Chapter 2: unconventional
Greedy feet seem to eat up the red tarp. There's a stillness that doesn't happen any other time than the morning. There's no breeze, but no sun. I can close my eyes and feel, if I ignore the thumping of feet, that I'm the only person in the world, doing the only thing she can do well.
The routine of Morning Practices may not be so familiar to me as of yet, but in the future, I can see it becoming so. Once I'm a Kai, a Yellow, amongst the benefits of getting a KeyCard to the Hall of Records, I'll have the responsibility of a real Olympian. Right now, I'm merely taking and not giving. I'll be entered into the Olympics. The words, just the words themselves, give me chills of dread and anticipation. Then everything will be perfect. Living in the perfect medium, the perfect place, where I'm recognized for my talent, that nowhere else would ever think about and competing in the thing I'm best at.
Out there, in the Down There, at the bottom of the mountain, the place we go for the Olympics, they don't appreciate us. According to Faern at least. If I haven't heard that talk a hundred times, I've heard it a thousand times. The people down there, they treasure the mind more. What they don't understand, is that the body is the being. Not the mind. They hate us.
A second nod from Faern, with just the slightest aloof look lurking in her yellow-flecked pupils, is the one we were waiting for. We don't allow ourselves to sag in our bodies, or slump to the ground in exhaustion, but the lifting of the tension and stifling lack of noise is relieving.
We wove our way in between the shadowed alleys and shortcuts. As a Red, I'd done this a million times (led by Danzor of course). Coming in late for Roll Call was no big when you were that young. You were simply given a Reprimand, and then asked to get back in line. Little Reds did that all the time, so it was relatively tolerable. As Reds became Blues, the standards of Conducts, as issued by Hera, were raised. I smiled wryly when I thought about those dusty old volumes of Rules, with their stamped spines crumbling, pushed to the back of my cupboard, out of sight and mind.
As Greens, we weren't supposed to commit Trivial Acts anymore. Any of them resulted in a dreaded Stripe. If there was anything we didn't want to get, it was a Stripe. Given, no one had really ever gotten one before, but the rumours (You have to spend a whole hour with Faern! You have to report to Zeus for Corrective Work! You'll need to file the Hall of Records all over again.) were enough to keep us away from it.
“So Lia, any last words?”
I seethed. Your friends really cheer you up at times like these.
“Thank you Seth. I appreciate your sympathy.”
“You're welcome.”
His cheerful tone makes it hard for me to tell if my sarcasm was lost on him or not.
Silence falls over us as we turn another corner past the Recreation Building and Training Centre 5. We were getting closer. The peaceful quiet continues until the sun strikes the clock tower of the Gods' Halls. As if on cue, Aeon chimes the bells.
The periodic 7 chimes wake the whole Olympus out of its slumber. A flood of Reds, Blues, Greens, and Yellows fill the Central Area. Out of each flat-topped gray Residential building comes forth a stream of single-coloured, silent individuals, who take their rightful places in neat rows. I feel my pace quickening, as does Seth's. We're supposed to be there. Now.
We shuffled into the back row about 2 minutes from our names being read out. Having been Roll-Called for 2 years now, ever since we became Greens, we know roughly when Jace, the Speaker, expects our dull tone of “Present” after our names. As if on cue, she spits out our names like they're the most vile things she's ever had the misfortune of pronouncing.
“Lia-Kreul.”
Behind the name, behind the tone, I hear contempt. I hear “She's hopeless.”. I hear “She's the troublemaker's sidekick.”. I hear sarcasm at its best. I hear gritting of teeth and hatred seething. At the corner of her eyes, I see that tiny furious pinprick of irritation and dislike, as her eyes move to meet Faern's.
Coach is leaning against the banister of the enclosed compound. She looks at Jace for a milli-second and then turns back to look at her fingernails. In her stance and her flick of her hair, she just has to show off that two streaks of gold. I mean, enough is enough! Needless to say, I couldn't stand her as much as she couldn't stand me. I'm not her best runner by any stretch of the imagination.
“Present.” I don't skip a beat. The routine's been solidly drilled in already. The monotone, however, gives away nothing of my wandering mind.
