Cloud Shifters

The rest of the weekend drug out as Cadin did chore after chore.

“What’s this?” Cadin asked his mom as he cleaned out a rarely used cabinet.

Sara glanced over. “Gravy boat, I think. Though the last time I used it was to hold decorative apples.”

“Give away pile?”

“Sure. I don’t know how to make gravy anyway.”

He didn’t mention anything about the conversation he overheard to his parents and what had his parents and the Master of the Core worried. He tucked the information away to approach at the right moment, which was not while he was ‘extremely grounded’.

Monday morning finally rolled around. He tripped over his shoes as he raced toward the double doored entrance to school. He was not early, as he had hoped to have a chance to talk to the others. He was guessing that Lep was freaking out a bit, even though he had not even been caught. He is probably all paranoid thinking that they are going to come for him at any moment and take him away to the Core Chamber, Cadin thought to himself with a smile.

When they were caught at Glade Palace, Cadin, Xeno and Vincent were all questioned about who the other two boys were that had escaped. They had insisted that it was only the three of them and that other kids may have been playing the “touch the gate” game at the same time. Cadin knew that some kids made a game out of seeing who could run up the closest to the exterior gate of Glade Palace without getting caught. Even though Master Sanjen looked questioningly at Cadin when he showed him how they had gotten in, no further questions were asked about the ‘other boys.’

The halls were nearly clear, and Cadin ran to get to the Dragon’s Den to avoid being late. Along the way, Cadin thought that a few of the kids in the hall pointed at him as they whispered to their neighbors, but he was too late to worry about it. Bursting through the door, Cadin felt self-conscious as the whole class turned to look at him. Both Xeno and Vincent were standing at the front of the classroom, looking quite sheepish.

“Ah,” Instructor Kade said. “So nice of you to join us in time for today’s announcements, the second of which concerns you and your cohorts. Please go and stand with them until we get to you.”

He quickly crossed the room without looking at any of his classmates. He hadn’t expected punishment from the school as well as from the Core and from his parents.

“Settle down, everyone,” Instructor Kade said firmly as the class had erupted in whispers at Cadin’s entrance. “Our first announcement, as I am sure you all have already noticed, involves a new student joining our ranks all the way from the Lance Commons.”

Cadin’s head snapped up and fell upon a pretty girl with glacier-blue eyes. A half-smile played across her smooth skin as she stared right at Cadin. His face felt flushed and he doubted that his dark complexion hid that from the newcomer.

He was shocked that he had not noticed the new girl immediately upon entering the room; not because she was new or pretty or even because she had obviously been staring at him before he had even looked up. It was the fact that she was the only other person in this room beside Instructor Kade who had an Aura. Not only did this girl have a bright light surrounding her, but it was yellow.

Instructor Kade called the girl up to introduce herself to the class. He had missed the name as she half ran and half jumped to the front of the classroom, stopping on the other side of Instructor Kade from where Cadin stood. The class had given her a courteous though slightly lacking applause, Cadin guessed because she was so different and nobody really knew what to think of her.

“Hello everyone and thank you for welcoming me here to Glade,” the girl said excitedly. Cadin noticed that half-hearted welcome applause had not ruffled her genuine thank you. “I have lived on the Lance Commons in the Lavine Quad my whole life, but I have traveled with my dad a lot to places like Lark, Carpathia, Central and even a few fringe cloud-lands.” The classroom erupted into excitement, few young angels without wings got to travel. The girl answered some of the questions that people had been asking of each other rather than directly to her without a pause.

“I have been able to travel so much because of my dad’s job. He invented a distance travel cart that uses the energy from the sun to propel it. He has all sorts of different types that can help to carry stuff over long distances and there are family carts so that adults can more easily and safely fly with kids. We also sell basic fly gear.

“We are here because my dad wanted to expand his business to the Guard Quad. He found a spot for his shop just outside of town near the Glade Palace,” she gave a quick glance to Cadin’s trio before continuing. “We are in the middle of building a new docking station for the transports and should be open for business in a couple of weeks.”

