Rosin

3- The Revelation

The Hollow
The Blaze: 626 Days Past

I can't believe them!! They're all awful horrible things! They lied! All of them lied! I thought that we tribes were alone but we're not! There are lots of tribes all around us and there are people in them! They aren't abandoned! It's ridiculous I hate them all I HATE THEM

———

Sorry. It's been a while. I've calmed down now. Let me tell you what's going on

The Elders are lying to all of us about the state of the tribes. The Nook, Burrow and Hollow are the only three tribes. All of the others were abandoned a long time ago. Gone. That's what they told us. But it isn't true. It isn't true. I heard the Elders talking about it
They lied

Why?

This doesn't feel real
I don't know what to do. It feels like a bad dream

I don't want to stay here

———

Rosin dropped the stick of charcoal onto the open pages of the book. Her hand was shaking violently, still in a position to grip the writing tool, hovering over those scrawled words. I don't want to stay here.
Rosin looked up and locked her eyes to the pink ones in the mirror. She stared, chest heaving, at her scraggly reflection. Hair in tangled curls that went everywhere. The front was heavy with sweat. Her dark skin had a sheen from where she had sprinted back to her home from the tribe centre. No healthy colour to her face, just an ashen greyness. She stared at that girl in the glass in front of her. And at the wings sagging down on her back. Heavy. Curved. Bigger than her when she fully unfolded them. So beautiful, so wonderful, so incredible— words people had said about those wondrous pink appendages. All of a sudden, Rosin was overwhelmed with how fiercely she hated being alive. Being here in this tribe, a place she had come to loathe, with these people who looked at her with such a belittling arch to their mouths, mocking little half-smiles from the Captains, the Elders, a catching to their voices— because she was Rosin. Volatile, out of control Rosin, scary-face Rosin, stay away from Rosin— and nobody could ever just talk to her! They always had to speak formally, awkward, hostile. And the truth was in fact that everything— everything was a lie! The one and only part of her reflection that she had always, always liked was her wings, and now she couldn't even look at them without her mind wandering to her leader's deceit!

Rosin screamed into her hands. The cry came from deep inside her guts and shredded her throat raw, and yet she heaved out air until she had folded over with the effort. What the fuck am I here for?! She grabbed the mirror from her desk and cast it across the room. For a moment, the window light caught the glint of the crystal and a brilliant white danced over her ceiling. Then it hit the wall and that was it— the mirror shattered outwards in an explosion of jagged shards. Onto her bed, across the floor, catching in the curtains. Broken behind repair.

Rosin stared at the broken mirror. No thoughts crossed her mind, it was just... a sort of calm, almost. An empty stare. Then her breathing hitched. Her legs wobbled and her wings began to quiver. I don't want to be here. The girl spiralled into a frenzy of emotion— Rosin tore about her room and pulled the furs from her bed, upturned her desk and sent its contents clattering across the floor, sent her journal flying across the room with a fierce kick of her boot. Thoughts bubbled in her head like bad water. She was hardly aware of what her arms and hands were grabbing at, her body just sort of moved on its own... disconnected from her screaming mind.
When there was eventually nothing else to upturn or smash, she stood panting. Her wide eyes went across the destruction she had made. And she simply fell to the floor.