Dawn Breaks by Jo Cook

Author:Jo Cook
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Jo Cook
Published: 2021-09-01T16:00:00+00:00

Lying wrapped in blankets beside the adult Aurora, Martin was also remembering.

When he joined the Guards at age eighteen, Aurora was eight years old, and at first she’d been nothing more to him than the nuisance who wreaked havoc in the training yard at least once a week, but still managed to have every Guard in the place wrapped around her finger. No matter how exasperating she was, all she had to do was give them her huge grin, or pin those green cat’s eyes on them, and they melted. Martin watched in amusement for his first week as she got the other Guards to do whatever she wanted. He’d taken Miss Aurora’s measure the moment he saw her, and he let her know right off the bat that she couldn’t tame him like the others.

That set off a silent, but vigorous, contest of wills. Aurora tried to charm him, and Martin ignored her completely. That eventually ticked her off enough that she went in the complete opposite direction, and tried to make his life miserable. Replacing the cookies his aunt sent him from home with ones she’d made herself from sand and glue, stealing his bootlaces so the other Guards laughed at him when he tried to run in shoes that were flopping off his feet with every step, stealing his toothbrush and replacing it back in his drawer covered in very suspicious brown stuff... Miss Aurora had tried it all.

Far from being displeased, Martin admired her ingenuity. When she finally pushed him too far one day, he gleefully jumped into the fray and began playing his own tricks. He counted it a good day if he made little Miss Aurora scream at him in frustration.

As he settled into life with the Guards, Martin found he could excel in this job. It was what he was born for. But fulfilling his destiny to become the best Guard in the company came with an unexpected price. He won more responsibility as he moved up through the ranks, but the other Guards wouldn’t take him seriously when they needed to if he were always joking around with them, so he had to become more serious... but being serious was stressful.

Miss Aurora became a kind of lifeline for him. With her, he could be exactly the person he really was. He teased and played pranks on her, and said every ridiculous thing he could think of to make her laugh. He pulled her braid and threatened to cut it off. When she made faces at him, he said it was an improvement over her regular face.

The more Martin teased her, the more Miss Aurora was determined to add him to her string of admirers. Miss Aurora loved a challenge, and Martin was the first Guard who’d ever given her one, so when he pushed, she pushed harder. She spent hours plotting ways to annoy him, and their battles became daily ones, enjoyed by everyone to the extent that the Guards started placing bets on who would win on a given day, Miss Aurora or Martin.

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