Agatha wasn’t fully comfortable wearing her patchwork dress when Christie was wearing a gorgeous red dress herself. Whilst it wasn’t the same color as her hair, the textile still fitted her. Scarlet or burgundy? The seamstress-in-training thought to herself as she looked at her roommate from behind. Her long red mane complemented perfectly the long skirt of the dress, which was still beautiful even if it wasn’t frilled like the skirts from the academy. Though it could use some. To Agatha, frills were the pinnacle of fashion. That and ribbons.
“A ribboned and frilled dress, huh…” She found herself mumbling, her discomfort forgotten and substituted by mental sketches.
“Have you said something?” Christie turned to face her.
“No, I was just talking to myself. Your… compliments have rekindled my passion for tailoring. I have been so overwhelmed with the academy – or rather the idea of the academy – as of late that I have not sewn anything for… a month already?”
“You should get back to it, lest your skills erode,” the redhead wearing red giggled with a hand before her mouth.
Ah, Agatha mentally gasped. Her roommate boasted a decorum that she just wasn’t capable of managing. When she had first met her, Agatha compared her to a doll, but the longer time went by, the more she realized that comparison fell short. A doll couldn’t exude that much nobility. True nobility, the kind from fairy tales, and not the type she had seen at the academy.
Which was to say nothing at all.
Apparently, most of her classmates were nobles, but Agatha just couldn't tell the difference. If they really were nobles, then I should be able to distinguish them at a glance. She often thought to herself. No matter how much she inspected her classmates – she had only been one week at the academy so far, though – she wasn’t able to tell who was a noble or who was not.
Her line of thought was broken the moment Christie stopped walking once they had approached the border of the island where the Skyscraper Academy was situated.
“Is everything alright?” She asked her and placed a hand on her shoulder at the same time.
“Ah!” Christie yelped and jumped at the touch.
“Oh, sorry,” Agatha apologized as her roommate turned to face her with a shaken expression. “I did not know you did not like physical contact,” even though you are the one who grabbed my hands several times just now. She left that snarky comment unspoken.
“No, it is not that,” the redhead pressed her hands against her chest. “Is that just… it is an intimidating sight.”
“It sure is,” the dirty-blond girl mused as she looked over the horizon. They weren’t close enough to the edge to look straight down, but some parts of the city could be seen from their point of view already.
“Are you not… scared? That you maybe… uhm… might fall?” Her roommate clutched her hands.
“I mean, yes?” Agatha shrugged. “We are very high up, and heights are intimidating, but it is very, very hard for us to fall. The lift is really big too, and there is a soldier always manning it, so I guess they could help us in that hypothetical case. Did I use it right? Hypothetical?”
“Y-yes, I guess,” Christie responded absentmindedly.
“So, that,” the villager continued. “I doubt the fall will be our perdition. And even then, I do believe we could improvise something with our agates.” But Anchor will prove rather hurtful if I use it to stop the fall.
“Still… I would prefer it if there were some railings around. It feels, well, too insecure to just have a fall this height unprotected.”
“You think so?” Agatha grabbed Christie by the hand and with the other pointed at the horizon. “Think about it, what difference is there between a cliff and this?”
“Uhh… nothing?”
“Sactly! Uh… exactly!” She corrected. “There is no difference between the free fall of a floating island and a cliff. Yet people do not put railings over cliffs, do they?”
“I guess not… But this is not a random cliff of a mountain, but an inhabited place.”
“You say that as if people do not live on mountains,” Agatha chuckled. “I understand that you are,” don’t say scared, “intimidated by heights, but most people are sensible enough not to get close to lethal heights.”
“But we need to get close to the lethal heights to get down…” Christie looked very small as she responded.
“To be fair, there is a booth covering the lift,” she corrected.
“…what?” The redhead looked at her with utter bewilderment. The pathetic type at that.
“What?” The dirty-blond girl squinted and shook her head in shared confusion. “You know that, right?” She pointed at the booth-slash-stand-slash-stable-slash-whatever you wanted to call it that protected the lift and the passengers from the elements.
“Was that always there?” Christie gasped and covered her mouth with her free hand.
“Yes?” Agatha tilted her head. “Did you not see it when you got to the academy?”
“I… well…” Her roommate flushed. “I might have been looking away at that moment.”
