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     Matthews looked around him at the distant view of the town below the airship, taking in the monotonous rusty, wet colours of the uneven buildings. Dull, yellow square lights decorated some of the constructions and dark waves of smoke leaked up the chimney of houses and bakeries, the foam reaching to tangle with the clouds around the airship.

     He then glanced at the newly made friend, William, sitting next to him on the roof of the ship's huge balloon, watching as the scarf wrapped around his delicate neck waved in the powerful wind. The accessory was striped with two shades of dark grey, much like Matthews's large shirt.

     It was a rule that all of the kids living in the Airship Orphanage wore one grey striped item each, it was like an ID card of sorts, and therefore no kid could wear the same item as another. It personalized them.

     Matthews had only been in the airship for a few days now, so he was still confused as to why he had been brought up there after his parents didn't return home. Sure, one of the two headmasters had explained him, but he didn't pay attention throughout the entire hour of conversation.

     "William, why are we up here again?"

     His young friend let his eyes absorb another definition in the dictionary he was holding, and then gingerly traced a finger along the bookmark and set it between the pages, closing the document.

     "Remember the gentlemen that showed up at your door and took you to an institution in which they offered you an intelligence test?" he spoke, his child voice standing in contrast with his fluent vocabulary. After waiting for Matthews to nod, he continued.

     "That is called an IQ test. They offer those to each child that remains without parents. If you were to have the average intelligence, you would have went at an orphanage down there." he pointed to the distant view. "But since you proved to be clever enough, you have been brought up here on this airship, where every 'genius' child is kept. The goverm- government wants to keep us up here so that we won't be stupefied by the average, and so that we receive special education in order to help in scien- sci- scientific studies when we grow up."

     William squinted at the words he had yet to master, and opened the dictionary once again to glare upon them. Matthews looked down at him and pondered the information. "But I do have parents."

     Will shook his head, attention still on the book. "No, you wouldn't have been here if you had. They don't tell us what happened to our mothers and fathers, but I suspect they died." he shrugged, flipping the page.

     Matthews nodded, and continued looking around. He hadn't had that much of a bond between himself and his parents anyway, they were the rich couple with a trophy child sort of family. Besides, he liked it here better. There were kids all around him and he managed to make a friend.

     Other than that, he loved the airship. It was like an endless realm of adventures for a kid like Matthews. The dominating colours of the many secret places he'd find were grey-brown, dark maroon and rusty yellow, like the inside of a big, old clock. Still, the main areas involving the hallways, study rooms, dinning rooms and bedrooms were fancily designed like the inside of a hotel.

     "I think I'm going to go explore." Matt stated after a few more minutes as he eyed the trap door they got there through.

     William nodded and reached slender fingers to tighten the scarf around his neck with a shudder.

     "Why do you keep coming up here anyway? It's cold and windy." Matthews spoke, taking off his black coat to put it around the smaller kid's shoulders. William didn't respond, instead raising his thumb to suck on it as he frowned at the pages.

     Matthews offered the slightest of smiles at his friend's habit and went on his fours towards the trap door, opening it and going down the ladder until he reached the small metal platform and then went to the old elevator. He entered the cabin and closed the creaky doors, then pulled the lever and waited for the mechanisms to function.

     It slowly lowered to the second deck and he exited, running on the long, narrow platform towards a door at the end of it. To his left there was darkness and different metal paths leading to foreign mechanisms, but he ignored them and opened the door, not wanting to get lost.

     The scenery drastically changed as he entered the cozy atmosphere of a hallway.  The dark parquet creaked slightly under his steps as he walked along it curiously, fingers brushing the pale brown wooden panels on the dirty-yellow walls.

     Darting a look at the doors around, he noticed plaques saying 'Music Room', 'Psychology', 'Literature', 'Foreign Languages' and such, and deduced he was at the educational floor. He didn't really manage to remember each floor according to its rooms yet.

     As he passed by a door next to which a plaque said 'Library', he could hear curious sounds emanating from inside, so he stopped, the leg he had in midair dangling before going backwards to step in front of the door.

     He opened it silently and entered, looking around in awe at the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, feeling as if he was inside a labyrinth.

     Matthews tentatively walked around, steps muffled by the soft carpeted floor, ears perked to catch the notes. After walking down an alleyway of bookshelves and reaching its end, rounding the corner, the sound became clearer than ever.

     And there sat a boy.

     The chair underneath him was tall and cushioned, its wooden legs long and voluminous, leaving the child's dangling above the maroon carpet.

     The boy's hair was as black as Matthew's, if darker, and his skin was smooth and pale. What stood out most about him were his eyes, wide and a watery turquoise, his irises almost shining in comparison to the lifeless, dark colours all around the place.

     He was holding a violin, but in the position of a guitar, the top of his fingers approaching purple as he held them pressed against the instrument's strings.

     His outfit was rather intriguing. He was wearing a long, black sleeveless hoodie that stood loose on his scrawny frame. The grey striped item he was wearing were his stockings, hugging his slim legs from his thighs to his toes, which were exposed since he wasn't wearing shoes. In order to stop the stockings from falling, he had two thin leather straps with clamps hanging them to whatever he was wearing underneath the hoodie.

     The look was rather naughty for a kid, but the other children were too innocent to realize that and the tailor was one weird woman.

     Squinting his eyes, Matthews searched the stockings for a name, aware that everyone had to write it on their striped items. On one of the lighter grey stripes, around his calf, he noticed a neat handwriting, which said 'Veronique'.

     The boy also searched his striped shirt for a name but frowned, tilting his head at a uncomfortable angle since Matthews had wrote his name upside down, having done it while wearing the shirt. To top it off, he doodled it in big, sharp letters, unaware it was so important.

     "Smehllow?" the child asked tentatively, moving his head back in place and looking at Matt questioningly from above his dark circles.

     "Matthews." he corrected, patting his v-neck shirt absent-mindedly and then pulling his black shorts further up his waist. "Why do you have a violin and why are you holding it like a guitar?"

     The boy in question bit his lip guiltily and his toes rubbed against another. "I sneaked in the music room to search for a guitar, since that I know how to play, but couldn't reach high enough for that. So I decided to try on the violin." he shrugged, rubbing at his fluffy hair, and then moved his bright eyes on Matt with a pleading look.

     "Please don't tell on me..."

     Matthews crossed his arms, approaching the smaller child slowly, his thin shirt waving gracefully with each step. "One condition." he decided, picking up the violin stick and running a finger along it.

     The boy looked at him hopefully, gripping the instrument to himself.

     "I'm tall enough to reach for the guitar. We go take it and then return here; you teach me how to play that, and I teach you to play the violin. Deal?"

     The black-haired child's eyes widened even more, along with his lips which offered a toothy grin. He extended a slender hand, which Matthews shook gingerly, afraid he might break the fragile fingers.

     "Deal!"

There will be a few chaps with them as kids, but I assure you they'll be interesting... Sorry if you dislike this sort of books but it will have been worth it :)

Do you like cover? :D Did it mahself~! 

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