Inherently Innocent

From The Story That We've All Written

Thyme didn't recognize his home.

Like it or not, he had been born and raised in the settlement. Of course it had things to critique, but there were others that were to praise. Everyone survived on their supplied rations, everyone had a roof on their head, everyone had classes to take or a job to be heading to. There were few moments to stop and take the air in, and there was not a single moment of silence.

But then, that had changed.

The air was asleep around them, their steps were light on the asphalt. Even the sun seemed to rest and avoid burning his naked feet.

The streets were sickly quiet. The houses were polluted with silence. It made the walk north-east a lot easier, but with a heavier toll on their instincts. Any moment now, there would be an ambush, Thyme was certain. And he couldn't shake off the feeling that something was following them.

"You said everyone is gathered in the inner circle?" Asked Thyme, taking his next step like he was casually avoiding stepping on a landmine.

Byeol Lee nodded. "Did I not say so already? I must be distracted, silly me." Of course, thought Thyme. Her daughter had just come back from the dead and her spirit walked quietly behind her. There was no way you could focus on a single thing at a time. "I'm pretty sure we managed to turn the population in your favour. The issue is there are soldiers out there who have not heard us, and they are the ones bearing the guns. Those who unleashed their weapons on us within the borders have already been apprehended. When this is all over, Program Imaginaria will be for the oppressors, not the oppressed."

Thyme nodded and avoided another inexistant bomb. He scanned the stones on the ground as if they were buttons that would alarm the nearest trained killer of their location. Someone suddenly held his hand, making him stumble back right into an imaginary atomic bomb.

"Oh, sorry," Liliac quickly moved her hand back towards her chest, "I noticed you were nervous. Didn't want to make it worse."

"No, no. It's alright," or so he wanted it to be. It was clear from his ghostly eyes that he was expecting it to be someone else "I'm just... worried."

Would Golshan even be there when they came back? He had to trust Aloe, no matter how many times he had failed at that before.

"You're more than worried," Lee said, in a tone Thyme heard inside his head when he thought, "You're surviving. After today, we'll do more than that."

The boy smiled, and wished for a moment he could float away towards the mountains, forget the settlement ever existed, and drink fresh water while looking at the birds singing from the nearest tree.

"What do you want to do after today? Apart from living," he asked the world.

"I want a small house with many windows and pretty curtains. And I want to bake bread and invite people over. And it'll always be clean. No dust, no stains," Liliac smiled.

Thyme cherished every time Lee smiled. He couldn't remember the precise moments, because everything around her was blown away when she was cheerful. But he could remember the angle from which he saw her. Her front, her profile, sometimes he was behind her and saw her cheeks go wider, and that was enough to make a memory all about her. After today, he thought, I'll see her smile every day.

And there came the gates of Program Imaginaria. Thyme had already forgotten the time he had run away from them. Only the thud of his heart remembered, echoing then the same speed and pressure as then.

The doors were simple. You wouldn't have been able to tell them apart from the storage building doors. They had probably been made by the same hands, too. The concrete around them looked like it vaguely remembered seeing an architect once, and had never even heard the word artist.