A Whateley Academy Tale

To Seal Our Happiness

Parents' Day 2007

by

E. E. Nalley

So go ahead and ask her
For happy ever after
'Cause nobody knows what's coming
So why not take a chance on loving?
Chris Rice, Lemonade

Prologue

October 26th, 2007
The Nalley Residence, 2170 Kellogg Creek Rd, Kennesaw, GA

“Hurry, baby, you know how bad the traffic is on a Friday!”

Gene Nalley grunted an answer to his wife as he rummaged through his side of the closet for his go bag. The old and well-worn flyer's kit bag his father had used in Vietnam, his 'AWOL' bag as he referred to it, as it was just the right size for everything one would need for an overnight or even weekend get away; with or without leave as the saying went. Several bad experiences had taught him to always take a carry on bag with all of his toiletries and several changes of clothes when traveling and the AWOL bag was just the right size for it. His wife had reorganized the closet, again, it wasn't where he'd left it. He pushed his small collection of suits out of the way and he found it stuffed into a back corner, covering his favorite pair of work boots that had also gone missing a couple of months ago.

Muttering about how it was better to have a wife who cleaned too much rather than too little, he pulled the bag out and with it came an envelope that had been in the boot. Frowning, he reached down and picked it up, finding Daddy, written on it in his daughters pinched, precise handwriting. It was not sealed, and inside was a slip of folded paper he removed and opened, finding it dated August, 24th, the day Elaine had left to go back to school.

A Whateley Academy Tale

Amongst the Shadows

by

E. E. Nalley

You took your time with the call
I took no time with the fall
You gave me nothing at all
But still, you're in my way

I beg, and borrow and steal
At first sight and it's real
I didn't know I would feel it
But it's in my way

Carly Rae Jepsen, Call me, Maybe?

October 11th, 2007
Room 210, Poe Cottage

When Tansy woke up it was night and a look at her Rolex showed it was also after curfew. “Aw, shit,” she muttered and made to get up, but she was hopelessly entwined with Elaine in her bed and there was no way she would be able to rise without waking her. Tansy looked at the girl in her arms, from the soft Irish sun kissed face to the wayward strains of her crimson hair, Elaine looked like such an angel it made her heart melt.

Yes, Mustang opined in her mind. This is what love feels like.

“Tell me we can make this work, Mustang,” she whispered, one hand gently caressing her lover's cheek, feeling her mind so effortlessly it would have worried her if she didn't enjoy it so much. She saw Elaine's dream of a mid summer's picnic, a little gaggle of children playing, red head, brunette, blonde, without care of who was whose mother as she and Tansy lay against the man who had fathered them. “Tell me this dream is our future.”

I am not a prophet, the spirit replied in a lazy voice. But if I had any sway with the Creator I would use it to make it so.

A Whateley Academy Story

The Evil That Men Do

by E. E. Nalley and ElrodW

Part Five

When the cold of winter comes
Starless night will cover day
In the veiling of the sun
We will walk in bitter rain

But in dreams
I can hear your name
And in dreams
We will meet again

Howard Shore, The Breaking of the Fellowship

October 10th, 2007
The Nations Teepee, North of Holbrook Arena

"Wyatt?"

"Yeah?" The big Alaskan senior was a little groggy from cold and fatigue, and that concerned him. He shouldn't have felt this cold, not inside the tepee with the buffalo robes. This wasn't a natural snowstorm, he was starting to fear. The fire was out now, all the fuel consumed and when he had tried to go outside to gather more, over her protestations, the cold and the wind had bitten into him through muscle and bone down into his soul. He realized leaving the teepee would be a death sentence.

They were bundled as tightly as they could, with several furs underneath them, between them and the hard, cold floor. And with each passing moment it seemed the warmth trapped around them in the furs got a little less. "I'm ... I'm scared," Kayda admitted, her voice cracking.

"You're safe, Kayda," Wyatt reassured her, with a confidence he didn't feel. "I promise."

"I ... I d-d-don't want to f-f-freeze to d-d-death." Her shivering was getting more intense, and she shook as she sobbed.

Jayden 6

Dirty Business Done Cheap

A WhatIf story by Crazy Minh 

I smiled as I walked into my cottage, Biskit riding on my shoulder. It had been several weeks since the library incident, and things were going really, really well. I had just made a business transaction, destroyed a potential terror threat, and managed to get filthy rich all in the space of a single day. In retrospect, the detention I had just received from Carson was kinda a damper on my good mood. But, there was a story to all of the above things…

A Whateley Universe Story

Evil Genius

by Bek D Corbin

Part One

June 12^th 2016

The cargo VTOL circled the remote base three times before being given permission to land. This was expected and usual. When the VTOL landed, prisoners came out to help unload it. Again, this was expected and usual. But as the young men, little more than boys, in thick coats over red scrubs unloaded boxes, a woman in a stylish coat, wearing a chic hat and trim trousers alit from the VTOL. She wasn’t in a uniform or in chains or in any sort of strange life support system. She was expected, but quite unusual. She paused and looked around. As far as the eye could see, flat desolate tundra stretched with only a few patches of scrabbly green breaking up the taupe of the barren ground. It was just within the Arctic Circle, and at these latitudes, even at the height of Summer, it was in the mid-40s. In a couple of months, Winter would overrun Autumn, and the place would become the frigid icebox that the Lower 48 tends to think that the rest of Alaska is year-round. There was no sign of any road. To strike out into that tundra without a vehicle right now would be dangerous going on foolhardy; come winter it would be a death sentence. But despite that glaringly obvious fact, the base was surrounded by a double-fence with thick reinforced concrete pillars, and between the barbed wire-topped fences there was a five-foot wide empty area. Signs on the fence stated that the fences were electrified, and that the space between them was a minefield. A Sensor packet on a track moved across the space over the minefield. The only signs of anything to protect- or contain- were three large concrete discs set about a quarter mile apart, and a few squat poured concrete bunkers.