“I see,” she let out a small giggle. “You can look away if that makes you comfortable.”
“Really?” The dressed doll looked at her with agates commanded by Light.
“Of course,” the seamstress-in-training clasped her porcelain hand with both of hers. “You can close them now. I will guide you, trust me.”
“I… I will,” Christie nodded and closed her eyes.
“Alright, I will start moving now. Follow my pace.”
Her roommate did as commanded, and they slowly but surely pranced toward the booth and the edge of the island. A soldier stood at the entrance with a face tarnished by boredom, and Agatha only exchanged a nod with him as she motioned at the lift. The soldier seemed amused by Christie, as the tall girl clutched on Agatha’s petite frame by the arm, and with her eyes closed, but he had enough presence of mind or manners not to comment on it. As soon as she guided her roommate to the center of the lift, the soldier gave them one last nod before the platform started falling.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
The sudden movement made Christie yelp and clutch on Agatha’s arm with greater strength. I must say, though, she’s rather… weak. The finely dressed girl was trembling with whitening fingers as she clutched her, yet Agatha didn’t feel that match that supposed strength. That, or I’m rather tough. I guess I can handle damage better than most considering the recent journey to the academy or the fact that I was stoned since I was little. Oh well. The village girl decided not to linger in the past because if she was here at the Skyscraper Academy, it was because she hadn’t let the past shackle her.
A soft breeze met them as they descended to the city of Knight’s Ascent. Agatha could understand that one could be scared of the winds, but in reality, even if they got strong enough to thrash people around, the lift was wide enough for that to be a non-issue. Agatha took pleasure in the wind that caressed her face while Christie trembled as if they were naked in a snowstorm. The petite girl couldn’t help but blush softly at that scene she created in her mind.
Yet, for the first time, Agatha could indulge herself in the breathtaking sight of the capital. When she arrived at the academy a week ago, there had been nasty weather, so she had only seen darkened and damp streets as she made her way here. But her greatest lament was not seeing the aerial view of the city.
Lament was the right word, for she was now gaping at the sight.
Knight’s Ascent was huge. Mindbogglingly huge. Her mind couldn’t just comprehend it. Even though she had passed through a handful of cities on her way to the Skyscraper Academy, they could not compare to the scale of the capital. And even then, she had only seen the main avenue of those cities. Definitely not the whole.
Bewitched.
There was no other way to describe her current mental state. Yet as all good things, that marvelous sight soon ended as the lift moved fast and it was only two hundred meters of free fall. The stone platform became incrusted on the ground with a heavy grumble as it came to a stop, yet the redhead still continued to clutch her arm as if she were to run away.
“Christie, we have arrived. You can open your eyes,” Agatha softly told her.
“Really?” She shook her head with her eyes still closed. “Are we really on the ground?”
“Why would I lie to you?” As she said so, Agatha realized that it would have been very funny to lie to her roommate, and she let out a chuckle.
“You are laughing! You are definitely lying!” Christie gripped her even harder.
I guess it is my fault, the sapphire-eyed girl sighed. “Alright, believe whatever you please,” and with ease, she removed herself from the redhead’s clutches and started walking off the platform.
“Wait! Agatha!” The girl extended her arms toward her as she begged with her eyes still closed. “Do not leave me here!”
“We are on the ground, I think you can walk for yourself,” she was aware that she was torturing her roommate, but at the same time, she wasn’t lying. They were on the ground, and Christie was just drowning in a puddle.
“Okay… okay…” Christie took deep breaths with her hands accompanying the movements of her breathing. “We are on the ground. We are on the ground. You can do this, Christie. Just… open your eyes.”
Agatha almost chuckled again as she heard the girl’s monologue, and with lots of difficulty, she managed to contain her laughter in case all the progress was reset.
“Open, your, eyes!” And she did. “Oh…” Christie moaned softly as she looked at her surroundings. “We are on the ground!”
“I told you so.”
“Then why were you laughing?” She protested and stomped on the ground.
“Can a girl just not be blessed with the gift of joy these days?” Agatha raised her arms to the heavens dramatically.
“No,” Christie pouted and stepped out of the lift with a frown.
“I mean, you cannot blame me, you literally wrote yourself the tale you wanted to hear.”
“I would rather not talk about it, thank you very much,” she added cuttingly and overtook Agatha as she walked past her.
