High School Is Over

The room was quiet in the darkness. It had not been touched since Ben had left, and this somehow made it all the worse to see. Hoping his entrance had not woken his mother, Ben walked about his room gingerly, a full moon eventually flooding the bedroom with light when he gained the courage to open the curtains. As he sat on the bed, his old bedsheets feeling surprisingly clean, Ben's head exploded with sadness and longing. He had not been gone a month, but so much had happened in that time, it felt like years. Add that to the fact that time shifted four times more slowly at Equanime than it did here, and Ben may had well been an old man. Looking about the silver lit room, Ben realised that in all essence, nothing had changed at all save himself. His clothes still hung in the wardrobe, his computer loomed in one corner, a neglected guitar lay in another. He smiled, noticing a glint of metal on the floor. Not bothering to move, Ben extended a palm towards the object, and it flew into his hand as if it has been thrown. A single tear rolled down his cheek as he looked it over, a small badge that read in proud red engravement "Captain". Instantly Ben had remembered that day, when his conversion from SRC member to Symbian Alliance member has been completed, much quicker and much harsher than he had hoped. He was in front of the whole school, giving an announcement about a sausage sizzle and mufti day to raise money for a charity. Sure, he had it all then. The girlfriend, the popularity, the marks. As he talked to the nine hundred enthused, bored or non-attentive faces, he thought nothing of a large creature that had formed behind them all, dark furred, large eared and winged. Ben laid back on his old bed, remembering with a sad smile how Indref had looked, his usual cocky warrior self, but as if it was a facade, like he was trying to hard. Laying back against a wall, behind the students and teachers, visible to none of them via a particularly ingenious trick the Symbians had devised some hundred thousand years ago. Thinking nothing of it, he had simply talked on, not skipping a beat, his message nearly finished. And when he was done with the stage, he was about to step down. But something about the way Indref moved stopped him. The winged rabbit, six feet tall and coloured jet back save for slightly grey tufts in his ears and on his feet, the entro that he had come to know and trust, began to walk towards him, weaving through the kids and adults carefully, shifting his enormous wings to squeeze between two adults. He had frozen at that moment, the small crowd looking on questioningly. Ben's heart had sunk into his feet. He knew what was to come next. Indref's form gleamed quickly, and the sea of students reacted immediately, screaming or yelling, the closest pulling away from the sudden creature, the most distant craning for a better view. Spreading his wings, Indref had soared quickly to Ben's side. The big guy had nothing to say, Ben remembered, but connected as they were, there was no need. A simple nod gave it all away: it wasn't safe anymore, and he has been ordered by the Alliance to evacuate to Symbia, as so many before him had done. A noise from outside the door jolted Ben from his thoughts. The full moon had been obstructed by dark clouds, and bedroom had fallen back into darkness. Ben pocketed the badge and got up from the bed.

Eyes bleary, Mrs Jaycobe opened the door and her son's room, only to find it empty, empty like it had been since his disappearance. Shaking her head (she was so sure she had heard something), she turned and was about to close the door, when she noticed that the curtains has been opened. Didn't she close that so the media wouldn't take voyeur shots of her son's room? On the roof of the house, Ben watched over his old home, then disappearing with a silvery gleam.