cascade | kotlc

22. Redeeming Change

 The next day they leaped to campus and arrived in the heart of a blackened plague zone.

The Exilium tents had been set up along the edge of a sheer cliff, overlooking a shriveled woodland. The tree trunks were twisted and cracked, their branches sagging and drooping, and their speckled leaves blanketed the ground in heaps of mold green and sallow yellow. Everything felt dead, but there was that hidden hum behind the destruction, as if life was waiting, ready to spring forth again and take shape, building a better, more magnificent forest, rising stronger than ever before.

Hope.

"Where are we?" Sophie whispered.

"It doesn't matter," her purple Coach said behind her.

The six friends turned to find all three Coaches looming over them. Waywards milled nearby, pretending they weren't eavesdropping.

"How can you say that?" Biana asked the Coaches. "Don't you know what's happening down there?"

"We don't," the red Coach said simply. "We're not supposed to."

"That's not our world," the blue Coach added. "It's simply scenery."

"We know our place," the purple Coach clarified. "We know the role we're supposed to play. This is not one of them."

"You are no longer part of a community. You're fighting for survival and redemption."

Biana's heart clenched. Proven unstable and unfit for society. In other words, proven undeserving of the world, expected to rot in a corner, saving the scenery -- the world -- for everyone else.

Society only belonged to people who deserved it. Everyone that fought against the Council's supreme order did not deserve basic life. Basic happiness.

Hope. They didn't deserve hope. All they deserved was this. A desperate fight for survival that they knew they wouldn't win.

If Calla was here, everyone would be coated in a thick sheet of green, glowing brighter than the sun. The lost hope, waiting to be taken back, as its owner gradually died inside.

"How is it redeeming to only care about ourselves?" Sophie asked.

The silence that followed felt like it was breathing down their necks, probably because the whole school was watching.

The Coaches eventually ordered everyone to their Hemispheres.

Biana followed Sophie as they ran over to their purple Ambi tent, sitting near one of the tent poles. A shadow passed over her, and she looked up to find the Shade and Hydrokinetic standing beside her.

"You'll get in huge trouble if you keep talking to the Coaches like that. This is Bosk Gorge, and it's not the worst we've seen of the desolation. Wait for Wildwood. There's pretty much nothing left."

But the land still hoped. It still breathed, dreaming of its cure, singing of the Panakes, whatever they were. The earth still hoped for a chance, and that made all the difference. The earth still had the will to live. To rise up from the ashes and reclaim its deserved throne.

"Everyone rise!" the purple Coach ordered.

Biana moved to stand, then realized the Coach meant a different 'rise'.

Rise up.

When are these Waywards going to rise up?

Rise up and claim their part in society? Be allowed to live, to hope, to dream? To fight for a better future?