It had been a mad few months even before the incident that would come to define my life.
Moving from the Isles to Apox was always going to be an interesting experience. I never really left Abingdon Parish in my youth. My parents were very much the kind of people who never wanted to travel, whether as a family or separately, which meant that the furthest I ever went in my youth was a school trip to Montfort. I think that has very different effects on children. For my wee twin brother, Ally, it suited him and he very much stayed that way as an adult: he moved to Glenmount for work and that was very much far enough. For me, however, it drove me to want to see the whole damn world.
It was something I started to rail against even as a teenager. I threatened to go to university somewhere else entirely in the multiverse, which terrified my family to no end. The thought of me being miles and miles away from them was something that filled them with fear: to me it felt like freedom. The one that freaked them out the most was my promise-cum-threat that I would move to Mytanija for university.
In reality, I don’t think I ever really wanted to go far. I wanted to be close enough that I could see them, but far enough that I no longer felt constrained by my parents. I love them, but they were just very overbearing. I wanted to escape, even if it meant being separated from my brother. He was the person I was closest to in all of the multiverse, and I couldn’t imagine being separated from him for too long. I think Ally took it harder than me, he seemed pretty broken up about it all.
When I look back at it, I suppose I would have been too if I knew what was to come in the future…
It seemed to be a day like any other. I had woken up in my room, enjoying the sounds of a busy city outside. For many, a big city was not a calming thing to wake up to, but for me it was just so different from my boring youth that it was just comforting in some strange way.
I had classes to get to, so I hurried out of bed to quickly brush my teeth. I had an exam coming up in one of my civil engineering modules: something that was at least interesting, but also difficult. I didn’t want to miss another session of content that might be on the exam.
As I rushed out of my building towards the campus, I managed to type out a quick text to Ally. I was supposed to be having a video call with him in the evening: no matter how much of a social life I was developing in Apox, I would always have time for my brother.
Hey bro, looking forward to catching up tonight, speak to you soon!
I doubted he would forget about it, but it was always a good idea to make sure with Ally, he could be a bit all over the place at times.
The day was relatively normal, with a lot of lectures, note-taking, and coffee. By the end of it, I hadn’t heard back from Ally, so I tried to ring him.
It was just dial tone. That was strange.
I tried a couple more times, but clearly there was something going on with my signal, or his. I seemed to have a connection, and I managed to get on twii.tur to look up what might be going on. I assumed that I wasn’t the only person having this issue, and I was very much right.
It seemed like the Isles, as a whole, were impossible to contact. I was hoping that wouldn’t last, as I wanted to catch up with my brother for the first time in a while.
As it turned out, it would last a very long time indeed.
Cyan-and-Gold Squad to face Sargossa at Gardiner-Stewart Stadium, Abingdon:
C. Fraser/R. Findlay, L. Allen, F. Watson, C. Spijker/S. van Duuren/M. Henderson, T. Johnston, A. McGregor, W. Tuininga/T. Weiling
