Arrow in the Quiver (Romantic Suspense)

Chapter 2 - Employment is Overrated

Lane sat beside me on the scrollwork metal bench, to-go container open on their lap, happily plowing through an impressive helping of fries, having long since polished off their bacon cheeseburger. Where the kid put it all I had no idea. My lunch sat off to the side, untouched.

The park had been Barnett's idea. An excellent idea, truly. All around me, the air carried the scent of rain, while above, remnants of the morning's storms floated on a stiff autumn breeze, whisps of silver and gray contrasting with fluffier white clouds across a perfect azure sky. Nearby, several young children climbed or dangled from brand new playground equipment. A man pushed a toddler in a basket swing while keeping an eye on a boy of about five repeatedly going down the wide, undulating slide. An older woman sat in the damp sandbox with a little girl building and rebuilding a castle.

I wracked my brain to remember what had been in this spot before. Likely not a park. Green spaces had always been at a premium in Keiva. What open spaces there were more often than not became impromptu camping locations for unhoused people. Before the war, poverty, especially in the cities, had been an ongoing, seemingly insurmountable, challenge. As I looked around now, I saw no tents, no lean-tos, no bundles of bedding with some unfortunate soul concealed beneath.

A loud bang sounded behind me, ripping me from my reverie and making me jump.

"They're demolishing a building a few blocks over," Barnett assured me from his lounge spot in the grass. "You're safe." He tipped up the hat covering his face. "You've been begging me for weeks to get you something from that food truck. Now that I have, you're going to insult me by not eating it?" His mouth quirked before the hat descended.

I popped open the to-go box to find a tasty-looking sandwich. Chewing the first flavorful bite of bread, meat, lettuce, tomato, and - what was that, aioli? - I was struck by how different things were. No soldiers patrolled the streets, except after curfew. No bomb craters pockmarked the pavement. No civil defense sirens screamed. In their place, birds sang and chattered in the trees, professionals headed back to work from lunch with friends or coworkers, students headed to or came back from the communal university a few blocks down, children played in parks...

Gods, it was so...normal.

During the war, normal had been the goal, but it'd felt so distant and unattainable as to be almost an idealized version of itself. However, here it was. People had jobs. They sipped tea in outdoor cafes. They went shopping. They attended the theatre or went to the cinema.

From where I sat, I could make out a poster in the window of a nearby shop advertising a performance of The Winter Bird, put on by the National Traditional Dance Ensemble playing at the newly reconstructed Center for the Performing Arts. When I was a child, a secret military coup deposed the president. To keep media from reporting on it, every channel played a sixty-year-old performance of The Winter Bird recorded in black and white. From then on, I'd become obsessed with the story. I'd never seen it performed live, but I'd always wanted to. However, without some kind of government-issued I.D. card, I couldn't access my bank account in order to buy tickets, or do much of anything else for that matter.

Around me, the world moved on, but I no longer got to participate in it. And I was in turns jealous and furious about it. I wanted my life back, or I wanted the chance to carve out a new one but not here. This wasn't home. Not anymore. When I thought of my friends and what they'd sacrificed - what I'd sacrificed - to fight the occupiers then and now, all that effort felt particularly futile as the city pulsed around me. It was as if all we'd really accomplished was a few years' delay of the inevitable at great personal cost. People I'd counted as my fellow countrymen just a few years ago had as good as rolled over for the invaders. These days, many of them had become indistinguishable from their conquerors, so fluent were they in the language, fashions, and customs.