Lunch Break

Created on 5.20/14, 1:11PM

The first time he ever set eyes on her, he'd been standing in line at the Academy's mess hall, waiting his turn to get a tray of the stuff they called food. He couldn't judge yet, because it was his first day, but from his vantage point in the middle of the line, the sort of pasta looking thing they were serving didn't look very appetizing. The mess workers behind the counter were scooping it out of huge, industrial-sized pans with metal ladles before passing them to the waiting students. There were two pans to choose from, and each person was pointing to one or the other, so he had to assume that they were somehow different, though he had no idea how. They both looked identical to his eyes.

The mess hall wasn't quiet, but it wasn't loud, either, like he'd been expecting. Mostly, there was just the abstract rumble of hundreds of voices talking all at once, only just loud enough for each table to hear over the others, so that, while he could actually hear himself think, unlike at some of the other schools he'd gone to over the years—though, he supposed, flipping his pale pinkish-red tray end over end idly in his hands, this place wasn't exactly a normal school, seeing as it was the Academy with a capital A—where the students screamed at each other just to be heard over the din of shouting voices and stomping feet and clattering trays, it wasn't as...disciplined as he'd been expecting. His father had always gone on about how a good soldier was always respectful and held his manners, but things here were...

...They were almost relaxed.

And, as he stepped forward in line as it moved slowly along, he felt compelled to add the almost, because when the students walked, mostly the older ones, they did so with clipped efficiency, as though they were so accustomed to standing at attention and marching that they now did it without even having to think about it. He watched them with interest, watching the way their feet seemed somehow...perfect in a way that a normal civilian's wasn't. He wasn't really sure when he'd started watching the way people walked, but it never failed to intrigue him, especially in crowded hallways or sidewalks. The way everyone moved with both single-minded intent while still being aware of the whole of the group, knowing the exact moment to step this way or that way to avoid running into someone else, drifting past each other like river water around obstacles with almost seamless purity, with only a ripple here and there to disturb the surface, when someone refused to give ground, or a group insisted on walking side by side without waver, trapping everyone who needed to get past them in swirling eddies of confusion as they were forced to wait their turn to move forward once again, forced to break the invisible line of the stream that separated this direction from that one.

Watching the older students now, he wondered if his feet would ever move that way. If he would ever be able to gain such...stilted grace.

As he waited in line for his turn to get food, he had a lot of time to ponder the world around him. The line was long, but he wouldn't have to worry about cold food. He knew that those specific brand of metal trays were always kept warm so that each plate was the perfect temperature. Not so hot that it would scald the tongue, but not so cold that it lost everything that made it appetizing. Just the right amount of steam would come off the food that it felt like a home-cooked family dinner. Not that he'd enjoyed many of those, but still, he was happy to see that the Academy had them. He'd only ever gone to two schools that had this set-up, (out of how many, he could never be quite sure, because his memory had run together in his younger years) and he'd been slightly worried—well, resigned might have been a better word—to the fact that he would probably be left with cold food if he arrived too slow to get to the front-end of the line.

There were still about—he guessed—thirty or so people infront of him when she showed up. At first, he didn't even notice, too caught up in twirling his tray in his hands, but then the person behind him nudged him with a quick elbow in the side that wasn't quite painful, but hard enough for him to look up, only to notice that almost half of everyone in the line was suddenly standing at attention, one hand raised to their forehead in salute, their tray hanging from their other hand at their side.

It was with overwhelming relief that he realized that he wasn't the only one that had no idea what was going on. Several other students he recognized from Orientation earlier that day as his classmates were fumbling with their trays and stepping into rushed salutes, some of their faces heating up with embarrassment as they tried to figure out who the other students were saluting in the first place, panic evident on some of their faces as though they expected to see an Admiral striding up the line.

The person next to him nudged him again, and turned his eyes—shockingly bright against the darkness of his skin, and the deep brown of his iris—wide in an obvious attempt to pass on a silent message that was half made up of amusement and half of alarm. He was supposed to salute too, which he'd forgotten in all of his fascination with watching the others salute.

