Permafrost Slumber

Chapter 8

Even if Kallen's not willing to speak for the time being, the Captain tries to make sure she's emotionally stable while keeping an eye on her from a respectable distance. For the most part, Kallen simply shovels coal without doing anything else, except for a few breaks where she rests to recuperate her strength before continuing.
A few hours later, the children were the first to pack up and leave the Gathering Posts after a day's work. After nearly eight hours of toil, the little workers are spent and eager to leave as soon as possible. Some of them toss their tools haphazardly inside the Gathering Posts as they almost run away the moment the workday ends. The sight of children no longer working in such harsh conditions seems to have brightened Kallen's mood and made her lowly smile for a moment before she returned to work.
Nearly two hours later, the inmates were relieved of their workday and sent back to prison. The walk back to prison was uneventful, the inmates were quiet, and not a word was spoken between any of them except for the occasional shiver or cough. Upon their arrival, the inmates lacked any sort of measures to clean themselves, there wasn't even a communal bath area inside the prison. As a result, the Guards put the inmates to use the abundance of snow and rubbed out at least some of the stains on their bodies and clothes before they were to enter.
Leaning down to grab a handful of snow to wash his hands, the Captain half-jokingly reminded Kallen that she once said the same thing not too long ago and it now came true, but Kallen, who was kneeling not too far from him and washing her face with small handfuls of snow, wasn't amused and said nothing in reply.
Inside the prison, the inmates were treated to a fresh bowl of gruel. A coarse meal that looks like porridge but is a lot thinner and has a bland taste with nothing flavorful, like salt or spices, added to it. In comparison with the soup they received, the inmates very much preferred the soup that at least had some hints of flavor to it.
After their meals, the inmates were sent back to their respective cells and turned in for the night, visibly exhausted from a day's work. The Captain was reluctant to return to his cell, fearing for Kallen's emotional status. Even as he glanced once last time at her before she was escorted to her cell, Kallen's sight was aimed at the ground and she said nothing to anyone. The Captain entertained the idea of visiting her tonight just to check up and see how she was doing, even if the patrolling Guards were a threat.
A few moments later, after the bulk of the Guards were redistributed around the prison, leaving only a few members to patrol the cell block, the Captain paced around his cell like a caged animal. He was nervous and was bothered by the thought of Kallen's emotional status being so uncertain. Not even he got used to the feeling or thought of seeing different versions of himself in each world they visited. Each version was like, yet at the same time, unlike him. It was a surreal experience that was next to impossible to get used to but after a while the emotional turmoil would pass away, slowly but surely. But for Kallen, who never saw a version of herself in such a poor state, touched by hunger and so much unlike her, is certainly something that can't be so easily overlooked or put out of one's mind so soon.
Having decided that he should at least see if Kallen was doing alright, or at least hear her vent if only for a little bit, the Captain nervously paced around his cell as he waited for the patrolling Guards to either take a break or fall asleep. But that opening never came and the Guards were unusually active that night, yet the Captain remained awake and eagerly waited for a chance. Eventually, the Captain never had the chance to leave and remained awake for a long stretch of the night for no reason; at one point the exhaustion from a day's hard work and lack of sleep caught up with him, and even though he sat down on the edge of the bed and closed his eyes for a moment, the last remaining hours of the night passed by him like a gentle breeze.
The following morning the Captain doesn't even hear the noisy ring of the alarm that heralded the start of a new day of work. He remained sitting upward on the edge of the bed, head hanging down and back arching forward, a terribly uncomfortable position to fall asleep in even if it were for a few hours.
Seeing as the Captain was unresponsive to the alarm, a Guard barged into the cell, propped his left boot against the right side of the Captain's body, and gave him a strong shove, knocking the still-sleeping Captain to the floor with ease. The sensation of falling jarred the Captain awake immediately and he managed to cover his head with both of his arms to prevent serious injury, even if the fall was short-lived and the distance was brief.
Looking up at the Guard, the Captain doesn't even have time to register the man's face and he's pulled off the floor onto his feet and shoved out the cell's door with an added strike from the Guard's baton to the back of his knee for motivation.
Under Guard escort, the Captain then joins the rest of the inmates outside in the prison yard. Glancing at a peculiar sight, the Captain notes a group of hooded men, the same as yesterday, speaking with the Guards who are trying to make them go away. The hooded men are adamant about something and seem to insist on speaking to someone but the Guards deny their every request. The discussion soon turns into a heated argument and the Guards soon force the hooded men to leave under an unrelenting verbal assault of threats and slurs only a sailor could come up with. The hooded men retain their calm and do not use any kind of harsh language in response to the rude behavior of the Guards; they simply gently lower their heads and leave quietly without making any more arguments.
After the small distraction ended, the Captain searched the yard for Kallen and found her sitting quietly, hands crossed and back leaning against the iron mesh fence, in the furthest corner of the pen the inmates were kept in. When she noticed the Captain walking toward her, Kallen waved a little with her right palm while not even uncrossing her arms. When the Captain was close enough, he could see that Kallen hadn't slept much as well, there were dark circles under her eyes but she seemed less troubled than she was yesterday.