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Theodora's house is gone, due to rampaging space iguanas and a swarm of mosquitos. |
| [Introduction]
Theodora gets frustrated at school, since she has other things on her mind. Like a long-standing feud between space iguanas and a super-intelligent swarm of mosquitos, the latest battle of which completely destroyed her house. Fortunately it also opened up a portal elsewhere, so with the help of the mosquitos she just might escape the wrath of the space iguanas. (This whole thing is really just an excuse to write 'space iguanas') |
| “Teddy, Teddy,” the teacher said patronizingly. -Theodora-, the girl thought, and you have no right to call me anything else. “Your grades need improvement, and you see, we can’t just let you skip out of classes.” Theodora gazed out the window. By focusing her eyes on a distant scrap of cloud, she could ignore the head of the teacher, whose hair was dyed and gelled into a shape resembling a sea urchin. She sighed. The classes taught her nothing new, and locked her away inside, forced her towards inaction. She didn’t have the time for this! She couldn’t tell anyone, however, because there was no one to tell. This particular teacher was certainly not an option. Theodora didn’t dare talk to anyone she knew to have such an exaggerated ego. “Don’t you like writing?” The teacher was now going to try and persuade her that classes were fun, and good, and she should stop being a teenage rebel, because it would only hurt her in the end. “Don’t you? Don’t you like reading and writing? Your test scores are very good. With practice you could…why, you could write for the school paper!” “I’ll think about it,” Theodora said. She pulled her face into a smile, genuine, just the way they liked ‘em. “Thank you very much.” Before the teacher could think of any new arguments to foster the love or learning (murder it, rather, Theodora thought to herself) she walked out of the room. Thanks to the ‘little chat’, she had missed the bus, not that it mattered. There wasn’t a house anymore at the end of the wooded drive, where she got dropped off. It was important to keep up appearances, though. She left the school and went to the 'woods'. There weren’t actually any woods near the school; there was nothing that had escaped the force of the landscapers for miles around. Nothing except for two trees, huge old oaks, that had been left next to the school, surrounded by broken glass and detritus of humans. Theodora set her backpack on the ground and leaned against the treetrunk. She saw only the irrefutable existence of a parking lot and the glare of the setting sun. It did not reassure her. The iguanas crawling over the wreckage--what was left of her house--had destroyed any faith she had in the world being normal. If it hadn't, that hurried trip through the Swarm's temporary holes in space would have. Something buzzed past her ear and she shook her head irritably. In doing so, she glanced toward the parking lot again, and caught a glimpse of a leathery tail whisking away behind a car. "Not this again," she muttered. She was only half surprised when a grey mist of tiny flying insects burst away from the oaks' branches. One group detached and flew away to the parking lot, while the rest hovered around her, pushing her between the trees (a thousand mosquitos have a fair amount of heft). She wondered briefly if she would just end up standing on the other side of two decrepit old trees, with the asphalt still hot from the day and with nowhere to go. And probably the bugs would disappear, and everything would be like it was before. She stepped out from between the oaks into a forest that had never heard of asphalt. |
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