The Festival of Light

Two

Chapter Two

Winona sat on the tram, feet pushed up against the seat in front of her, watching as the City flashed before her eyes. The squealing hum of machinery was soft in the girl's ears, just audible over the collective chatter of the passengers. Sunshine pierced through the tops of the window like a bright crystal before the tall buildings blocked open roads as they travelled closer to the City's centre.

Being one the busiest lines, the tram was overcrowded. Not the uncomfortable type of crowd where you cannot not move to breathe but crowded just enough so that all Winona could see were seas of bodies squished into the metal capsule. The TLC graduates had filtered into the compartments promptly at 12:30pm to find them already occupied. With the next tram not expected for another hour, the students had quickly sardined themselves into the carriages. Win and Roxy were lucky to snatch up the last of the unoccupied spaced, but majority of the remaining students hung around the walkways, their arms stretched up to the leather handholds, legs spread to balance themselves, laughing and chattering away with jubilation at the end of their schooling.

For what seemed like the fiftieth time that hour, Winona pulled out her tablet staring at the message with the timestamp of 11:05am. Her heart pumping madly as she read and reread the message again and again:

MISS WINONA GRACE, ID no 94647223 has been upgrade from level 2 (TLCS) to DIVISION CPP. Please log into your MyCity account for further details.

She had done it. She had successfully achieved the highest privilege the City had to offer. The privilege of freedom. The privilege to work wherever she wanted without the restraints of Division. From now, Winona was at liberty to explore and expand her ideas into reality. It made her proud. It made her worthy of her father's name.

Winona could not contain the giggle that emitted out of her smirking lips breaking Roxy out of her own daydreams. Looking at each other with steaming pride, Win pushed her tablet back into bag, letting it drop to the floor.

"We are meeting Austen at the grand staircase yeah?" Win asked.

"At 1:30pm, yeah. Then we can get something to eat before making our way into the stadium." Roxy replied, pushing her own tablet back into her satchel. "I don't know how he will manage to get into our area".

Austen was one of Winona and Roxanne's closest friends. They had met in their third year of TLC and had been inseparable ever since. Being a year older than the two girls, Austen had graduated the Centre and established himself securely as a CCP, training to become a nurse at the Hub hospital. Even then, the three friends were able to catch up with each other every week, an almost impossible feat, if not for their absolute determination of seeing each other.

"They don't allocate any seat numbers on the tickets – other than the highest officials who are placed on the stage, of course. Mum tells me it's to encourage interdivision interaction." Winona explained to her, memories of that exact conversation with her mother the night before filtering into her mind.

"I mean, that makes sense," Roxy laughed "It would've been cool to sit with our fellow CPP people but I guess we have the rest of our lives to do that".

"We totally do" Winona grinned leaning back into the seat, pulling the tablet from her bag to reread the message again.

It took the tram exactly thirty-two minutes to travel from The Leaning Centre to Hub Station and then another seven minutes to walk from the Tram station to the centre of Market Square. Winona had completed the journey many times to visit her parents at work, weaving her way through the crowds easily marching towards the centre of the square.