Chapter 4.2: Fuga, continued

Chapter 4 continued

“Oh I am going to miss it.” Said Laura still looking at the hull. “Master told me to build him something to show him that I was worthy. He wanted to not see his style simply imitated, but my own style. I came up with this, the Fuga. I have been out in her as often as I could the last three months. It flies like a wonderfully. I was worried that the flapping of the wings would make the ride bumpy, but I was able to compensate that with these runes over here… Wait you don’t understand a thing I am saying. I’m sorry, I’m babbling I just never realized how much I was going to miss her.” She patted it with a clanging noise, a few of the metal feathers rustled slightly from the vibrations.

“You will be able to see it again though, after the test. You will be able to come back here and fly it as much as you want.” Abe said ducking as to not hit his head on the wing. He came up next to Laura and traced one of the runes with his finger, it glowed more brightly to his touch.

“No, I might not. Not everyone survives the test.” She said it calmly, but Abe could sense that she was afraid.

“What do you mean? Not everyone survives?” Abe asked alarmed

“The last exam for Dream Catchers is extremely difficult. One in every three hopefuls doesn’t survive. That’s why a lot of Dream Catchers never get licensed. Instead they move to somewhere where they don’t need a license, and do odd jobs. Back at the Academy they used to warn us all the time about that. They said that if we ran to another territory that we would be found and punished by guild laws, but they don’t do it. They never enforced that law not even in the old days.” She sighed and looked at the ground, then slowly walked over to a crate near the rear of the Fuga and sat down. Abe walked over to her.

“I have heard you talk about the academy, but what is it? You were a dream catcher before you came to mister Sparrow’s?” Abe asked as he pulled another small crate closer so that he could sit on it as well.

“The Academy is where we are trained before we go to individual masters. I was chosen for mister Sparrow because I was very gifted as a student. The Head Master took a liking to me early on because of how I got to the academy, I was just like him.” Said Laura. She was staring into the distance obviously envisioning her old life at the academy.

“What do you mean?” Abe asked honestly curious.

“ I was a orphan, on the street in the slums around Brass City. When I was ten I blew up a bakery because the man there had hit me after I took some bread. I was starving, and he didn’t have the heart to even give me the scraps he was throwing out. The b*****d!” She banged her fist on the crate, tears in her eyes. “Then a representative came to find me. Rumors spread fast through the slums, and the story that a kid could control dreams spread like wild fire.”