Nine Open Eyes

Try, try again

Fourteen-minute read

"If at first you don't succeed, try try again"
- T. H. Palmer

Allison's POV

In the weeks that followed in A5, Allison worked harder than she had in her life. She woke up before the sun did and paced the 1000m track, careful to practice hurdle jumping.

"If you are the smallest in the group, then your dips should be lower, your jumps should be higher and your legs should be faster", her Trainer had instructed.

Her first successful attempt at jumping the highest hurdle had shocked the others enough to slow them down.

She pored over the various literary texts available at the small windowless library situated on the second floor. Books on Fae language and culture, theses on Fae anatomy, faerie folklore and myths.

On one such day, bent on her scratched reading stall, she happened to stumble upon a book named Icarus.  The volume discussed his first attempt at manned flight.

She'd sat there reading over and over, the wax and wood wings making more and more meaning. Allison had taken out a spare piece of paper and sketched the outlines of wings, making a detailed wooden frame, rubber and steel alloys, resistant feathers.

She'd sat bent and absorbed for a good two hours before Ms. Berger, the librarian, had informed her that the library was to be closed.

The designs had been hastily stuffed into the military-provided  satchel Allison carried, muttering her goodbyes as she went out the library, and to the dorm rooms.

Another small upgrade from living alone, the dorm rooms housed four people each and had half the space. She'd immediately been given the lower bunk by her roommates when she'd come into the room unable to grab her bearings at living with strangers. Well-behaved strangers, she thought.

They certainly stuck to routinely disciplines and hygiene.

Outside her room, four paper holders were fixed. One bearing her name. Here she looked every day, morning afternoon evening, waiting for Annie or Sam or Duha to reply.

Today there sat a grayish set of papers that she recognized immediately to be her Zaria test. She plucked it out, opening the door with her other hand.

Full marks. As was in all her tests nowadays. She chuckled thinking how she'd absolutely failed in Greenfoot School.

Allison sat down on her bunk, untying the laces of her black boots. The teachers at A5 were unnervingly good when it came to teaching, focusing mainly on clearing students' concepts.

"How'd ya do?", Asked the the purple haired girl, Rihanna, on the bed beside hers.

"Did great.", Allison handed over her Zaria test.

Rihanna flipped through the stapled pages, her multiple rings catching the lights.

The other two, Sandra and Amy, had already slept.

"I don see why you gotta get more marks than me. The checking sys'ems busted."

"Probably", said Allison. She kicked the boots and socks under the bed.

She laid down in her gray camo pants and shirt, sleep claiming the best of her.

*

She was up early the next day, running her usual errands.

"Allison", shouted her Trainer from across the dew riddled field.

Instead of shouting back, Allison paced to her. Weeks at A5 had shown her one thing in particular: respect.