Quote:It was a gorgeous summer day, and the beaches were almost overflowing. Though Rose was flying miles above everybody else, she felt the same joy they did. The sun was at her back, and a half-melted ice lolly was in her mouth. Taking the last bite with a gleeful grin, she tossed the stick behind her and turned to look down at the sea. Its rich, salty smell was almost an invitation. With a sonic boom in her wake, the girl rocketed towards it, arms outstretched.

BANG!

Rose sat bolt upright in her chair, almost toppling over backwards. “Iwasjustrestingmy-”

“Eyes,” finished Arlutheus, the one who had slammed the book in her face. “Rose, I’ve told you before, you must not neglect your-”

“Studies.” The girl rolled her eyes, hands folded behind her head. “Why?”

Arlutheus puffed himself up, long eyebrows quivering in indignation. Rose might have been afraid if he had been taller than three feet; as it stood, she merely laughed.

“Why?! Because you have to learn, you have to grow, you have to know!”

Expressionessly, the girl repeated: “Why?”

“What do you mean, why!?”

Rose sighed, as a teacher might when explaining something to one of their slower students. “We’re in a pocket dimension, sealed off from the real world. Knowing stuff is pointless. Nothing ever happens here. You Illumins just watch what goes on outside, and talk about it. You debate and you reason, but you never actually do anything.”

The scholar twirled his moustache thoughtfully, closing his eyes in careful consideration. “Perhaps from the point of view of some, but is the pursuit of knowledge not an action? Is it stagnation to develop one’s understanding of the world? It could be argued that to act without knowing the full consequences of those actions is not to act at all; it is simply reacting to outside stimuli, figurative flailing in the sea of time.” He opened his eyes. “Rose? ROSE!”

Rose snickered, one foot on the windowsill. “You’re so predictable. After all those years of studying, you still haven’t learned the difference between a debate and a distraction. Seeya!” And with that, she hopped down.

Arlutheus tugged on his moustache, the hours of time spent curling it forgotten in rage. “THAT … GIRRRRL!”

* * * * *

Rose sighed, looking up at the sky. No sun here, not even a moon – just twilight, now and forever. And without the sea to make it a beach, it didn’t matter that the whole dimension was covered in sand. No people either, unless you counted the Illumins. Some of them weren’t so bad, but it was hard to find things in common when even the youngest among them were a thousand years her senior. Rose longed for someone her age … or even just someone her species, though she couldn’t strictly call herself human.

“Rose! There you are!”

The girl turned to see Arlutheus, accompanied by two of the younger scholars. Her shoulders sagged. “What?”

“What do you mean, ‘what’? Your mother entrusted us with you, and we intend to make sure you get a proper education.”

Rose cocked her head. “Yeah? Well momma ain’t here now. Frig off.”

The three Illumins gave a collective roar of outrage. Arlutheus took a step forward and bellowed. “How dare you speak to your elders like that! If you won’t come back to the classroom nicely, we shall bring you! Jilithaos, Nalmathius, if you please!”

The girl rolled her eyes. “Oh come on.” Her eyes turned to the Knowledgarium, the gigantic building which served as the epicenter of everything in the dimension Illumis, and reached her arm out towards the roof. With no warning, her hand shot out of her sleeve like a bullet – attached to her shoulder, it seemed, by a flesh-coloured bungee cord – and grabbed onto the building’s tallest spire. She grinned momentarily, and then the rest of her body catapulted upwards to rejoin her hand; the flailing arms of the scholars just a second behind her.

“Rose!” barked Arlutheus. “You come down here right now or … or …”

“Ooooorrr?” queried the girl in a singsong voice.

“… You’ll find out!”

Rose gave a patronizing smile. “No I won’t.”

One of the younger Illumins put his wrinkled palm on Arlutheus’s shoulder. “If she doesn’t want to learn, just leave her. There’s no point chasing her around the dimension.”

Arlutheus sighed. “You’re right. Let’s go.”

And with that, Rose was left alone. For a while she simply hung from the spire by her elongated arm, swinging gently back and forth. Then, with a yawn, she lowered herself onto a flat ledge and stretched out. Perhaps I can pick up where I left off before, she thought to herself. Before long, her snores filled the otherwise still air of the Illumis dimension.