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Fifteen Years Later

Take a deep breath!

Take a breath so deep that it hurts your lungs enough to remind you that it's real.

The world I live in is real and so was I. So were we all. One hundred and sixty two of us all. And counting?

No.

What breed of an imbecile would wish to bring a child into a merciless atmosphere as such?

Exclude my dead parents and Mr. Birch and a couple more who must have lost their mind.

Take a deep breath so the lung is heavy. Do it until you can't take it anymore.

But deep breaths seldom calms my mind. It does the contrary to it. Romping with fanciful dreams of a civilization that had an ounce of civility. The kind of courtesy only seems to exist with monsters in silk and velvet. Civility- not humanity.

I know of them because I have read about them. In books and journals, in pictures and paintings, and from the tongue of who had lived there before the banishment. The one's who are alive to tell the tale.

Before they all fled into the corner of a kingdom that no one has ever outlived. A streak of ice and sky on map. They perhaps believe we died in the journey, it's said many certainly did. The story that took place twenty-two years ago is hazy and contaminated, but it's there.

The truth. We fled.

My parents did.

I was born here. In ruins of ice. In a land where no man should live. Where no one comes in or goes out.

We are hiding.

But I haven't seen anyone from across the land. None we need to hide from. How cruel are they that we are terrified so fresh even of year's that passed.

What is so inhumane about the people of Antar?

Weren't we among them once?

Sometimes we hear their names in rumors. The newly implemented policies and ever-changing generals. I curiously desire to know who fetches us the report. Do they patrol farther than the land I have walked. Do they do it often. Is there a way out.

Is there a way out?

Is there the kingdom that I have read in books? Where sun brings blush to cheeks and nights with gentle air. Fruits grows in house yards and flower blooms in windows shells.

Where a ruler looks after his subjects and leaves a part to rot when he can't seem to unearth the traitor.

At times I hear his name. I try to forget it the minute. Evade it in detailed nonchalance.

Irresponsible and erratic was it by my role to do so. Since I had been curiously soaking up all the information I could get my hands on since my childhood.

Antar-

A place so close yet so far. A realm I would do anything to get out of. Owing books and maps is a luxury that I have, the old man who I remember in my fogged memory is said to have owned a public library in the town of Helios, and thus it's books and a stray infant that he found on the path is all he bought.

Hence he died when I turned five. Volumes of books were not enough to keep him breathing from starvation and cold. He was there during my growth years- but not when I needed him the most.

He left me with books and died in the only pair of good clothes he had. So all I had, for now, was knowledge of both worlds that cannot fetch me a permanent roof.

Not in Isles of Ivyaki.

Whistle from the rusty kettle by the fire top drills into me, swaying me out of my thoughts. The wood floor creaks as kids rush around in frenzy. One of the youngest clings to my leg as I put the fire out, almost reaching for the steaming pot. I twist my ankle to get the little leech clinging on to me to flee. If I had a choice, I would fuse the boys to a chair and watch their horror as I lay down a lizard on their lap.

It's not much, but they do hate rats and lizards since they find it funny every time I Yelp when they stuff the dead ones from the ranch in my knapsack. I do it so they laugh, and I also pretend so they would feel accomplished and let me go on about my miserable life.

No.

Not miserable. Adventurous. I remind myself. But I do sense that I was indeed fooling my humble conscience similar in a behavior I did with these kids. But surviving each day in a ousted community wasn't any less than a perilous adventure.

My hand dash from left to right in a call, I approach the work in automation. When I shiver with cold I let baby Atticus hold me further. He probably needed the warmth more than me with his parents gone out to retrieve something that could put food on their plate tomorrow.

The sun was low, not asleep yet., But there was no rise in temperature. As winter approaches most hibernate inside the crumbling mound they call home.

"Is it me or does the cold seem to plague harsher the new winter?" I regard baby Atticus with hope, urge that he would speak back. But like his older sister who is nearing my age, he remained quiet. Looking up at me with his honey gold eyes as if I shared a magical secret with him. Which I unconsciously did,

They have it in them, the people who live across the walls and the forrest of the dead, they can do it. Freeze us to death or burn us to ashes. A shake of my head gives him the idea that I was done with my chores, his touch leaves me- it's cold again. But for an entirely different reason.

Wiping my arms in a ragged piece of jute cotton I step out, I see Castle, immediately I stir away to avoid a bristling conversation. Her claw-like clutch gets to me before I could escape. Her voice doesn't soar in silence, it never did. She can't speak. She can listen though.

"I can't take you with me" I sigh throwing a longing glance towards the door. But it wasn't just this door I plan on leaving out of. The withstanding hell of Helios residing here awaiting death is was I yearn to get out of. If it even ends in death itself- so be it. Then I recognize the lack of noise in the house, wondering I turn to her "Where are your broth-

'I send them out'

Her furious fingers sign, her chin juts out in stubbornness.

