Brassman

Two

Ren stretched her hand over the empty expanse of her mattress. Her blanket had fallen off of her during the night. Nothing occupied the bed with her except a squished grey pillow. Ren groggily opened her eyes, yawning and running a hand through her white hair, a nest perched on top of her head.

"Th-Theo?" Ren yawned again, stretching her toes. She dangled her arm over the railing around her bed. She was on the top bunk, as always. Clutching her pillow, she scrambled down the ladder in her oversized pajamas. Perching at the bottom step of the ladder, holding the pillow as though she were about to smack someone with it, hard. She crept toward the bottom bunk and raised the pillow over her head, then faltered. The bottom bunk was empty.

Ren sighed and tossed the pillow back onto her bed. She should have known that her brother, with whom she shared a room, would be gone early. He always was. 'Loser,' Ren thought to herself.

Slowly, she dragged herself around the house and unhurriedly prepared herself for the day. She caked black makeup over her startlingly green eyes, and ran a hand over her freckles, which dotted her pale face and neck. While tying her long snow-white hair up in a ponytail at the top of her head, Ren shoved a dagger into her belt. As she took her sleep shirt off, she shivered as her ponytail tickled her lower back. Ignoring the rumbling in her stomach, Ren slid a strapless top the color of blood over her head and laced up her brown boots, tucking her dark blue pant legs into them.

Strolling into the kitchen, Ren picked up another dagger off a crumbling coffee table and fed it into the sheath on her hip.

"Morning, Moby," Ren said tiredly to her adoptive father when she entered their cramped kitchenette. A large hand rumpled her hair.

"Mornin', Renbug." A tall, slightly grimy man stood at the counter, tapping his fingers impatiently while waiting for the water on the stove to boil for tea. "What's the plan for today?" Moby sucked on the cigarette dangling off his lip and shook his mouse brown hair out of his face.

Ren spread jam over a plain piece of bread and shrugged. "Guard duty."

Since Ren had turned 16, the legal working age in the nation of Keystone, she had been recruited to work as a guard for the Princess, who had also happened to have been her best friend for seven years. Ren worked with another girl her age, Breeland Ayala.

Moby dipped a teabag into a tall cup of hot water and nodded into it. "Be safe. I love you."

Ren nodded and finished off her toast. "Love you too." She gave Moby a sideways, one-armed hug and dashed out the door, shouting goodbyes and "love you"s over her shoulder.

Once Ren's feet hit the rough cobbled streets outside with a clack, the world around her buzzed with energy. As she lived in the slums of Keystone, of course not everybody was particularly nice, but Ren had been brought up to handle it. She was rather rough or ferocious herself at times. Ren pushed past a clump of people at a cheap fruit stand and kept walking, picking up the pace now that she was nearly late to Guard duty.

As she walked in the brisk air, Ren pulled a short cloak over her head, but threw the hood off. Her eyes slid from side to side shadily and she gripped one of the daggers in her belt. She'd also been brought up to realise that not everybody living in the slums was trustworthy.

Luckily, Ren made it through the rougher, shadier parts and into the city nicely. Where the slums met the city was where the cobblestone on the street immediately got smoother, the houses became nicer with less holes in the roofs and less broken windows, and the people overall were friendlier and fancier. Women strutted around in velvet dresses with overlarge hats perched atop their extravagant hair while men glided along with their wives in long coats and dress shoes.

Sounds like the Victorian era, doesn't it? This, however, was long after that.

This was the perfect Post-Apocalyptic world.