*****
They rotated through their classes. First was Mind, where today the aim was to move an object using only the energy of one’s mind. This everyone thought was ridiculous; nobody had ever known anyone who could do it. Not even the Councillor leading the lesson could do it, so it all seemed pretty pointless. Some girl in the back had a hysterical moment when she swore she’d managed to move the flower in front of her a little, but seeing as she couldn’t repeat the feat, everyone lost interest pretty quickly. Anita wasn’t a fan of the Mind Temple. Its gothic features made it oppressive, like the walls contained secrets and the doors might suddenly slam shut, locking you in, never to let you go.
They escaped the gloomy space and moved onto their next class, Spirit. Anita had always loved the Spirit Temple. It was so lofty and light, sunlight streaming in through enormous slit windows that extended up its clean lines to a spired point towering acres above. The flowers everywhere were free and wild and flitted about spontaneously in the light breeze that always seemed to play across the colossal open expanse of the Temple’s floor. Whereas the Mind Temple had a number of closed off, secluded areas, full of dark corners where it was easy to hide, conspire and observe, the Spirit Temple was one enormous open space, sectioned loosely into areas by the soaring columns that seemed too few and too high to effectively hold the walls in place. Obviously, Anita was most loyal to the Temple of the Body, but she had always felt an inexplicable pull towards the Spirit Temple.
The lesson focused on joint meditation, where two people sit opposite one another and meditate together, the two peoples’ energy working together to take them both to a shared mental space in one or the other’s mind. Here they have a shared experience that is invisible to the outside world. This again had seemed ridiculous until several months ago when Anita and Cleo had been paired. Whilst meditating, they had each been in a boat on the sea. Although they hadn’t seen one another there, through much in depth comparison, they’d found that the details of the boat, the weather, the sea, had all been identical, so they usually tried to be paired with each other to see if they could get any further. Today, however, Bas had jumped in before Cleo and Anita could pair up, so Anita spent a couple of very uncomfortable hours trying to ignore Bas’ soaring energy and closing herself off to anywhere he wanted to meditate to.
It wasn’t that there was anything wrong with Bas. He was gorgeous; tall, athletic frame, olive skin, classic good looks. He was a kind, loyal friend – Anita’s only real close friend apart from Cleo. He usually came second to Anita in Body challenges, not to mention that he was intelligent, in an academic sort of way, ran the energy Observatory, and came from a well-connected Council family. But Anita had just never seen Bas as anything other than a friend. She could see the girls all swoon when he walked by. Most of them would have swooned just because of his family connections, social climbing rife amongst Empire’s well to do. Mothers with nothing better to do spending their days plotting how to marry their daughters off in advantageous ways. In addition, Bas was handsome, clever and didn’t have a big head about his background, making him target number one. But his energy never shifted with any of their daughters like it did with her. Anita made it pretty obvious she didn’t see him that way, but he never quite seemed to take the hint.
Next up was Body class, where people were taught how to use their energy to influence the actions of their bodies. This afternoon was all about shooting, but seeing as Anita was a better shot than any of the Councillors, she was allowed to skip the lesson. In fact, she hardly ever went to Body lessons, unless something like yoga was being practised, and this was only because there was a cross over with the Spirit disciplines. She usually went for a run or a ride during this time, meeting up with Cleo and Bas afterwards to walk home, but today she decided to stay in the Spirit Temple to meditate; she hadn’t exactly had a productive session with Bas after all.