The massive doorway of the ramparts that surrounded the crater of the Skyscraper Academy was open this time, unlike the time when she had arrived at the academy, so her roommate just rushed outside with a hasty trot. Agatha simply sighed before reaching her with some long strides.
“For someone who was too tired to train, you have the surprising amount of spring to your step,” Agatha recriminated her with a soft tone.
“Maybe it is the hunger,” Christie explained. “It is lunch time, after all.”
“Sure,” she easily accepted it, even if both knew that wasn’t the case. The girl’s ears were as red as her hair, after all. “I am wondering what we could eat. It is the start of the weekend, so it is bound to be a market somewhere. Surely there are stalls serving some local snacks.”
“You cannot substitute lunch with snacks.”
“You definitely can substitute lunch with snacks.”
“Well, it is not a matter of possibility, but decorum.”
“Riddle me this, Christie. Who is going to hold against us the lack of decorum?”
“Of course, the… the… huh,” she stopped dead in her tracks and turned to face her. “You are saying we can just eat snacks for lunch?” Her eyes glinted with childlike joy.
“Sact-Exactly!” Agatha corrected herself. Years of mispronouncing the word on purpose were difficult to correct in a matter of days. “You surely will get a weird look as you are wearing an expensive dress, but no one will admonish you about it. And talking about dresses… now that I think about it, do you not have anything more casual?”
“I… do not…” Christie giggled nervously. “My dearest father only wanted me to have the best of the best, and casualwear does not fit in that definition for him.”
“Huh,” the villager groaned, which actually meant to say: I cannot understand rich people for the life of me. “You have brought money, right?”
“Sure, look.” Thoughtlessly, the redhead took out her coin purse and opened it to show it to Agatha.
The dirty-blond girl’s first thought was: That is a lot of aluminum, meh. She cringed at the cheap coins as if the sheer amount was not already more than all the money she had seen in her whole life. That thought, however, was quickly substituted by: Are those platinum coins? The impoverished seamstress-in-training had never seen them, but their silvery shine was all-to-recognizable. And finally, but most importantly…
“You should really not show your coin purse to anyone, Christie…” Even though they were still in the environs of the city, Agatha couldn’t help but look around in case there was a person who – not necessarily a thief – had seen the loaded pouch.
“Oh, right,” she giggled, completely unaware of the issue. “They told me I should be aware of the money, but… well, it is my first time having coins, let alone using them, so I am kind of at a loss here.”
“Crown in the heavens,” Agatha exhaled in exhaustion. “You are lucky I am not blinded by greed.” And she knew better than to steal from a fellow student when her whole scholarship was an ephemeral ordeal already. “You really should take better care of the money. Do not get away from me, and do not buy anything without consulting me first. I have the feeling that you will get ripped off if you do so.”
“I mean, money is not an issue…”
“It is!” She pointed at her roommate with an accusatory finger. “You might not be aware of the weight of money, but everyone else is. And even then, your father must have worked hard to get that money. Are you sure you just want to frivolously waste it?”
“Uh… no…” The doll turned into the bunny she had first met as she shrank in shame.
Agatha was proud of herself at the exchange for many reasons. Not only had she managed to show Christie the way of her errors, but she had also managed to use a difficult word like ‘frivolously’ without any help or second-hand confirmation! I am getting the hang of this.
“So, should we get back then?” Christie suggested, and the villager frowned at her.
“And why in the depths should we do that?”
“Well, we should not waste the money on snacks…”
“Christie, oh Christie,” Agatha placed a hand on the tall girl’s shoulder and swayed her head in dejection. “We have to eat, right? Then we are not wasting the money, just filling our bellies. And eating is a vital expense, not a frivolous one.”
“But we have food for free in the mess hall,” Christie was a coy mess as she pressed the purse close to her bosom. Maybe she has taken my words a bit too literally.
“Have we not come down here for an outing? Of course, we have to eat outside! Do you not think so?”
“Uhm… I guess?” Agatha could see it in the girl’s eyes. She was fighting herself, trying to justify her actions to herself.
“Then what is the issue?” The sapphire-eyed girl chuckled. “And anyway, we were bound to spend money.”
“How come?” Christie tilted her head downwards in confusion.
“We have to buy you ‘casualwear’, of course!”
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