storm and cocoa (Thia)

The heavy rain started when we were all in the bus but it wasn't enough to dampen my spirit. Still, it was hard to get my thoughts focused. Noaba sat beside me. Jay and Sam just behind. Noaba must've noticed something was off.

"You wanna talk about it?" she asked.

I had a feeling she'd been holding that question all day.

"Not really."

She paused for a moment. "Ok."

One thing I liked most about Noaba was that, even though she could sometimes hear people's thoughts, she wouldn't press you about them. She still tried to be respectful of other people's privacy.

Honestly, I wasn't quite sure what it was that had me so distracted. Was it still about that dream, or that book I'd been reading? It was quite addictive, getting very interesting, hard to get my mind off of it. But I'd say this day had definitely helped with that.

When we were almost back to the school, I started putting my hoodie on. I loved that thing. It was a gift for when the weather started getting colder. A lovely plumb colour, snug but not too big and baggy for someone my size and the best part of it was the hood. There were two areas at the top for my ears to go when it was up, loose and flexible so they were able to move around freely without constriction. We were lucky though. The school wasn't that far from the base. We just had to hold our hoods over our heads while running the short distance. I was the first person to get to the door, so I was the one to use the key card to open it. When we were all inside, we all let our hoods down and had a good shake. Though I had tried to keep my hair dry, it had still frizzed up a little but I didn't mind too much. I actually kinda liked it wet and frizzy. Beside me, Jay was wiping the drops from his waterproof coat while Sam was already taking his off. Noaba hadn't worn a coat. She liked the rain but it did mean her uniform was soaked, so she went straight off to shower and change and before long the boys did the same. I preferred a bath to a shower so instead I went to the EnSite beside the apartment.

It was around 4:00 when we were all out and back down in the lounge. The sky had gotten darker and the rain was completely obscuring the windows so it was impossible to see outside. Sam and Noaba were sitting in a corner giving each other tips on how to play strategy arena while Jay was sitting in front of the coffee table, his head resting on one hand while he twiddled a pencil in the other. I was too tired to think about strategy so I went to sit by Jay, rubbing my eyes as I did. "Gods, I need a cocoa." I muttered. Perhaps I shouldn't stay up reading anymore. Truth was, I was still afraid of having another dream. It wasn't until I kneeled on the other side of the coffee table that I noticed Jay had his sketchbook in front of him.

"You tryn'a draw those creatures already?"

He shrugged. "Might as well get it done while I can still remember what they looked like."

I looked at the blank page in front of him then at the pencil he was spinning.

"But can you remember?" I said with a smirk.

He stopped twiddling and pointed the pencil at me. "I will do."

Just then, James came in, taking off his jacket and going to sit on the couch.

"Can I borrow your jacket?" I asked him. "If you're not wearing it."

He looked at me for a moment, then smirked and rolled his eyes. "Sure."

"You cold?"

"I'm wet. We did just get in from a storm."

"Well, I've been working in the training courtyard all day." James said with a smile.

In truth, the jacket didn't really help much to begin with, since it was my neck and shoulders that were cold. So instead, I draped it over my shoulder and tied the arms loosely under my chin, wearing it like a shawl.

"Well, that's the last of school this yeah. Now it's the summer holidays."

I folded my arms on the table and rested my head on them, closing my eyes just to rest them. "We got that inspection to look forward to next."

Jay just hmphed, then started laughing for some reason. I opened my eyes. "What is it?" I saw he'd started sketching at the top of the page.

"Don't you think it's kinda odd, that this place is fighting a war on its own, now it's getting its first inspection, and it still doesn't have a proper name yet." He'd said it loud enough for most of the room to hear so the others were now looking at us.

"You can give it a name yourselves if you really wanna."

"Like what?"

I shrugged. "Spitfires rise?"

That made Noaba laugh. "Where'd you hear that?"

"Nowhere. Just came up with it."

Brain sniggered. "Liar."

I looked at him. "How would you know?"

"Because, I read the Underdogs too, remember."

After that all I could do was try not to smirk.

Jay adjusted the angle of his pencil to draw the sides of whichever beast he was drawing. "I don't know about 'spitfires' but something with 'rise' at the end sounds pretty cool."

"Well, you think of a name then."

"Well maybe I will."

"Someone order cocoa." The voice was out of nowhere and unexpected. I turned in surprise. I didn't think anyone had heard me. But sure enough, there was Zee, standing in the doorway with a tray full of cocoas. Jay put his sketchbook away so as not to spill any on it and the four of us sat at the coffee table to have ours.

"Nothing like a hot cocoa and a cold and stormy night." Commented Sam.

But Jay still looked confused. "There's still one thing missing." And to correct that, he turned on the hollo-screen to the channel he was watching before we left. "Oo, it's still going on."

I hadn't really paid much attention that morning. Just noticed there was a kitty girl and someone on a motorbike. But after watching a bit of it properly, I felt I'd heard of it before somewhere.

"Wait a second." Something twigged in my memory after seeing the intro of the next episode.

I held up a finger. "Be right back."

"Wait a sec!" Brain called out and I stopped right in the doorway. He held out a water bottle and placed it on the counter towards me. I smiled and took it. "Right." And I ran from the room, up the escalators to get something from my room in the apartment. People would look at me running by but no one stopped me. They knew who I was. I guess they were kinda getting used to seeing us kids run around here. When I got there, I had to use the key card again to open the apartment door but after that I ran straight through, threw open my bedroom door, tossed the water bottle on the bed and knelt in front of the bookcase. There were three shelves of books. Some I hadn't read yet; some I didn't really read anymore and some I'd started but hadn't finished. On the very bottom row were the first books I'd ever looked at myself.

I thought I would remember this but over time it became blurred. Of course little children don't really think about the possibility of forgetting things. Looking back, I tried to think of the earliest thing I could remember. My sister reading to me. That was what first drew me to books. First reading to me, then helping teach me to read. With books like these I thought, looking over 'Tales of Beedle the Bard', 'Fairy-tales of Remnant' and all those little Disney picture books.

I picked up the book I wanted and looked at it more closely. It definitely had the same main title and was set in the same world but the art looked quite different. I decided not to think about it more until I got it back down there and could compare them side by side.

"Ba-da!" I jumped into the lounge, holding the book out in front of me with the title page facing them.

"Fairy-tales of Remnant." Some of them seemed to recognise it.

I heard one of the girls laughing. "Where did you get that?"

I moved the book down from my face. "I've had it since I was little. It was part of my fan-fairytale collection." I said, coming and sitting by my cocoa again. "Some of the first books I ever read."

"Oh, so that's…" Brain pointed at the screen, apparently just making the connection.

"I knew I'd seen it before somewhere." I said, looking from the R.W.B.Y letters printed on the books front page to the characters showing on the screen. "I don't think I knew it was a show though."

The rest of the evening passed with us drinking our cocoa and watching the show, with me trying to match the dots between the fairy tales and the show. It didn't take me long to figure out that the R.W.B and Y were actually the first letters of four of the main characters. There was also a very intriguing young boy character which I thought might be connected to at least one, if not more of the fairy tales. It only went on for one season though and for some reason had me both interested and worried about what might happen next. Jay promised he'd be able to find it again another day so I decided to think on it overnight and for the first night since Brain gave the book, I went to bed not thinking about the underdogs.