I walked along the hall as Headmaster said to go, from the circular foyer I went straight, the hall was wide and open with big windows to my left and there were office doors to the right with name plates on them marking what they were, but the wall was that rich, deep mahogany paneling with the ornate detailing from hip down, the walls for the most part just featureless sleek wood adorned with all sorts of art work.
I did pause at one spot though: it was this massive section of open wall before that next foyer: there were small plagues with years and a photo above, the big panel along the ceiling said it the Wall of Honor. A smaller side plague said that it was pictures of all of the valedictorians of the graduating years. The oldest photos black and white with plagues with slight spots of age along the edges with patina tinted bronze, the styling was the same for the plagues and frames, but the photos greatly changed. What caught my eye though was a photo, not eye level with the most recent photos, but a level up and far to the side…because it was a familiar figure in it…it was a photo of my mother.
Dressed in full black cap and gown, a small stole around her shoulders of a rich metallic copper, there were all sorts of colors across the photos: pale yellows, white, drab taupe, lilac, copper, pale blue, oranges, browns, russets, crimson, purple, lemon yellow, green, pink, apricot, silver gray, olive green, dark blue, sage green, peacock blue, salmon pink, golden yellows, citron oranges, scarlet red and pale ashen gray among dozens of other shades…but it was without a doubt, my mother: the same deeply tanned skin with long wavy black hair and like in that dream, her eyes weren’t the deep warm brown I was used to, but a rich scarlet burning red, covered in golden jewelry, a big warm smile with a bhindi on her forehead as I always saw her wearing. The plague above the year had Padma Suthar.
I smiled softly as I reached out and rested my hand over the plaque, “I’ll make you proud, Mom” I whispered before I started walking again.
The hall soon opened into a matching massive trapezoid shaped foyer, I’m guessing this was the bottom part of the T shaped building, it was a trapezoid shape with the wider end merged into the horizontal side of the building, the narrower end merging into a slight hall where a very large set of doors was. It was the same marble, glass and dark wood, a much larger form of the same mosaic across the center of the room, a larger chandelier in the same dark green glass roof, much more angular staircases going up through the floors, it seemed even higher than the circular area, maybe upwards of a dozen floors up. I breathed deeply as I turned to the right and walked for the doors, the room was less of a singular trapezoid and more like two with the wider end of the first one being the side of the smaller end of the second because the angled walls of the smaller trapezoid were there two massive windows of the same turquoise colored metal, thickly paned in glass with ornate framing with pulled back white sheer diaphanous drapes that were held back in gold shell shaped hooks, framed by sconces with green glass shades, the entire short wall a pair of doors nearly the entire size of the wall: twice as wide as a regular double doorway, but more than twice the height made of dark wood brushed with bronze and massive bronze handles, the entire middle of the doors occupied by thick glass stained ornate with deep green vines across them. I breathed deeply as I walked towards the doors which were propped open fully, letting the soft breeze filter into the building, there were signs on the doors marking first years to go a certain direction. I walked through the doorway before walking off to the right as the arrows pointed and Headmaster told me to go. The pathway was wide and marked with much more widely spaced stalls of the various clubs and groups, the ones at the front seemed far more notable or had just gotten there first, but the ones here were either larger or the stragglers because of how they were at the end of the route to the auditorium.
The auditorium was not the building the map marked as theatre, I had been able to see a glimpse of that from the gate, this building was octagonal with a purple toned roof and nearly at the far left end of the T shaped building. Maybe upwards of four stories of white stone, fluted pillars with stark white filigree along the base and top swirling up along them, massive windows along the walls, a huge fresco above the front projection, wide stairs with winding ramps leading to the front landing, the fresco depicted all sorts of various mythical creatures brushed with gold or silver. Just past the wall of pillars along the landing of polished gray stone were three evenly spaced chandeliers in the high ceiling above me and two overly tall double-doorways along the wall, the middle occupied by various posters and a projection of the ticket booth. The doors were open with signs outside marking first years to go inside. There were sporadic spots of people filtering into the building as I felt myself twisting my sleeves around my hands and fiddling with my fingers as I tried to find the resolve to go into the building and to be able to stand about a massive crowd that I could only assume was inside based on the massive volume of students there is here based on what I’ve been seeing around, there are upwards of two thousand people in every year and it’s a five year program, this entire school was just smaller than my entire hometown. My high school was probably a hundred people max across all four years, each group of entering first years for each house is probably more than that…this place was impossibly big compared…I’m going to get eaten alive inside there.
“Well…here we go” I whispered as I walked into the building.
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