Ch 3.8: Distractions

Tira wished her clear head from the outing at the lake hadn’t been ruined by the news from Elaina’s meeting. It wasn’t Elaina’s fault of course, but that fact didn’t do anything to quell Tira’s worries about the matter. She’d sat in her office for a good half hour after the other girls left just thinking about everything. Having to leave, having to go to war, having to go to Kaldish of all places.

“Homecoming for both of us, in a way,” she muttered to herself, looking down at her hand. Elaina had seemed about as excited about the fact as Tira herself was. “Should’ve asked her if she was okay with that part of it.” Tira knew she obviously hadn’t been.

“Fuck,” she said, standing up from her chair and making one last glance at the office monitor as she pulled her jacket on. There wasn’t really much to look out for at that time of night before curfew, but she needed to work somehow. Reports were caught up, monitor clear, no underlings to mess with, so she guessed a patrol was what it had to be. As useless as that was at the moment, at least it would be better than letting her mind eat away at itself.

One foot outside was all it took, just existence in the presence of others. Tira could feel her spine straightening, her heart calming. The handful of students in the hall didn’t cower at the sight of her like they might some of the stricter teachers, but she could tell that they stood a littler straighter as well, some casting quick looks as she walked by to make sure they hadn’t somehow caught her attention with their untidy uniforms or some other infraction they’d conjured in their minds.

Tira wasn’t interested in busting her classmates for stuff like that though. She did like the authority, the sense of respect that her title commanded, but truth be told curfew was the only of those administrative rules of that she really cared about, and mostly because the off chance of a teacher finding a student out at that time before the Watch would reflect poorly on her.

There were some things she cared about of course. She didn’t tolerate bullying, harassment, cruelty. She’d always had a need to protect people when she saw even the littlest injustice, and as a kid that had actually gotten her in a bit of trouble herself. Her level of aggressiveness in dealing with such things as a Watch member and then captain had garnered her somewhat of a reputation, and that did make it hard to keep relationships of any kind, but it was what it was.

Maybe I can get by in Kaldish the same. Don’t enforce stupid shit, do the right thing.

But that was thinking about it again, which she was very much trying not to do. And besides, she knew better than to think so wishfully anyway. She knew exactly what they were being signed up for, even if the other girls and even Alonse himself didn’t.

Fuck, thinking about it again!

“I can’t believe Kalivahn expect us to actually do this much work. Like, it’s raining, so class should be canceled, not just held inside.”

That voice drew Tira’s attention back to the patrol. It wasn’t one she was super familiar with, not even one she could put a face to, but it was one she recognized, one that had some significance in her mind, and as she turned it clicked into place into place. One of Fireguard’s friends, one of the two girls always hanging around her, Ferris, and the other boy.

Prisma was in the middle of those two girls, the boys nowhere in sight right now. Tira couldn’t be assed to remember the names of those, but seeing any of that group was enough to sour Tira’s mood even further, especially Prisma.

Something did look strange though. The girls didn’t pay Tira much attention as she walked towards them, not too uncommon for first years who didn’t quite know her reputation, but that wasn’t what was wrong. Prisma was looking down at her feet, a deadness in her eyes that bothered Tira.

It wasn’t that she hadn’t seen that look on the girl’s face before. Tira had seen it plenty of times, any time Elaina was nearby. But Tira had also seen Prisma in the halls, on the monitors, in the cafeteria without Elaina nearby, and each time there had been some degree of life in her eyes, some manner of joy and playfulness as she talked with her friends, but even with Elaina absent that life wasn’t there right now.

Tira herself stopped in front of the trio, looking at them more out of curiosity than anything else. Eventually the two girls surrounding Prisma did notice her, stopped yapping as they looked her up and down, eyes freezing on her Watch pin.

“Oh, sorry, uhm, we didn’t mean to…” one of them said, scrunching her nose. “Wait, what were we doing wrong?”

Tira ignored her, locking eyes with the girl in the middle, those dead eyes. She wasn’t sure why she had stopped in the first place, why she was still there. Prisma had apparently made it clear that they were all done with everything after all, so why were they staring at each other right now?

“I need to talk with Miss Fireguard about something,” Tira said, still unsure of herself even as the words came out.