Lies & Harmony Trilogy

Chapter Seven: Discovery

We walk until the safe-house fades from our view, and the ragged landscape comes back once more. It’s silent unless I count the mutterings under breaths from Mallory and Kasie.

     I’m the first to speak up.

     “Why is the land like this?” The question escapes my lips like it has a mind of its own which I suppose it does. Dr. Salazar has always told me that I ask too many questions for my own good.

     A pained look crosses Tabitha and Gordon’s faces. A while ago, I would have felt proud that I finally caused pain to the ones who have caused me pain. Now I don’t even know what to feel anymore. That is ironic because I’ve just been given a piece of information about myself. How could I not know how to feel? If anything, I should be clearer on my own opinion.

     The gritty dirt beneath me is no longer making its way into my slippers because I am no longer wearing my slippers. After Kasie refused to stay, Tabitha made her fetch a pair of clean boots for me in the same design like all the others. Putting on the clean boots, I picked up my slippers and stared at them. Did I really want to throw them out?

     Back at the hospital, I never really cared for the wellbeing of my clothes if they were impeccable. Now that my slippers were worn and ripped at the seams, I wondered if I should keep it for a memory. I don’t have a lot of memories to keep anyway.

     In the end, I threw them away; I hurled it across the yellowing dirt until it reached its destination with a soft landing, yellow dust momentarily gathering in the air. Then I looked away, determined not to glance back ever again.

     They stole my memories. I’d be a hypocrite to keep theirs.

     “What was that?” Mallory asks me, seeming uninterested in all of us until I had spoken up.

     I motion to the desolate land around me. A sole tree in the distance is standing, stripped of leaves and black like ash. We near the tree, and I think of it a lonely thing, abandoned and just waiting for the day to collapse into nothingness.

     “That was something that happened a long time ago,” Tabitha begins hesitantly. “They didn’t teach you that in your… hospital. Did they?”

     They didn’t. I shake my head. We’ve never learned about ‘Seraphin’ or whatever this place is called. The Teachers never found it important to talk about.

     Or maybe, something cruel whispers, they just didn’t want you to know.

     “There was a… A war,” Tabitha finishes, her voice dropping lower at the end. I don’t understand the word, and I’m about to mention that before she continues, realizing that I have no meaning attached to that word. “A war is when people… fight over a cause that they don’t agree on.”

     “And then people die,” Mallory cheerfully informs, and Kasie gives her a dark look. “It’s true though,” Mallory says, shrugging. “I’m just telling the truth. There’s no harm in truth, is there?” That half-smirk appears on her lips again, and Kasie shakes her head at her, muttering dark things about Mallory under her breath.

     “Typically,” Tabitha corrects Mallory without irritation. “Not always. There are some times when no one dies.”

     Mallory rolls her eyes. “That only happens in your happy little world, Tabby.”

     Tabitha’s dark eyes narrow at Mallory. “Don’t call me that,” she says, her usually warm tone now full of warning.

     Mallory doesn’t seem to care about it at all. The threat that Tabitha holds is not a threat in her eyes. “You let your best friend call you that,” she says, smiling back at Tabitha. There are no signs of uneasiness in her eyes. Either she doesn’t realize the anger in Tabitha’s eyes or she doesn’t care.