Forgetfulness

For the prompt “How could you forget THAT?” Fanfiction of Addergoole Year 9.

Zita was a student at a boarding school known as Addergoole. She was in her fourth year, a few months from graduating, and was endlessly surprised and impressed with the school’s ability to throw fresh challenges in her face, where they proceeded to try to claw her eyeballs out and turn her tongue into a new and delicious form of popsicle.

Today, Zita was wearing one of her favorite outfits, a short white skirt and white blouse with a matching white ribbon choker and tiny white hat that took nursing past the practical and into the risque. It made her bosses at the school nursing station make old fashioned sounds, but Zita knew for a fact that both of the women in charge of her supervised last year of earning her nursing certification in her spare time would be busy with patients and then busy eating and sleeping and having some semblance of time off to recharge. It was a hectic time.

Right at the moment, the challenge facing Zita was her English homework. Despite batting considerable eyelashes at the English professor, she still had an essay due Tuesday. Or was it Wednesday? She was pretty sure she had it written down in a day planner that she realized, running a hand over her face, she had left at home. Zita sighed, and plowed on with her notes.

A sound in the doorway made her look up. Zita blinked. Leofric, Leo, her best friend and the center of her life, was standing in the doorway covered in blood. That was not, in itself, unusual. Leo liked to fight, and blood was easily replacable. Leo’s shirt was missing a sleeve. Also not particularly unusual.

Zita stood up.

Leo’s arm was missing from inside the sleeve. Zita’s teeth clenched.

“Leo, you lost your arm. How could you forget that?”