Releasing one hand from his tray so that it could drop to his side with his other, he straightened his back and squared his shoulders, and raised one hand to his forehead almost seamlessly, holding the position flawlessly even as his eyes continued to dart up and down the line and across the huge room, to where those already at their tables were acting as though nothing was happening, though he knew that they were aware of what was going on, because some of them were watching with interest as they continued to eat, and one worried students—he recognized her from Orientation as well—was whispering to the older student beside her, her gaze darting back and forth between along the line. But the older student she was sitting with shook their head, and she visibly calmed down again with an obvious sigh of relief, so he had to assume that those who already had their food were exempt.

For a moment, he worried that some higher officer was going to come marching down to berate them for being so slow to the mess hall that they weren't among the first in line—stranger things had happened before in his life, so it wouldn't exactly be unexpected for something like that to happen now—but then he noticed the sound of footsteps in the suddenly quieter—not but quiet, because those at the tables were continuing their conversations like normal—mess hall, and his eyes quickly darted to follow the sound, his ears already cataloging the pattern of the steps into those belonging to an older student, but they were somehow more...controlled. Like every step was a conscious decision, and not the half-awake, half unconscious walk of those who had trained themselves to memorize it and could now safely fall into it at a moment's notice.

Turning his gaze straight ahead again when the footsteps grew closer, he waited with anxiety for the person they belonged to to fall into his view. He didn't know what to make of the pattern of their walk, and it had him worried. All along the line, his classmates stood at attention, trays at their sides and hands to their forehead, their feet side-by-side. And as he stood among them, anonymous in the mass of saluting uniforms, she walked past.

Her gaze never wavered to glance at any of them in curiosity, or to rake a judging eye down them to lock on those who were nervous or afraid, or even to give a reassuring smile the the ones that were so obviously new. She just strode past them as though they weren't there—but now that he could see the way she walked, one foot infront of the other, clipped and curt and only as quick-stepped as she needed them to be, he knew somehow, without even understanding how, that she was completely aware of every single pair of eyes on her or held off to the respectful side, every hand raised in admiration and nervous fear for her, every empty tray held at their sides so that she could have the opportunity to eat without being forced to wait at the end of the increasingly long line.

And in that same moment that he understood how aware she was of them all, he also knew that this was not her choice. He could see it in the way her arms were tensed and her eyes held straight ahead of her that she was wary of this gift she'd been given. She wasn't like the bullies and would-be leaders that he'd had to deal with in almost every school he'd gone to, who tried to muscle and threaten and plead and convince everyone with their honeyed words—in whichever way they knew would work best for whatever crowd was watching—that they deserved to be first in line, and everyone else needed to wait.

No, she wasn't like them, he decided as she reached the counter, where the mess workers were waiting patiently, one of them even shaking his head in exasperation, and pointed silently to the tray on the left, the one that he still hadn't been able to differentiate from the one on the right, and accepted the food with a quiet thank you that somehow managed to carry its way down to and past his point in the line. She continued down the counter, letting the workers place more food on her tray as she went, before she reached the end, and grabbed two water bottles from the cooler that sat there.

Then she turned away from the counter, and walked—calmly, but somehow almost hurriedly, though her pace had not changed in the slightest from what it had been before, almost, it was just like she wanted it to—to a table halfway back, that was occupied by two teachers he'd seen in the halls, and sat down to eat,

Almost immediately, the students in the line relaxed out of their fixed stances, and within moments, the line was moving forward again as though nothing had happened. The entire thing hadn't even lasted a single minute.

Confused, but relieved that nothing annoying had happened, he had to resist the urge to turn to the person behind him to ask what had just happened. The other man was obviously an older students, and though he had been nice enough to draw his attention to what was happening so that he didn't look like an idiot, he didn't really want to push his luck. He'd had plenty of experience with 'upper classmen' that didn't have time to be friendly to those younger than them, and he was tired of accidentally starting pointless feuds over a small incident.

Returning to twirling his reddish-pink tray in his hands and losing himself in his thoughts—trying to retrace his steps from the Orientation classroom to the mess hall so that he would be able to get back without any unnecessary problems, being extremely grateful that the Academy seemed to actually understand the concept of a new student like so many of his past schools had not, because their Orientation lasted two weeks, and during that time they were given multiple tours of the building so that they would know where everything was, and every class available was explained in-depth, so that they could make completely informed decisions on which they wanted to take, instead of wildly guessing and hoping for the best—his trip toward the front of the line seemed to pass by in a matter of seconds, rather than minutes.

Waiting behind only three people now, he could see that the food in the trays were some sort of thick lasagna-type thing, with the tray on the left, closest to him, was labeled potatoes, and the one farther away apparently had something called egg plant in it.