Great. A tantrum from a teen is what I was looking forward to this morning. Her bronze skin and Sandy brown hair glisten when she takes a step forward, the gold eyes Warn me while I got lost in her beautiful tragedy.

They say that the women of Helios were among the most divine poetry ever written. While the men entranced by the bewitching sensuality lost their fortune on them. I wonder how many suitors Castle would have had if it wasn't for the world collapsing around us. And freezing again in literal.

Her gaze pours into me. Soft and in distress now.

'Be a man and take me with you'

She signs again.

No.

I mouth.

Tears well up as she crushes my collar in a hostile grip. I close my eyes awaiting a punch. Slap if generous. They don't arrive, instead of the banter of trade between Mr and Mrs Birch and their footfalls crunching through the snow waves in. The room bathes in sunset yellow and the warning shrills red in me. The lock comes undone and I try to get her hands off me.

"Please Castle, I'll lose my job" I try. Not that it matters now. Grunting I tug her wrist. She further pulls me into a hug when I hear their gasp. It thunders on me, Mr. Birch, and his wrath.

"Get the bloody grave away from my daughter" I oblige, I shove her away as the mountainous man gets for me.

"Kind sir, it's nothing like what it looks like" angry I flare a glance at Castle as she cuddles up to her mother. A sly smile on her lips plays. The audacity of this girl.

"Don't" Mr Birch spits, breathing out I accept my fate "Don't you dare look at her" I open my mouth but a ringing slap on my cheeks cuts me off. Almost thrown out of balance I dig my teeth by my lower lip, drawing out thin line of blood.

I can't trust my voice now to defend my dignity.

"We trusted you boy" Mrs Birch salts it up. An aged version of her daughter but dirty in tactics equally, she doesn't back me up. I was quitting my job anyway today, she can easily find someone cheaper and more desperate for a pathetic employer.

One less mouth to feed as she would say.

"Is he the reason you refused to be wed to Orion?"

My head snaps to Castle as she steals her ashamed gaze away from me at her fathers question. He sure wasn't speaking of his forty-two-year-old medic friend was he?

"Sir, it's not my place to speak-but isn't he too old-

Rewarded with another slap I seal my lips to remain mute in a course that doesn't concern me. Castle hadn't been borderline nice to an errand boy like me. Living by the Isles of ivyaki had taught us many things but not compassion. In this frozen edge, survival strives higher than hope and life. Some who fled died in trials, if anyone ever made it- is not known. A strip of glass hung by the firebox reflects me, my messy blonde hair nests atop of my head, once white shirt had yellowed up, sizes mightier on my dissolving body. Smoke and soot dusts my face and coat, I felt a woolly bundle being shoved up my palms. I look down to see Atticus handing me out my cap.

Does he value my smile when I give it to him? I will never know. Baby Atticus doesn't smile back, he drinks in what we offer but doesn't return a favor. So selfish.

And yet so naive to wish for devotion.

The universe has birthed us to take and not give. So I let Mr Birch take it all from me.

My impending annual fee, the straw bag, my dinner, and the tiniest of faith I had in them. There is no faith in the land of froze, but needs.

There are three needs.

A set of requirements that could keep one alive. Food in stomach, mouldy tent, and warm clothes are the luxury these three needs entices us with.

One- They bear an ancestry. Belonging from an origin makes you the least skeptical one. These people have enough supply for oil and fire. They had smuggled what's left of their treasury into their palace of misery. Used them to keep the production up. Cartons of soil and seeds for indoor farming. They basically are running our lives by keeping us under their boots. They are the richest among us- with healthy water and spiced porridge steaming up their plates. Mr Birch has such leverage, it's not surprising that snobbery runs in his veins.

Two- They were among the educated ones. These comprise immensely of the group in their later forties and extend to an infinity of dying and already dead. They mince their knowledge of medicine and schooling to receive what they need for survival.

Three- it's very simple, really- it's nature that does it for you. For the third merit, you just have to be-

- a boy.

A gender that's immune to the impact of upheaval caused by a ridiculous myth. It's said they took our girls, leaving behind wailing mothers and helpless father. Where they are now, what have they done to them was a mystery. But to know that I am and we are here resisting what happens across the walls that reach the sheen of the sky makes me drag my behind to work each day.

Because I, Iris Lavera ticks none of the boxes of requirement. Without a heritage at disposal nor a skill that shapes life, and worse of that - a girl dressed in rags made for men, I am a target that walks on both legs.

My scalp prickles, the stuffed-up short dark hair beneath the lid of my dirty blonde wig sat too tight this morning. The sun seems to bid a lead gray sky behind as I drag my enormously draped body across the snow bed to somewhere I need to. I fall in compliments to my penguin walk and crawl a few distance.