“Excellent,” said Instructor Kade before the class could start talking too much, “I am sure that the people of Glade will be happy to have the shop and your family here. Before we go on, why don’t you tell us just a little bit about yourself, such as what you liked to do best in Lance.”

“Oh,” she said happily, “I like archery contests.” The whole class grumbled a bit—the Guard Quad had notoriously bad showings in distance and accuracy contests, and archery was the most popular distance game.

Without taking into consideration the mood of the class, she continued happily. “I was quite upset this morning to come here and find out that this school doesn’t have an archery club at all!” Her face was so stricken that Cadin had to giggle a little bit.

Instructor Kade gave him a hard look and Cadin quickly turned it into a cough. It wasn’t that Cadin didn’t like the idea of an archery club—it would be great for the overall training improvement; he just found it funny that someone new would be so open about how upset she was to this group that obviously cared very little for archery.

“So,” the girl continued, her face beaming with excitement, “I talked to Headmaster Tripharian this morning to get permission to start our very own Glade Commons Archery Club!” Apparently expecting applause, the girl’s shoulders slumped a little bit when all she got were blank stares, at which point Instructor Kade stepped up.

“Yes, I have agreed to be the supporting instructor for the club as I think that it is a great idea and opportunity for everyone here. Unfortunately, we can’t start the club today as requested due to last minute scheduling conflicts which we will talk about next.” Cadin got a deep sinking feeling. “However, we will have an initial club meeting tomorrow before lunch. The Archery Club is optional; however, I strongly encourage each of you to attend.”

“Now, why don’t we all give Sun a welcoming hand?”

Cadin clapped a little harder than everyone else, thinking that Sun was a fitting name for this happy girl with a yellow Aura.

“Can we ask Sun a couple of questions before we move on?” Lexi, the confident girl with pink eyes asked.

“Yes, if Sun doesn’t mind,” Instructor Kade said at the same time that Sun had answered, “Of course.”

“Well,” Lexi started out, “do all angels from Lance get their Auras at a young age?”

Good question, Cadin thought. He had been wondering about her Aura too.

“Actually, no,” Sun said with a thoughtful look on her face. “Angels on Lance usually get Auras around the middle of their first year in high school. I got my Aura over a year ago, which shocked everybody. The only reason that anyone could really think of for it showing so early is that I started competitive archery when I was very young.

“Most kids can’t focus that early, but it just always felt right to me. The more I practiced, the more I could feel my energy rising to the surface. Then the night before the Lance Archery Competition, it felt like all of my energy just exploded beyond my body. I didn’t know that it was my Aura surfacing, and it took me at least an hour to understand what had happened. I was almost disqualified from the tournament because we were so late, and then when we got there some of the judges didn’t believe my age. Well, we got everything worked out, and that was the first time that I won the Champion Title.”

“Wow,” Cadin said.

When she turned towards him, Cadin realized that he had said it out loud. She gave him a quick smile before looking back at the class.

“Any more questions?”

She seemed to have shocked the room into silence, and though Lexi looked like she had plenty of questions tumbling around in her head, she kept quiet.

“Well, thank you, Sun and welcome again to the Dire Dragons,” Instructor Kade said, emphasizing the team name, which inspired the largest applause of the day so far. “Make sure and introduce yourself to Sun when you each get the opportunity. Now moving on to today’s schedule change and the reason for it—boys will you please step up.” Instructor Kade motioned Vincent, Xeno and Cadin forward.

Here it comes, thought Cadin.

“As I am sure many of you have already heard these three boys were caught in an illegal action this weekend.” The tension in the room was tangible.

“Because of this breach, there will be no free time before lunch today, as the entire school will come together for triple exercises.”

Eh! School exercises were not done often, and they were usually to make a point. The worst one that Cadin attended was in middle school. Everyone was brought together to do double exercises because someone had vandalized the Headmaster’s office, and stole her personal cloud-gaiter trapping gear. Triples sound bad.

The class broke out into a loud uproar. Cadin noticed that not all of it was in anger; curious whispers spread across the room wondering what happened.

“Training starts after morning lessons and will conclude at lunch time. Whether it is before or after lunch will be determined by the amount of effort that everyone puts in.”

