneaky with it; they just didn’t take the yellow-eyed spell far enough to make us do what they needed.” When she stalked away, I watched her smiling cheerfully at Adam and his group, twisting her hair flirtatiously again. That boy was in trouble.
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They are the Morse siblings. Leslie is super excited and full of energy. Heather is watching for potential threats, keeping her sibs close. And Andrew is curious about tech that’s just out of sight.
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