He had no idea what an egg plant was, so when it was his turn to hold out his tray, he politely asked for some from the left pan, and saw with curiosity when a scoop of it was deposited on his tray that it was topped in what was obviously mashed potatoes. As he moved farther down the counter to inspect his choices of fruit and vegetables—peaches, oranges, apples, pineapples, pomegranate seeds, blue-shell fruits, their startlingly bright insides exposed in little half-circles where they'd been cut neatly in half, the pitch black shell used as its own bowl, corn, celery, peas, carrots, both steamed and raw, even onion rings and baked potatoes, he'd never seen so much food—his mind continued to wonder at how lucky he'd been at the Academy so far. The way his father had always talked about honor and dignity, he'd expected the place to be hell, formal to the extreme with barely any room to breathe.

And he definitely hadn't been expecting to be served such...real food. The pasta on his plate—what ever it was—was already starting to make his stomach growl, and it smelled amazing. Quickly grabbing two ladle-fulls of peaches so that he wouldn't hold up the line, he hurried to the end where the cooler was, and stood off to the side as he was once again surprised. Not only could they get water, but almost every flavor of soft drink he'd ever heard of was in there as well. Grabbing a strawberry flavored one with hardly a moment of hesitation—and only then because his family had hardly ever had the money to spare on soft drinks, and he was half-afraid that someone was going to come along and tell him he had to pay extra for one—he resisted the urge to grin widely, and moved away from the line area, anxious to get to a table so that he could sit down and eat.

He took one step forward—and then stopped suddenly in horror as he realized that he didn't know where to sit.

His eyes widening in the beginnings of panic—because he'd gone through this crisis more times than he wanted to count, and it seldom ended smoothly—he barely had a moment to freak out before a shoulder nudged his arm, not hard enough to startle him or cause him to spill his food, to his relief, and he looked up to realize that the man who'd been standing behind him in line was next to him. He grinned, inclined his head in an invitation to follow, and then started off toward one of the emptier tables.

Hesitation abandoned in his fear of sitting awkwardly by himself at table where he wasn't welcome, he followed quickly after the older student to the table he'd indicated, and was glad to find that the other students there were friendly and welcoming. The dark-skinned man introduced himself as Alex Hale, then allowed the others at the table to introduce themselves as well. The woman who Alex sat down next to who had her dark red hair in a buzz cut that let you see through to her head was Kaita, and they were cousins, and the man who sat next to her—half eating, half buried in a book, with his floppy blonde hair almost entirely covering his eyes so that he had to wonder how he could even see—was Steven Bruck.

"Zak Adama," He said in answer when Alex asked for his name, and, after the initial shock of recognition passed, the lunch period went by smoothly, without anything stranger than someone accidentally dropping their—fortunately empty—tray to mar what was turning out to be a pretty nice first day.

And then the bell rang to release them back to their classes, and he parted ways with the other three—after they made him promise that he would sit with them again the next day—to head back to Orientation.

And while he was in the hallways, back in that swirling river of feet and bodies, each one moving smoothly past the others without incident like a fast-moving current existing side-by-side by its opposite, for a single moment, he caught sight of the woman that had made the line of students stop themselves in place so that she could get her food first, only this time, she moved with the same anonymity that he had felt standing in the line of saluting students, blending in with them as though she were invisible amongst the twin currents. She moved with seamless fluidity, not even hesitating for a moment to duck and weave among the rest of them to get to where she was going. She didn't resist the tide, she allowed herself to be swept along by it, as though giving no thought to the others around her, and by the time she disappeared from sight again, he was left feeling like he'd just watched a ghost pass through a wall to reappear on the other side.

Smiling to himself at the thought of how his brother would have reacted to hear him talk about things like walking in such an abstract way, he made his way without incident back to the classroom he'd been assigned, and spent the rest of the day soaking up everything he learned, while at the same time unable to shake the thought of the woman who moved so much like a ghost that she was at once completely visible, and somehow hidden at the same time.

That night, when he fell asleep, his thoughts swirled like fish through his mind, and wondered at the tenseness that had been in her arms, before his awareness slowly faded around the edges, and he fell into a deep sleep filled with images of flying in a Viper through a sea of clouds painted orange with the sun.

Finished at 4:22PM.