Anxiety consumed Cadin during lessons and he was unable to soak in a single thing that was said. Finally, Instructor Kade finished with what may have been a math lesson before erasing the cloud-board and telling everyone to grab some water.

“Alright, everyone outside to Yi Field. You three,” Instructor Kade said pointing to Cadin, Xeno, and Vincent, “stay by me.”

Vincent and Xeno were looking at each other with horrified expressions on their usually composed faces. As they approached the field, Vincent opened his mouth and just barely got out the words “the whole school…”

He hadn’t been paying much attention as he followed behind his classmates, until they came to the open field where the entire school gathered. They approached the formal end of the field where instructors stood on a large stage. Many of the winged students glanced around, looking annoyed.

Hmm, Cadin thought, most of them are looking at this as a punishment for something that they didn’t do. Can’t really blame them there, but they should not go into these exercises thinking like that or it will make the exercises feel like an entire weekend rather than a morning.

“Cadin, Vincent and Xeno—up on the stage with me. Everyone else, join the other students in the field,” Instructor Kade said as he climbed a few stairs to the first level of the stage. The stage had three different viewing levels for the instructors, the second and third had to be flown to. The highest stage reached nearly to the top of the tree canopy of the forest that stretched out just a short distance behind them.

A yellow glow broke up the sea of green. Other people not from the Dire Dragons were staring at Sun, perhaps wondering who she was and what she was doing there. Sun, however, was not looking back at them, but looking once again at Cadin with that half-smile. Cadin felt slightly abashed that this interesting stranger’s first day here had to be the day that Cadin was chastised in front of the entire school, followed by what he guessed would be brutal exercises. Why did she have to pick that morning to join their class?

Cadin wondered about all the cool and clever ways that he might have introduced himself to Sun if she had come one day later and not gotten to know his name through this gathering held for his eventful weekend.

“Welcome and good morning,” Headmaster Tripharian said. “As it was Instructor Kade’s students that performed the infraction that brought us all together today, I will let him continue with the assembly.”

Instructor Kade shook hands with Tripharian as they crossed the stage. “As you all know, we are here for disciplinary actions today.” Instructor Kade started in a strong voice. “It is this school’s responsibility to shape all the students within into honest, productive members of society. When there is such a great breach of our society’s code of honor from any of our students, we must respond to the situation quickly so that we all might learn from it and not have it repeated.”

There was a general murmur from the crowd, but Cadin decided not to try and shrink himself up too small for everyone to see like Xeno and Vincent.

“Because of their actions of breaking into the Glade Palace, the whole school will be doing triple exercises today.” Instructor Kade finished, though for all Cadin knew, nobody heard the last part, because once the other kids got confirmation that it was Glade Palace that they had broken into, the whole of the student body erupted into excitement.

“Calm down, please. Before we begin, I am going to ask each of three students that somehow found a way into the most famous guarded safe-house in the Calvarian System to say a few words of apology to you. First let’s hear from Xeno, then Vincent and we will conclude with the leader of the group, Cadin.”

Something wasn’t right with that speech, Cadin thought as Xeno shuffled forward, squinting into the bright sunlight. It sounded almost as if he were praising our success. Xeno spoke softly to the awaiting crowd, “I apologize to you all,” bowing his head as he returned to his spot on stage next to Cadin. Vincent stepped forward, breathing heavily, his eyes darting back and forth, as if searching for an escape route and finding none.

Vincent said, “Sorry,” before rushing back to Xeno’s side.

Grasping his medallion to help collect his thoughts, Cadin took a deep breath and stepped forward, looking out into the crowd. “I am Cadin, son of Talvarian of Ansford and Sara of Air,” Cadin started in a strong voice. He noticed Instructor Kade shifting.

“Listen, I am sorry for putting everybody in the situation where you won’t get any free time today; however, at the very least, it should be some great training.” Cadin faltered a bit upon hearing an angry mumble roll across the student body. Cadin waved to the school group, “We might as well take advantage of the situation and think of these exercises as a challenge for ourselves rather than a punishment for something that you guys, at least, didn’t even do.”

