Godspeed

3# New Friend... and Enemies

SO, THE BUILDING was bigger than I credited it to be.

     It was way bigger, enormous, colossal! It looked like whole schools merged into one, they could decide to turn it into an airport and have no problems fitting two or more planes. When I was in the distance it went from Whoa, that's a nice looking school to That's a huge school to No way that's not a castle or palace.

     Faith and I stopped at the end of the forest, in front of the golden gates of Godspeed. The space was surrounded by trees of all shapes and sizes, bushes and shrubs of all colours. Seriously, I've never seen a white shrub, only the ones covered with snow.

     Now addressing the elephant in the room (or glade), Godspeed put my secondary school (middle school-high school, for you Americans) into shame. There were three separate buildings as far as I can see, formed in a U-shape, one main on the centre and two individual buildings on its left and right. I'm not even sure how to put the size into words it's that big, millions of windows were set in neat rows, white pillars supported the structure in between every few windows.

     The buildings looked very symmetrical that I'm pretty sure whoever designed them must've loved the one part of the build and copy-pasted it for the entire thing. Its cream-coloured walls looked like any ordinary school, but as the gates magically opened themselves, I began to notice some details.

     The walls looked damaged. I spotted blast marks and small cracks like someone's been stabbing it. One side of the building was drenched like it had been raining only in that one area. In the centre of the three buildings, there was a big weird-looking tree, its trunk was twisted and its branches swirled all around the air. Not a second passed since I laid a foot past the entrance, the ground shook faintly as I heard an explosion and the tree collapsed on the centre building (pretty sure that wasn't my doing).

     'What are they up to,' Faith sighed, though her voice had no surprise or concern, 'I'll take you to the girl's dorm, I gotta clean up this mess.'

     'What is happening?' I asked, completely bewildered. The tree burst into flames. I repeated myself, 'What is happening!?'

     'Your new friends,' Faith explained, 'It might get a little heated here.'

     The tree burst into more flames.

     'Quite literally.'

     'C'mon,' she led me to the right wing. The building on the right itself looked like a palace, a Queen or King could walk out any second now. Never in my lifetime would I expect myself to experience a majestic site like this, no way someone like me even deserved to step into the place. But now that Faith said it'll be where I stayed, I'm kinda curious to see what's inside the ancient-looking architecture.

     Counting its windows, there are at least twenty floors in there. The mahogany doors were roughly thrice my size and looked like one of those church doors with the curve on the top. Faith stopped there and told me, 'I'll leave you here before the school burns down. Once you enter, talk to the person behind the desk, she'll give you your room. If you need any other help or have questions, just look for a student council, someone with a blue and white pin. Make yourself at home, I have faith in you, godspeed!'

     With that, my only guidance rushed into the school grounds, leaving me alone and overwhelmed. Confused whether I was in heaven or hell as I watch the tree burn down, surprisingly only staining the school with soot and not fire; Amused by the clever pun she had used; And again momentarily confused why she had shouted the school's name before noticing she was wishing me luck. I decided to do what I was told and pushed open the doors.