Looking For Hope

Chapter 6: The Beginning of College Life

It had been a couple days since Moira received the news of college acceptance from Lee. She still felt over the moon and had to frequently do reality check to make sure she had not misunderstood the whole conversation. Her suitcase was now fully packed with her belongings, including a puppy plush toy from Neesa, a book on the chemistry of fruits from Uncle Martin, and new clothes from Aunt Zoe. In two weeks and a half, Moira would fly to Red Sycamore, which would take four days of flight to reach from White Banyan. Neesa had bought Moira a whole heap of snacks to take with her to the space ship, including dried mangoes and pineapples.

Now wide awake in her room and finding it difficult to sleep because she could not contain her excitement, Moira decided to finally read the syllabus for biochemistry classes that Lee would be teaching in collaboration with other professors. There were four classes that took Moira's attention: Environmental Health and Habitat Restoration, Elements of Healthy Habitats, The Curious Explorers Honors Course, and Introduction to Animal Biochemistry. 

Moira knew that she would probably be required to take all of those throughout the course of her undergraduate studies, but out of the four classes the honors course piqued her interest the most. Lee had written in the course description that the course would cover the sociocultural history of the infamous endangered hybrid species of Red Sycamore known as the Gaburs. Neesa already explained to Moira a while ago that the Gaburs were threatened due to their spectacularly low rate of reproduction, but the course syllabus offered more tidbits—the Gaburs, affectionately nicknamed winged elephant, only lived in an indigenous land called Golden Valley and the villagers, known as Little Trees tribe, once regarded the Gaburs as sacred animals that were also the pets of goddesses. 

In the past few decades, modernization in Golden Valley had a negative effects on the number of Little Trees people who still held on to their old beliefs, thus nowadays it would be almost impossible to find a Little Tree who worshipped the Gaburs. The indigenous land was now also open to tourism and patches of forests had been cleared to create campgrounds, forcing the Gaburs to retreat deeper into areas that were still pristine. There had been some efforts to save the Gaburs, such as by establishing conservation sites, but for the most part the Little Trees were lackluster about the welfare of the Gaburs and only saw them as drivers of the tourism industry. 

To make matters worse, the land on which the Little Trees lived was known to produce Pronas and Quenax, two rare gemstones that could be sold at a high price to manufacturers of spaceships batteries. Predictably, this would attract mining companies but so far no company had actually been built although there were rumors of an influential entrepreneur called Deandra Milton who was allegedly the most likely to bid the highest price for the rights to build one. Moira's blood boil, she hated people who only thought about money and nothing else.

The teenage girl's phone vibrated and there were several text messages. Moira opened the one from Kenta first, wondering if he was in the mood to geek out some more about his now completed dissertation. She had not properly congratulated him on attaining his doctorate degree yet, so she was happy that Kenta reached out to her when she could not fall asleep.

Hey, I was planning to wait until you set foot in Blue Orchid to tell you this but then I thought to hell with waiting, the excitement is too strong not to share right away. Moira, it looks like I will have a permanent post in my alma mater! They have hired me to work at the Writing Center as a writing assistant. Great, isn't it? If you ever need an editor for your essays, come see me. I will try not to give you a preferential treatment but I know you will be among my favorite students.

Moira texted back: Congratulations! Yes, I will pay you a visit. You seem to love Blue Orchid so much and that love is infectious. I am glad you are not going anywhere.