“We had no thoughts to hurt anyone, or even steal something that was precious and valuable to someone else. We wanted to see what the inside of Glade Palace looked like, and test our abilities to manage the task of getting inside.” Cadin could see that he had the entire school’s attention. He blushed with embarrassment, but chose to continue.

“I see now that we chose the wrong outlet. I want to say to you all that I will not do something so foolish again...and I’m sorry...” He wanted to say more but was too embarrassed to continue.

He followed Vincent and Xeno off the stage as the entire school moved into somewhat orderly lines. Instructor Nightan stepped to the front of the stage to begin the physical exercises; a nasty smile lit his face as he stared down at Cadin in the front line.

“Well done!” Headmaster Tripharian announced to the sweating group of students “Now go and enjoy your lunch.”

Cadin’s leg cramped and sweat rolled down his forehead. Instructor Nightan threw everything allowable at them, but the student body as a whole kept up. As the crowd thinned and left for lunch, many people approached Cadin with words or gestures of acknowledgement, greetings or even praise. Some people introduced themselves, while others such as the twin boys in Nightan’s group insisted on high fives.

Cadin and Xeno found Lep and Treven; Vincent had disappeared and Cadin didn’t know where he had gone off to. As the group started walking towards the lunch room, a large boy with sandy blonde hair and looming wings walked right up to Cadin and pushed him in the chest. “I want to talk to you, little turd.”

Cadin jumped back a bit, positioning his feet in a ready stance, surprised by the hostility. Xeno made a move toward the bully, but Cadin pulled him back, not wanting a fight. The odds were not great, as the muscular boy had three large friends watching a few feet away. Better to solve this by talking, Cadin thought as he looked the boy in the face and caught the glint from the veretal that had begun to coat his feathers.

“How can I help you?” Cadin asked.

“Yeah, say that all innocently like you weren’t the reason for the entire school having to do triples today and then trying to cover it all up with a big, fancy speech,” he said mockingly. “I didn’t come to here to get shown up by some little pipsqueak who thinks he owns the school. I am Gregor of Glade and I never get shown up, especially during exercises!” he announced passionately. His cronies behind him gave him some cheers of encouragement.

“But you did today.” Cadin guessed, looking at Gregor’s bulky muscles, guessing that he was strong and often dominated his classmates in regular exercises, but had too little endurance to last through triples.

“Look, you little punk,” Gregor said as he took a threatening step toward Cadin, “I came over here to tell you your place in this school. You are the scum between the toes of the creature that is this school…and I am the teeth. Watch yourself or you will get bitten.” With that, Gregor spat on the ground in front of Cadin’s feet and walked away.

“Jerk,” Cadin said. Being a bully was not a good way to lead people.

As they entered the lunch room and got their food, Cadin noticed that Sun was sitting by herself, spinning a spoon between her fingers and looking around. Several tables waved them over to sit, but Cadin headed straight for Sun.

“Do you mind if we sit with you?”

Startled, Sun turned to look at Cadin. Her eyes left Cadin’s and glanced at each person in the group which now included Vincent and Jade—both of whom had been loitering at the front of the lunch room. A thoughtful expression played on Sun’s face as she seemed to evaluate the group and weigh her answer. Cadin suddenly felt nervous, realizing that her only impression of him so far was that of a trouble maker—a status that he didn’t want to be known by, especially by this fascinating stranger.

A bright smile lit up her face as she spoke. “I would be very happy for you all to join me. I have been quite anxious to get to know some new classmates; and I must admit, you bunch have been standing out in my mind.”

Cadin released his breath and sat down across the table from Sun. He said his name quickly, but nothing else managed to escape his lips at that moment, and he felt silly planning his cool introduction. She smiled and politely turned to Xeno who was next around the table to introduce himself.

“So, aside from breaking into upper-class establishments,” Sun said with a twinkle in her eye, “what else is there to do around here?”

The rest of the lunch period was spent talking about Glade. Xeno regaled Sun with stories of the forest, Treven talked about town and his parent’s shop, while Lep and Cadin talked about swimming in the lakes. Sun was quite interested in Mist Lake, and the lunch concluded with everyone agreeing to go there after school.