Ignite

Chapter Three

Sabine put on her grey dress and white tights. They were going to the Office, and even though the reason was terrible, Sabine was glad she finally got to wear something other than her uniform. The sleeves of the dress cut off at her elbow, and she loved the way the skirt swished when she walked. She put on dark blue-black ankle boots with laces, and as she reached down to tie them, she saw a little pebble.
It was small, and was round. It was smaller than the size of her pinky nail. She stared at it, remembering.
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"Ugh. It smells down here," an annoyed Reye pouts from her space on the elevator.
"Well, you better get used to it," Amber spoke with authority, yet also with humor. "We aren't going back up there for a while."
Reye groaned. Sabine looked up to her, as she was only three and Reye was seven.

"And here's our new home, ladies," a much younger and less tired Kendall spoke, opening the door to the small, four-room-one-bathroom complex. It was near to the surface, as Amber needed to get to the surface for work fast and efficiently. Their most recent house had only one bedroom for all of them, a kitchen, and a bathroom.
They begun to unpack, each of them with one box. They sought out their rooms, the children happily jumping around and arguing about who gets what side of the room.
Sabine got the side nearest the door, and happy with her descion, she put her boxes down and started to take things out of them. Her favorite dress, it was grey, was on top. It was what she was wearing when the announcement came on the T3 for immediate evacuation.
Sabine remembered the fear of rushing out of the house, and to the Office. She remembered the awful smells of the safe house her family had stayed in for three days, where she had smelled smells she wished to never smell again.
Sabine took out her shoes, her extra uniform, and finally her books. She only had about two, as the States of FW had books on the net, so there was no apparent need for hard copies of stories. And also the others were probably blown to smithereens in the surface world. But just the same, Sabine liked the feel of holding something in her hands so powerful with knowledge. Something that could make her feel empowered when she read them.
But as she sifted through her stuff, putting it away as she went, she got to her boots. Sabine reached out her hand, not really paying attention, and when she grabbed the inside of the shoe to put it in the closet, her fingers felt something cold.
It was small, smooth, and round. She paused, confused. Her delicate fingers grasped this object, pulling it out of the boot.
It was a river stone, from the river by their house above ground. But that house had been bulldozed, and the river had been exploded.
Just then, Amber made her grand entrance, leaning on the doorframe, grinning.
"You like it? It was the last thing I grabbed from the surface house when we evacuated," she said.
"It's.... It's amazing," Sabine couldn't believe Amber had gotten this for her, the middle child, the quiet one, the invisible one. When they had evacuate, they had to basically drop everything and run. They hadn't taken any possessions with them. (Other than her books, and the clothes on their backs - but no one knew about the books). And yet here was the one thing Sabine would remember the surface world by. And Amber had specifically given it to her.
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But now, Sabine only looked at the rock with deep sadness. Amber wasn't coming back. She took out the rock and placed it on one of the shelves, next to her two books. She slipped on her boots, and then went to help Lilan get into her dress.