“Your secondary objective, the one you will be evaluated on both individually and collectively, is your ability to locate and acquire this,” she held up a large tropical flower. “King Protea. These are not flowers you can buy at any market, so you'll have to find them in the wild. You have until sundown to acquire them and return to the outpost. The team that returns with the best crop of them will receive the highest marks.”
My mind raced back to the lessons, trying to recall where exactly those flowers grew on Mesmoria. They weren't a coastal plant, which meant we'd have to travel inland. It was sunrisenow, so we had a total of twelve hours to find the flowers and get back.
“Any team that returns with none will fail. We will open the gates when the midterm begins.”
She began calling out names, separating us into teams. “Green team: Pasha, Orin, Georlan, Lisia, and Mikalyn,” she declared, pointing to an area near the barracks for us to gather.
My stomach sank as I walked over. I didn't know any of these trainees from anything besides brief interactions during lessons or training, with the exception of Orin. Maybe that was part of the midterm too?
“Okay, let's get names straight. I'm Mikalyn,” a woman with dark skin and long inky curls pointed to herself, “And this is my roommate Pasha.” Pasha looked sturdy, despite her diminutive height. She held up a bandaged hand in a wave. At least I wasn't the only one going into this midterm injured.
“I'm Orin,” he greeted, tipping his head toward the other man in our group. “Which makes you Georlan.”
Georlan smiled, his bright blonde hair bobbing. “Yep! The one and only.”
“And that means you're Lisia,” Mikalyn deduced.
“Great, now that we have names for all the faces, who remembers where we can find King Protea? And keep your voices down.” Pasha looked around at the nearby teams.
“They grow on Mount Kael, my family lives near there,” Orin shared quietly.
“That's pretty far from here,” Pasha worried a short caramel strand of hair that had come loose from her ponytail. “Even if we ran, it would take us at least four and a half hours to get there and back.
I winced. Now wasn’t a good time to reveal my recently sprained ankle. It felt fine now, and I'd been training on it forthe last few days without issue, but it wasn't back to one hundred percent. I hadn't tried running on it at all, yet.
“It’s not that bad,” Georlan said. “They could be making us run to the other end of the island and back.”
My mind was churning with everything we needed to succeed at to pass this test. But one requirement stood out above the rest as the most critical. “If we get separated, we should meet back here before sunset,” I said.
They might disqualify teams with missing members.
Orin frowned. “We don't know how they'll be evaluating each of us though. It could be on quantity, size, quality...if some of us show up with the flowers and others don't, wouldn't that be a mark against the team?”
“Better than missing team members,” Mikalyn stated.
Pasha examined Mikalyn and I's hair. “If we each carry at least two while we run, we can get ten of them back here by sunset. We might even be able to make two trips. We might get more if you both wear cradle braids and wedge their stems in.”
Orin scratched at his ear, tilting his head as he considered it.
The plan’s feasibility was questionable, my hair wasn't nearly as thick as Mikalyn's. Regardless, I pulled out my bun and fought the tug of the cold breeze, rapidly braiding it down. Mikalyn did the same.
“That sounds like a good pla–.”
“We could consolidate them when we get back here and then divide them bet–” Orin interrupted Georlan.
Collectively, all heads turned as the tall portcullis gate creaked with its ascent. “No time like the present!” Mikalyn ran toward the opening. Many others in the courtyard were also running for the gate.
Tying off my braid, I jogged instead of running. Even though it left me behind everyone else, it wasn't too much strainon my ankle, and it gave me a good view of the other teams. And what they were doing.
Izaiah and Talissa's team were running in a different direction than Mount Kael. Doubt stabbed me as I wondered if Orin had recognized the flower correctly.
Henrik's team split off into five different directions as soon as they were through the gate. Was it an attempt to conceal where they were headed? If so, it worked.
Veridiana's team was headed in the same direction as ours, and Sarina's team wasn't moving, still in discussion in the courtyard. Why were they all looking up?
I chanced a glance up, and the true challenge of this midterm slapped me in the face.
It was still too dark to make out much detail, but there were slate gray cumulonimbus clouds fanning out across the sky, as far as I could see. We'd be completing this test during the middle of a summer storm. That explained the chill in the air.