There's a stillness in the air that always seems to follow, before she moves on and her lips turn down a second time. After years of looking at the same Roll Call list, you'd think she'd memorized where we were and when we were called.
“Seth-Krono.”
This one's more mellowed, hardly anything but the slightest razor sharpness. The two of us are infamous. His tone betrays just the tiniest bit of mischief.
“Present.”
But the worst, as it is said, was yet to be.
“Danzor-Kreul.”
Everyone's mouth turns up in amusement, and then down in disapproval. The ringleader of the Trio. Hers is the name that's branded into everyone's name. Hers is the stereotype Rebel Olympian.
Her voice rings clear over the heads of the many Olympians standing at attention. They move back into their stoic expressions.
Danzor raises her hand and flicks it dismissively. Her little act of defiance goes a long way. No one does that. Not to Jace.
As much as her skin is “Whitie” shade, no one dares to look down on her. Jace was chosen, out of all the “Whities” to be our Speaker and the Head of Hermes. Her voice...possesses the innate quality to be heard by anyone and everyone. And her memory, compared to anyone else, is unmatched. I bet she can still remember all the names of every single Olympian there ever was. She's almost as veritable as the Hall of Records is.
But as the Head of Hermes, the only “high post” in the Gods that has to be held by a Whitie. Or to put it in the terms we are supposed to say, but never do, White-skinned Olympians. I don't see who we're trying to kid when we say they're Olympians. We've never looked at them as Olympians. They are the people that do the low jobs of mending EMRAs when they are broken, rebuilding dilapidated Residential buildings, or working in Hermes.
In the hierarchy of the Gods, Hermes is the lowest. In other Governments, they're the people who deal in External Affairs. It's the one that deals with Down There. The place at the bottom of the mountain. No one really wants to have contact with the people down there. Down There, people are all Whities. They have nothing skin that they want to make even more nothing with skin products and facials treatments. Don't they know that the colour they have is so blank, so boring?
They're the ones that are killing the world. With their cars, those strangely shaped scraps of metal that just happen to work long enough for them to show off to their friends how fast they can go. How fast they can go depends on their machine. All we have s our bodies. And I'm pretty sure I can run 5 times (at least) faster than any of those fat slobs who depend on those gas-guzzling machines to move 100 metres.
Jace, it's whispered, was someone from Down There, who stumbled through Olympus' hallowed Gates. She was a “lawyer”, one of those nothing jobs that Down There thinks up to put their people into more social classes. They always talk of unity in diversity, but whatever they're doing, it's just making people more segregated.
I smile proudly at my well-thought-through argument. Which isn't really mine. Danzor wrote this for a term paper, the only thing that grades our Academics. She's one of the few people who really put in effort for Academics.
I receive a cuff on the back of my head, the small movement strange in a motionless block of people.
“Stop smiling like that, Lia. You look like a fool.”
Thus comes the voice of Rade-Kai. The Yellow in my Residential Building. The Wrestling Champion and our Building's scold.
“Yeah, Latie.” Seth's voice goads on.
The sound of another cuff and an “Oww...What was that for huh?” float over to me. A ripple of laughter follows to those immediately around us.
Then I feel the hot-cold stare that's so characteristically Danzor. Even without looking, I can see her long, Jumper legs, weight solely on her right foot, that half-smirk curling her lip, her hair messy over her forehead. She knows. I know she knows. She knows that I know that... Well, that Kreul knows everything.
A glare passes over the crowd. Everyone shuffles back into the customary peace and quiet. The glare focuses exactly three people behind me and one to the left. The burn of Jace's eyes travel the long distance between us to scorch my head as it passes by.
Even though Danzor didn't do anything, no. Correction. Even though Danzor didn't do anything more than she usually does, she seems to see through it all. That this was all because of that term paper Danzor got an F and a Transgression label to add to her collection. She seems to document this, like all the other Blunders, Mistakes, or whatever other word they come up for it.
I can hear her cool voice even though there's no one speaking.
“Danzor-Kreul. The troublemaker.”
I can almost hear her answer. The one conveyed not with speech, but by that cool-as-a-cucumber look and those eyes that made you feel so nothing next to her and that eyebrow that goes just a little higher than the other mockingly. The look that I'd be frightened to look at, let alone don.
“Yup, that's me.”
