Roko’ana Secondary School, Fisse, Central Governorate
12:02 PM
The day was sunny, with white fluffy clouds rolling lazily through the tropical sky, promising isolated showers. In the city of Fisse, the school bells at Roko’ana Secondary School rang out, signaling the beginning of lunch recess. Kids burst through the doors and into the schoolyard to begin playing in the pleasant sun, and staff watched on to make sure no incidents occurred. On the far side of the yard there was a field with Soccer goals, and a group of kids began to put together a game.
“You’re going down!” One of the kids said playfully to the other team.
“Yeah right, we’re the better team!” Another responds with a lash of their tail.
One of them threw the ball into the air and the game began. Goals were scored, and everyone was having good fun. A couple yard duties came over to act as referees. Towards the end of recess, one of the kids, Whetū, kicks the ball particularly hard, trying to score a last-minute goal. He overshot the goal by a good bit, and the ball soars to the edge of the yard, by an old smoothpalm. Whetū sighs, and begins jogging over to retrieve the ball, the other students making lighthearted fun of his miss. As he’s going, the bell rings, and everyone begins making their way back inside. Whetū makes it to the old tree and leans over to pick up the ball. As he reaches down he sees a purple eye staring up at him from the shadow of the tree and he screams in surprise and fear and falls back onto the grass. But just as quickly as he noticed it, it was gone. He rubs his eyes, trying to determine if he actually saw something. He sits back up and leans to grab the ball, this time he sees a hole in the ground by the tree, it blends in with the shadow. It was about a meter in diameter.
The yard duties by the field, having heard Whetū’s scream, had now made it over, thinking he had found a snake or something, but were more surprised to see a hole in the ground. They tell Whetū to get away from it so he doesn’t fall in. “I saw a purple eye…” Whetū begins, but when he looks up at the yard duties, they look unamused. Not wanting to sound crazy, Whetū backtracks. “Nevermind, it’s gone now. Probably a bird or something.” The yard duties look at each other, ears twitching in perplexion. Once he started walking away back to class, the yard duties radioed the principal, and the principal called the local police station.
12:45 PM
After a short wait, the yard duties, the principal, and a couple other staff saw the police car pull up to where they were. The officer gets out, dressed in a light blue uniform and a high visibility vest. He approaches the principal and asks what the problem is. The principal points to the hole by the tree. “It looks like there’s a hole here. We don’t know where it came from, and a kids almost fell into it today.”
The officer looks at it. “It looks like a sinkhole,” The officer says casually. “Probably caused by some underground water movement that eroded the dirt underneath.”
The principal nods. “That’s what I thought, but the kid…” The principal looks at the yard duties, as if just as confused and hesitant as they were. “He said he saw something, what was it again?” The principal turns to ask the yard duties.
“He said he saw a purple eye,” one of them responds. “He said it was probably a bird, but he seemed pretty spooked.” They continue. “You don’t think it's…”
The officer’s tail halts mid-sway, but only briefly, undetected. Everyone stands in silence for a few heartbeats before the officer speaks up. No no, of course not. This city is protected by the Trilects themselves, nothing like that could get here.” The principal and yard duties nod, finding his answer satisfactory. This city was, in the magical sense, a fortress. “Yeah, it was probably a bird.” He lied. “Kids these days, always overreacting.” He looks back to the hole. “And about that hole, I’ll get a crew out here first thing tomorrow to fill it up so the kids’ll be safe.” The principal nodded once more. “Have a nice day,” he tells them before turning and walking to his car. Once inside, he begins to drive, but not back to the station. To the city hall. He needed to talk with the mayor, or the city council, anyone.
The Evil Eye was strong again.
