My boots are noisy, clomping along the marble corridor as I pass classrooms where lessons are underway. I snort to myself as I eavesdrop on them droning on. The theoretical lessons explained all about the great forces of fate, destiny and karma and how we weave their power. How on the great ocean of life, we’re the hands that guide the boat, that fill the water with waves and rocks, that make it so there is an island somewhere on the horizon.
Metaphorical, metaphysical stuff that my brain found both too broad and too abstract to cope with. I’m a doer rather than a thinker and I never felt that more than at my time at the academy.
And then after the lessons that fried my brains, I’d head back to the room I shared with Jet and she’d blow up about the ‘weaver propaganda’.
“What about the stuff they don’t talk about, like natural disasters or war? Are we lucky if we get to experiment with that? How do we live with the guilt if we’re the ones tugging strings that lead to misery?”
My sister is kind of an intense person, she feels things intensely. And shereallyhates feeling forced into things.
That’s why she hated this place so much. She never chose to be a weaver. She never chose to harness karma, creating obstacles in other’s lives.
I tend to be a lot more happy-go-lucky and chill compared to Jet, but even I can see why she has so many issues with this place.
If I didn’t, I wouldn’t have run.
I remember when I first met Jet, my first day here. She was in the middle of the entrance hall making a scene, ranting and raving about how despicable the whole academy is, taking kids away from their families to join the academy.
See, we weavers aren’t born. We’re just popped into existence as children. We then live as people for a little while—both Jet and I were spawned into existence on human Earth. They say the whole making up an entire life thing is to help us understand the lives and complexities of people we’d be weaving tapestries for. Then when we hit sixteen, we’re popped out of that existence straight to the academy. We spend years in one place, make friends and have families, only for us to be plucked out of our lives, never to see the people from our lives outside of the Ether again.
Continuing my tour along memory lane, I pass through the main hall with its arched ceilings, hundreds of chairs laid out, the stage awaiting an audience.
The same stage I never crossed.
I never stepped foot onto the stage, never received my placement. Never even found out where I was supposed to be placed. Me and Jet made a run for it while everyone was distracted during her ceremony.
Even so, it feels like we were never quite done with this place. Its claws still continue to be sunk deep even all these years later.
I slap a smile on my face, erasing any worry from my expression, and hop out of the Ether, back to our apartment. I know that Jet’s going to be less than enthusiastic about what I’m about to tell her and if she gets even a hint that I’m not fully onboard with the plan, I’ll never hear the end of it. So I flip to my go to move of hyper-enthusiasm. As soon as my feet land on the linoleum, I’m leaping onto Jet’s bed and scaring the piss out of her.
“Wakey, wakey, rise and shine.”
“Something better be on fire. And that something had better be attached to your head,” Jet mumbles into the pillow.
“I’ve been a busy girl while you’ve been snoozing your life away,” I tell her, popping a smacking kiss on her cheek.
“Good. Go be busy somewhere else. My head feels like I’m growing another one right inside my damn skull.”
“Told you mixing red and white does not make rosé, and that you didn’t need a bottle of each to prove it.” I tug on a few strands of her black and white hair. But she groans at my great wisdom, gazing blearily with one eye open.
“I’ve got some news. Maybe you can scrape yourself out of bed if I make you a coffee?”
She holds up a finger. “If you bring me coffee, I agree to sit up and listen for the first minute at least.”
Trust Jet to be bargaining not to have to listen to me even when I have the biggest news about her future as we’ve had inyears. That’s sisterly love for you.
I head off to the kitchen, returning a few minutes later with both coffee and doughnuts, and climb onto the bed beside her, snuggling up to her side.
“So, open the door to any interesting men this morning?”
“Maybe?”
“And why exactly did you let a strange guy into our apartment and then just leave him here to go back to bed?”
She grunts. “Thought he was a stripper.”
I just blink at her, decide that I can’t even begin to wade through that bit of logic, and grab a doughnut. It’s through mouthfuls that I explain the events of the past couple of hours to her. When I’m done, the doughnuts are all gone and Jet seems pretty nonplussed about the whole situation.
“So you’re going to be busy for the next while, I guess,” she says. “Playing detective with the stripper.”
