Chapter 2: The castle

We've been traveling for at least a couple of hours now, the castle getting bigger by the second. I can smell the royal air surrounding it and by that I mean you can't smell any animal defecation and everything smells much fresher. The cool night air bites at my exposed arms, the small coat I'm wearing is not helping me at all. We cross a wooden bridge that dangles over a moat and enter the castle grounds.

A graceful fountain with lush green grass surrounding it. Right in front of it is two wooden doors and brick laid down in front of it, making it like a town square. Even though, the town is all the way down this little mountain. The coachman, which I learned on the ride's name is Jack, opens the door and gives me a kind smile.

"Come on kid, the headmistress is already chewing at my feet for being late." He says jokingly, clearly he's used to being late. His joke makes me giggle, he smirks and holds his hand out to help me out of the carriage. I take his hand, and climb out, picking up my leather bag, while he carries my rundown instrument case.

The guards open the doors at the sight of the man, I can see Jack wink at the slightly smaller guard. His helmet covered his face but I had the feeling that he was blushing.

Returning my attention back to the castle. I almost stop in my tracks at how large the castle is. It's huge, my jaw drops at how gorgeous the architecture is. I can hear a chuckle at my reaction before grunting (again) at the heavy instrument.

"I apologise that we don't have a greeting for you. Usually we get the orchestra out for new visitors. We were planning one but something came up." He sighs, uncomfortably scratching his scalp.

"Alright, up that staircase is the teachers' rooms." He says pointing to the staircase right in front of me. "Go up one level, there are the student's rooms. There's the dining area." He continues, pointing past the staircase after he put my cello down to explain.

"Take one right in these long hallways is your year's classes." He says gesturing to our right. "To the left is the year nine's classes. The year ten's and eleven's have their own wing, it's the same with the year twelve's and thirteen's. It goes like that all the way through, from preschool to university."

He then goes on to explain where the kitchen, ballroom, and everything else I would need is. After his explanation, we walked to my room. He gives me the keys, tells me not to cause much noise, says he'll put my instrument of choice in my music class, and then says his goodbyes, doing exactly what he said he would.

I open the door to my room, it is a lot bigger than my room at home. I have a double bed and to my left is a walk-in closet. Next to the door was a dark oak desk, with all my necessary items for the school day. I also have around 5 uniforms, but I can wear my own clothes on the weekends. On the right was a bathroom. I set my suitcase down and start unpacking.

It didn't take me long to unpack since I don't have a lot. I then proceed to change into my sleepwear and plop onto the comfy bed. Crawling underneath the blankets, I close my eyes and let the darkness latch on to my exhaustion and my overwhelming amount of emotions. Drifting into a deep sleep.

I wake up to a bell ringing loudly and an old-sounding lady yelling, "Wake up ladies!" I groan at the sudden loud noise, already missing my mother and her ways of waking me, even if it's by tearing the warm blanket off me.

Then there's a bang on my door and then someone opens it, "You must be the new girl." An old, much kinder sounding lady pops her head through the door. I nodded, she smiled and then continued, "This is Edith, she will be helping you get settled in." As she says that an uptight tight seeming girl walks beside her.

The old lady leaves and as soon as she does Edith says, "Breakfast is in ten minutes get ready, we have half of the same classes." She goes to get ready herself but I stop her, "What about the other half?" She turns back to me and says, "I will tell you more at breakfast." She then leaves without hesitation.

I met her outside my room and together we made our way to the dining room where breakfast is being held. The girl slowly started getting less... old fashioned but I could tell that she wasn't letting loose anytime soon.

At the breakfast table, we met Anna. She has the other half of my classes with me. She's so relaxed, she's much better company than Edith but I could tell, these are my friends for the year. I could tell the way these two get across that they have been friends for quite some time now.

While eating breakfast they gave me a list of (in their collective opinion) the most important rules. These rules did give me a lot of questions...