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Gwen Song awoke to the melody of _Grande Valse_ blaring with the strength of an air siren.
Reflexively, she groped for her smartphone, making the familiar sliding gesture to unlock. Instead, her vague fingers encountered the strange sensation of physical buttons. A moment of frantic fumbling ensured, then a sound bega... |
The whole thing feels like a cult, Gwen cynically assessed the assemblage of students and staff. All around her, the cohort separated into rows standing before ten crystal spheres. The 'Awakening Crystals' reminded her of E-meters she saw once on Castlereagh St.
These students, who had already had their affinity aff... |
“So, what do I do?” Gwen's trembling lips begged for an answer.
By now, her eyes were moist with the distress of her devastating evaluation. The pitiful look she projected gave the instructor such a pang of guilt that he felt his iron mien falter. After all, the girl's future was nothing if not bleak.
But the cryst... |
When she was eleven, Gwen's parents separated. Custody, alimony, property splits, embittered family taking sides and caustic dialogue all took their toll. It had been a terrible time for the teenage Gwen, who through it all, tried to take care of her brother Percy.
In the end, she powered through and believed hersel... |
Turbulent thoughts tormented Gwen through the night.
Why was she here? What happened to the teenage Gwen of this world? In fact, now that she thought about it, what about her thirty-year-old body? Would her secretary, Becky, find her boss in a state of decomposition? Would the Sun Herald report on her mysterious dem... |
There's blood on her sheets.
That is, Gwen's scraped knee had bled over her sheets.
Pulling the gauzy cotton painfully from her skin, she stripped the linen from her bed. The last thing Gwen wanted to hear was her father's new bimbo having a crack at her bloody sheets.
Gwen took a moment to compose her thoughts. ... |
The week came and went, then it was time for Gwen to go.
With her father's latest lover still lounging in the living room, Gwen felt no obligation for an amicable departure as the last of her boxes were packed.
Her only regret was leaving Percy.
Her brother seemed precociously aware that in a few years, the distan... |
The terrible news of Gwen's 'true' talent spread like the thirteenth-century quasi-magical bubonic plague. She quickly left the main building before a mob could pick up enough momentum to start throwing textbooks.
When Gwen finally got to the dorm apartments, Yue and Elvia were already giddy with the good news.
"Se... |
Spring ended with November; then summer came on with its stifling heat.
Fair-skinned and petite, Elvia wilted like a rare white flower.
Gwen likewise melted in a most un-ladylike manner, legs akimbo, a spaghetti-string singlet loosely hung over one shoulder, its sheer cotton stuck to her stomach like wet rice paper... |
_Putt! Putt! Putt!_
The training dummy split in twain with a resounding 'crack!' as several stone-tipped Magic Missiles cracked its wooden surface, sending up a cloud of fragments.
The area around the dummy next shimmered; a mana Shield made opaque by dust, rock, and assorted sediments materialised.
Thunk! Thunk! ... |
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