The Shattered

Chapter 1: And you think you have pest problems

    "Look at how far you can see from here! It's amazing! I can't believe that you've known about this place for a month and haven't told me until now!"

    "And with all the jabbering that you're doing, I'm beginning to regret showing it to you at all." I pushed myself up on one elbow, elevating myself off the ground a few inches. Ethan rolled his eyes at me and smiled jokingly.

    "If you look hard enough, you can see the cooks just waking up and coming out of their homes." He said, pointing to a few of the small huts in the village below us. Sure enough, I could see the tiny figures of our cooks hustling towards the kitchen to begin cooking breakfast.

    "Look at the sunrise, Ethan. I love all of the colors. I wonder if it was that way back at home. Real home, I mean." He looked up towards the sky, and I watched him as he examined the colors that he found there. Sometimes, I wondered what the world looked like to him. I wondered if there was anything that he saw that I didn't. Even though he and I had been best friends ever since the plane crash that had brought us here ten years ago, there were still things about him that puzzled me.

    I watched his face crease as he tried to remember our old home, before the crash. He was handsome, with high cheekbones, a sculpted face, and tar black eyes. He was six foot three, a stark contrast from my delicate five foot frame. He was a sturdy build, and he basically had his own fan club, consisting of all of the single village girls our age. It was amazing, some of the favors that he could get from the female cooks. He had a sturdy appetite, and it was a wonder that he didn't eat the village out of house and home.

    He looked back over at me and caught me watching him. He smiled a lopsided smile, and sprang to his feet, offering me his hand as he brushed himself off with the other. I playfully batted it away and stood on my own, pulling pine needles and leaves off of my jeans.

    "If we hurry, we could still make it in time for breakfast." I said, and walked past him towards the head of the trail that would lead us home. It was a three mile walk from our village to the cliff, and we didn't have horses or cars to take us there. The only form of transportation that we had was the trains. About twenty train tracks encircled our island, with twenty trains running on them, naturally. We studied the trains, as they were a big mystery to us, but we found nothing. They didn't seem to have any form of electricity or any kind of power to run on. They just ran around their tracks day by day by day. As soon as the sun set each night, they all stopped, and as soon as the sun peeked over the horizon the next morning, they began running again. The trains didn't run anywhere near this trailhead though, so we had to walk, or in this case, run. I couldn't afford to be late to breakfast, because although the breakfast ladies would be nice enough to remember Ethan and to save a breakfast for him, I wasn't exactly one of their favorite people at the moment, so if I didn't make it to breakfast in time, I was screwed.

    "Come on! I bet I can beat you there!" I shouted over my shoulder as I took off running. Ever since we were little, we had been on this island. We had been friends ever since then, too.

    I cleared my mind as I sprinted down the trail, the wind rushing through my hair, and the sun warming my back as I ran. I could hear Ethan's feet thud on the ground a few yards behind me. The cold air rushed in and out of my lungs, and suddenly Ethan went flying by me, running down the trail at full speed.

    "When did you get so fast?" I shouted at him. He turned around and shrugged at me, still running. He flipped back around to face the right way, and sped off. I was laughing so hard by that point that I had to stop running. When I finally caught my breath and looked up, Ethan was coming back through the under brush, smiling at me.

    "I think that I win this one." He said, and wiggled one of his eyebrows at me.

    "That is so unfair! I can't do that! You know that I hate it when you do that!" I joked, trying to act pouty but failing miserably. He threw his head back and laughed at my failed attempt, which just sent me into fits of giggles. He brought his head back down and smiled at me. His eyes drifted to the underbrush behind me, and the smile dropped off of his face like he had been slapped. Hard.