My cheeks and nose go numb as I inhale the frost, I look towards the north through my snow weighed lashes- it doesn't seem to end.

The blanket of white.

The forgotten land of Iyaki. It motivates me to believe my acquired wit, there must exist someone who would help us. There has to.

I could've collapsed in glee when I saw a meager structure that stood proud in the baring wind, our home. When I reach his laundry shed I spot him.

"I can kill you with my bare hands now" I let my natural voice flow through, it doesn't rage with the brittle emotion I carried. He laughs while loading more clothes in a drum of water. The smell of ammonia and other chemicals assaults my nose "Close the curtains and mesh if you want your fingers to work, you can't hold a knife with frozen ones"

I obey like I always did. I need him and much as he needs me to get through and out, also he was couple a year older than me and much- much bigger inbuilt than I was. It is what that holds me back- I don't think I want to fight him on this.

"I could drown you in that water you are working with" I sat down on the floors suggesting his end as I took off my boots, I see his back, toned brown arms in a sleeveless vest, envying every second as I crowd wood with my trembling hands to make fire.

"I might adapt gills in there"

Quizzical and in awe I pry as I forced nonchalance-

"You can?"

He clicks his tongue, turning to face me as his earring on his left dangles with movement.

"I won't be up on land if I did, I love the ocean. You think I haven't tried. I am just immune to cold I guess"

There Is silence.

I have told him about how the crown of Antar selects the one to serve them when they have unique strength. When he showed me two years ago that he could stay in the freezing lake overnight without morphing into a popsicle. I had known that he would have been among them if things weren't so arduous.

A natural-born for war.

He might haven't noticed me then. My scripted knowledge would have been something so commonly known to him as a mother knows their child.

"I can picture you as a pirate" I pluck a strange looking fruit from our leftover box and hungrily chew on it. It's bitter and sweet, pulpy to make up for citric stings. "You lied like a criminal, you told it will be just us"

"We need Castle"

Gritting my teeth I throw the peel on fire, watching it flicker as my insides did.

"You need Castle, you like her?" I had nothing to do with jealousy, I can't let him jeopardize the purpose because he has a sweetheart. If so, she would become a liability.

"I like her skill"

"I haven't seen her make her own bed" chuckling In disbelief I mutter "And listen clearly, she has her own bed, there is no way she can make it"

I loathe how I still worry for her life even after her betrayal. She hadn't been nice to me in years, yet I know she left a share of her food on plate for a reason when I used to get punished by Mrs Birch for not completing chores in period. Was it enough reason to risk it all?

"She listens while we speak, she is the only girl among us three-" he had to pause and hold a laugh at that, he refuses to look at me as what I am beneath this facade. Dorin trained me without a prejudice. And I can't let him see me as anything else. He and his mother took me in when I had no one. In other circumstances I would have defined him as my brother, but a shape of emotional attachment is what we can't afford, we can't be wasting time to mourn if one of us can't make it. So I listen to him ardently. Like a student would with their teacher.

"It builds trust in people when they see a lady being treated nicely, and also - she has an embossed map to the city of Antar"

Scanning him to detect a lie I wait, his jaw ticks in guilt and balance. It's a deal- it never was about my acceptance of a third in the journey. I get on my feet like a tamed wilderness,

"She could be lying, it's impossible to have -

He nails me in the spot with his intimidating gesture.

"I saw it. It has the seal of the high blood, it's reliable, authentic even"

Laugh, smile, or cry- I couldn't decide between three so I do none. I flat my palm against my belly and feel it twist with ambition. The city maps emblem is something one owns when they are a civil servant to the high bloods, something that could not only get us out of the glaze- but farther from this cursed kingdom of Antar in its whole into a new world where we could be free.

It could be our ticket to freedom. My freedom.

Then my focus drops as with a wounded worry as I look at Dorin.

"She had the leverage, then why did she beg me to take her?"

It surely wasn't begging, but neither was it a polished order like she could have.

"I demanded that she earns her place" he resumes his work, squeezing the water out of trousers and hanging it up by the rope, he looks over me through his shoulder "We had scrubbed our minds and body, our entire life for this, I merely can't let her use us with the kind of currency she has. And from the look on your face, I can tell she messed up"

His policy must scare me, instead, it was significant to know how she would react in anguish - she framed me today, she could betray us tomorrow. But I smile to myself knowing precisely that a fox like her is what we need - she could be a two-edged knife, but I believe I know how to use one in my course.

Because at the end of the day, we all use each other, Don't we?

I hate winter. My dry skin cracks and blemishes when it gets unbearable. So does my mood like her. Hope you like this first chapter. If so click on the star for a firey vote and comment your thoughts on our girl:)