Marion stayed to herself as she sat underneath the tree. It was almost the height of summer in Below, and while the sky didn’t look too different, and the greenery was the only difference between winter, she still wasn’t feeling good at all. It had been a week since she had been blamed for that tag game, and she still couldn’t find it in herself to forgive, or even talk to the other Freshling. And apparently her ex-friends had been avoiding her too, and the ones that didn’t wanted to act as though nothing had happened. She had almost yelled at them that they weren’t allowed to do that and that they had very much hurt her, but instead she just went with ignoring them.

And as a Freshling who was required to go outside and play with the others to burn off energy, it had made for a very boring week. She hadn’t played any games with them, and the few times that the teachers had tried to force her, she would just stand there and not do anything. And of course, at this point, her friends were acting as though she were the one entirely at fault, as though they hadn’t done anything. Like she was the troublemaker or that she had really done what she had been accused of doing.

She sighed. She didn’t really like the Academy in the first place. She had heard about schools where one could go back to their home at the end of the day and spend time with their family, so that they at least got a break from school. But this place? It was a boarding school, which meant that she lived here. The only Freshling who was still talking to her and hadn’t been involved in the first place was her roommate, but the two of them never really hung out together. They had different interests and well, her roommate had other friends that they were able to hang out with. There was no need for the two of them to hang out together and so far that had been okay.

But boy did it make recess SUPER BORING! If she could have run around by herself, she would have, but apparently if one wasn’t in a group then they weren’t allowed to go crazy and do their own thing, they either had to be with a group or sitting down by themselves. She chalked it up to the teachers and other staff being lazy. If they just let her run around on the track a couple of times, then she would have used up all of that energy in no time! And it’s not like it was out of the way either! But no. She had to sit there with nothing else to do, other than watching everyone else and wishing she could take a nap.

She supposed it was another sort of punishment that the teachers had made up as a way to not have to look after so many students or if they weren’t going along, they would be punished with boredom because how dare some students not want to be playing with everyone else! Or in Marion’s case, how dare they be mad at their friends and not want to hang out for a while!

She thumped her head back against the tree that she was sitting under, wishing, for the first time in her life, for recess to be over so that they could head back in. Sure, she would still have all of the energy that she couldn’t get out of her system, but at least she wouldn’t be just staring at everyone and everything else like she was now! She didn’t even have a book to read!

She sighed once again, making sure to mentally blame her friend one more time before she moved out from under the tree a bit, to lie down and look at the clouds. At least this way the teachers could still see that she was there and could tell that she wasn’t doing anything by herself other than staying completely still.

But it was better than looking at everyone else having fun and playing with each other when she still couldn’t find it in herself to forgive any of them.

She looked up at the sky, wondering what Above’s sky looked like. She had been told that the sky was blue and that clouds weren’t always inside of it, but what did that mean? Did they just have skies that were blue with nothing in them at all? That would be kind of scary wouldn’t it? Like there was… nothing out there. At least down here in Below you could feel like, while the continuous clouds were blocking something, that there was still stuff out there. Mostly Above. She wondered if Above was literally above them and that there was some sort of ground barrier between the two of them, or if it was a more magical barrier? She had read some stuff about the war that had occurred between Above and Below, though she didn’t know too much of it. And wondered what exactly the reason was that they had started all of the fighting in the first place. after all, there didn’t seem to be too much to either side that she would want to get. But then again, she didn’t know too much about the world and had only heard about some of the other locations.

Once she got out of this place, she was going to go out and check what was out there! She didn’t know if there would be any jobs that allowed that sort of thing, and if a sluagh could even get those kind of jobs considering how large their arms and hands usually were, but if there was a job out there that would let her do that, then she wanted to do it! She just had to get out of the academy first, and who knew when that would be! Suddenly she heard the bell ring which meant that recess was over, and she was glad that she had been able to pass the rest of the time just by thinking over some stuff. Though, she hoped that it didn't mean that there was only a little bit of time when she had started to. That would have meant that it didn't go by as quickly as she had hoped!