Call Of Destiny

The Miser Of Winterkastle

"Rise and shine, sleepyhead!"
"Fuck off, Mleczka."
"But it's your big day, Joanna!'
"Again. Fuck off, Mleczka."
"Ok.."

Mleczka skulked off back to her own room while Joanna's eyes slowly adjusted to the still-dark room. She looked up at the clock and saw that she didn't actually need to be awake yet. With that said, however, she didn't actually have enough time to get any meaningful extra sleep if she nodded off again. Harrumphing begrudgingly, Joanna sat up on her bed and put on her long, fluffy robe.

As she came downstairs, with her hair unkempt and face free of makeup, her mother, Kinga Kisazyc, was stood at the marble counter in the kitchen. "Hey Joanna!" Kinga called out excitedly, whilst the frying pan sizzled and popped intermittently. "Mom." Joanna noted matter-of-factly, taking a seat next to her younger sister at the striking steel and glass table in the dining room. "I made a special breakfast because I can't have my oldest daughter going to Beacon Academy on an empty stomach!" Joanna simply looked bemusedly at her mother as Kinga dumped three Wiejska sausages atop a mountain of fried potato, sliced up bacon, and garlic mushrooms. Just looking at the meal made Joanna feel full, but she had a sneaking suspicion that she wouldn't be going anywhere until most of the food had disappeared. Sighing, Joanna shoved a fork straight into one of the sausages and bit into it, the flavour exploding across her tongue and tastebuds.

The moment that her mother turned her attention away from her elder daughter onto some inane housework task, Joanna made three smaller piles of food. One got snuck onto Mleczka's plate, causing the younger Kisazyc sister's smile to become so bright it risked blinding half of Winterkastle, her hometown. Another got surreptitiously portioned into the cat's bowl, leaving Joanna with a fairly manageable breakfast. She tucked into the remaining plate of food heartily as the salt and fat of it thoroughly warmed her cockles. Her outfit for the day was decidedly plain, a white button-down shirt and black fitted trousers- but Joanna saw no need beyond showing off to board a long-haul flight in full battle armour. In fact, even her trusty mace/throwing star combination of a signature weapon was snugly tucked away in her suitcase so it wouldn't be seen until her combat lessons. Joanna felt relatively sure, however, that on the flight she'd encounter at least one meathead man needlessly lugging his weapon over his shoulder and class head to toe in body armour.

After she had finished off the last scraps of the third of her breakfast she had eaten, Joanna strapped on her black, patent leather flats and slung a leather rucksack over her back. Her route was simple; the bus station was only a four minute walk from her front door, and from there she would catch a bus to the centre of Winterkastle, where she would then walk across the town Square to the charter airfield, where the ship would arrive hopefully some time after she did. She was always one to plan her journey carefully, but Joanna did not care particularly for being early, and viewed getting to the bus station as the bus pulled up to be perfectly fine.

She opened up the door, muttering a pleasant farewell to her mother and sister, and took a step out onto the path, not daring to stop to think about the fact she would likely not see her family again until at least Christmas. She already had thought about this over many sleepless nights. In some ways, it felt like a blessing to be free of Mleczka's incessant bleating about things that were inconsequential and unimportant and to be free of her mother's aspersions and hypercriticism. On the other hand, this would be the first time Joanna had been alone for longer than a weekend, and she was not entirely confident that she would be able to cope with all the responsibility that now fell upon her shoulders. Cooking, cleaning, budgeting, and scheduling were all skills she was somewhat competent at, but she was concerned she was not competent enough to cope.

Before she allowed herself to be studied into a train of self-doubting thought, Joanna found herself passing loose change to the bus conductor in exchange for a one-way ticket to the centre of town. The bus, she noticed was near empty, which meant that she would get her choice of seat (on the very back row directly behind the driver) and that no bizarre old men would try to chat her up like they often did after a few mid-morning beers. She pulled her scroll out of her trouser pocket and attached a tangled, off-white pair of headphones to them. After prising the knots in the cable apart with a long fingernail, Joanna started to play music through her scroll. Her favourite artist went by the name of Hazuki Shiza. Shiza was interesting in that she didn't actually exist, but rather was synthesized vocals created by Joanna's friend Maciej Kielek.

As her eyes began to close, lulled into sleep by the rhythmic movements and noises of the bus, Joanna was jolted violently back to reality. The bus stopped. Looking out of the grimy, dusty window, she realised she had reached her stop in the centre of Winterkastle town. Thanking the bus driver, she stepped into the brutalist grey of the town square, with the charter airport just opposite her, past the market full of overpriced fruit and vegetables, and DVDs of dubious levels of legitimacy. Confidently, she took her first side towards the airport, a building clad in shiny white and glass, providing a stark contrast to the endless monochrome concrete offered by the town square. Surreptitiously, she checked the neck pocket of her trousers for her ID chip card. Everyone resident in the nation of Atlas had one of these cards, and it acted roughly like a passport and driver's license in one. Assuring herself that she did in fact have her ID card with her, Joanna opened a spot and felt the cool air conditioning of the airport hit her. Then it truly sunk in. She was going to Vale. To Beacon Academy.