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Amalia woke up to the distant sound of someone calling her name. She reached up and rubbed her eyes with both hands.
"Mmmmh... what is it...?"
The voice from the other side of her door responded quickly.
"You're going to be late to class if you don't get up soon!"
She took her phone from her nightstand and looked at the time. Yeah, she had slept through her alarm again. She sat up, yawning loudly.
"Sorry, mom... I'll be out in a sec!"
Amalia got up from her bed and opened her curtains, letting the sunlight come in. She blinked and covered her eyes. That was way more light than she was expecting.
After partially closing her curtains again, she walked over to her closet, took out the same hoodie and pants that she wore every day, and quickly got changed. She took a quick glance at her schedule for the day, hanging on the wall.
Today was Wednesday. That meant... yeah, no history class. Plus math was the first class of the day.
Yeah, it was gonna be a long day.
---
Drawing was all that got Amalia through long school days. It didn't really matter what, it just helped her not fall asleep in class.
"Amalia?"
She liked to let her imagination wander, and her hands seemed to take care of the rest. Sometimes it was an animal with something weird about it, like a part from another animal. Other times it was a landscape she had never seen before. Most of the time, though, it was abstract symbols and shapes, with no meaning.
"Amalia!"
She suddenly snapped back to reality.
"Oh! Uh, wha...?"
"I assume this means you don't know the answer?"
The teacher looked at her sternly. How many times did he have to do this before he realized that she just didn't CARE, and that asking her questions wasn't going to make her care more? It was like he actually enjoyed torturing her personally.
"Um, no. S-sorry..."
With a sigh, the teacher pointed at a different student who had their hand raised. Amalia glanced at the clock on the wall, and her heart sank when she realized she wasn't even halfway through the class.
Before she could lose herself in her doodles again, the boy sitting next to her whispered something.
"Hey, you drawing again? Can I see?"
She turned her head and smiled. Jake was looking at her expectantly. He was one of the few reasons she could bear coming to school.
"It's not really anything though. Just some random sketch."
"You always say that! I still wanna see it though."
She looked around, to make sure the teacher was distracted, and slipped the notebook page she was drawing on over to Jake.
"Ooooh... It's a rabbit with... wings?"
"Uh, y-yeah. I did say it was just some random thing..."
"Hey, I think it's cool! It's-"
The teacher's voice boomed from the front of the classroom again.
"Jake, Amalia, am I interrupting something important?"
They both stood up and quickly shook their heads. With a disappointed sigh, the teacher turned around and kept writing on the board.
Jake gestured to Amalia by rolling his hands, signing "later". She nodded in response.
---
During the break, they sat at a bench together. Amalia pulled up her backpack, opened it up and took out a large, disorganized-looking binder full of drawings and sketches.
"You've been busy, huh?", Jake said, looking down at it.
"I guess. It's not like I have anything better to do, like... ever."
She pulled out a few of her drawings and handed them to Jake one by one. He flipped through them slowly, with an impressed look on his face.
"Wow..." There were many, many drawings of fantastical creatures and foreign looking places. There was never much detail to them, hastily scribbled onto any available space on the page. "Has anyone told you that you're really, really good at this?"
"Heh. I know you're just being nice cause you're my friend, but thanks anyways."
"No, I'm serious! This is better than what most adults draw."
Amalia tilted her head. "Okay, now you're just messing with me."
"No! Well, okay, I don't mean like, technically, like it doesn't have the same abstract quality and use of shapes and whatever else they come up with, but like. Their paintings don't really do anything, yknow? But I look at yours and go 'Wow. This rules. This could be part of a book or a comic or something'."
She looked away, chuckling to herself. "Right. Well, uh, thanks?"
Jake handed the drawings back to Amalia. "You ever think about that? Writing a book or whatever?"
"Hahah, not really. I wouldn't even know where to start. I mean, I can't even finish drawings. Look, none of these are colored or shaded." She held her binder up and flipped through it.
"Hey, that one there has color!"
"Oh!" Amalia hastily closed her binder. "That, um."
"What was that one? I didn't get to see it."
"Th-that one's private. Sorry."
"Aw, man. Well, if you really don't want to show it, I won't push you for it." Jake leaned back on the bench, with his hands behind his head.
While putting her binder back into her backpack, Amalia took a quick look at the colored drawing. It was a portrait of a girl, about her age, with bright pink hair.
---
After many more hours than it seemed possible for any human to stay awake, school had finally ended. Amalia distractedly walked home, quietly humming along to the music playing in her earphones, probably louder than it should be, in an attempt to drown out all the street noise.
Suddenly, she stopped in her tracks. The path that she normally took to get back home was cut off by several fences. Judging by all the construction workers standing on the other side of them, she'd have to take a different route.
Grumbling to herself, she pulled up her phone, stopped the music and opened a map. She put in her home address, let the device give her a new route, and started following it, checking the screen every minute or so to make sure she was still on the right path.
Except... something caught her eye on the map.
'Oneiros'.
Amalia looked around. She hadn't been to this street before, or if she had, she couldn't remember. Across the street from her was what looked like a warehouse of some sort. Two large pillars stood by the sides of the heavy door, which had a "For Rent" sign on it. Above it was the sign: Oneiros.
Oneiros... Why did that sound familiar?
She sat down on a nearby step and took out her binder from her backpack. She flipped through her drawings before stopping at one. A sketch of a temple, just outside of a forest. Not very detailed, but the two pillars besides the entrance were unmistakeable.
It made her think of the words 'temple of Oneiros'.
Why did she think that?