The Academy: when you laugh, i'm inside; Pirate

The sun rose with a swell; the tides were left behind as she walked into the academy.

It wasn’t the first time and, she thought, it wouldn’t be the last: this is a refuge, a place where the dark shadows do not follow her, not regret, not worry, not pity. Here, she can forget; she knows it is a dream that will never last.

Kalleis is grown now, almost fully so: her youth is apparent, but already it fades into the kind of uncertain adulthood she will, one day, bear with pride. Kalleis, much as her namesake, is beautiful: she is the color of lions, with a mane of silver draped chastely over her strong neck and thick shoulders. Kalleis will never be elegant or feminine, never maidenly or graceful. Her strength is in vitality, in fire and destruction and, to some extent, in light.

There is a small mark upon her neck, where a stone has pierced her.

Her teacher’s name is Pirate and she remembers him, dimly, from her times of youth among the sands. The fire that twines in her hair and coats her skin with ash is awake: it stares at the face of the wind curiously, hesitantly, but never fearfully. He has called for her before, long ago and then she did not answer: she does it now, as the time is due and her fate ready to be invoked.

“Pirate,” she says then, and her eyes are blue as the summer sky; “I am here, teacher.”

kalleis
daughter of war, daughter of love