bite the hand • jean moreau

-2

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There's never a more pure moment than that which comes before something evil. To brave something filled with so much potential, like a rubber band stretched to it's furthest point, and face it with strength, is the greatest power one can possess.

Felicity Sharma stands at the gates of Castle Evermore, staring up at the imposing black and red structure before her. It smells like a dream and it tastes like her future. Her fingertips are alight with electricity.

The first time she'd ever been on an airplane, and it was to leave her family behind to travel to the other side of the country. Her father had wept, her mother had held her fiercely like she was never going to let go. But she did, just like she did her two daughters before Felicity, and the sixteen year old girl boarded her flight to West Virginia International with her head held high and tears trapped in her throat. She can still feel arms tight around her shoulders, still feel someone else's teardrops finding their way into the roots of her hair.

Does it ever get any easier to leave the ones you love?

So, tugging a bright yellow suitcase with one arm and hoisting two tote bags on the other, she makes her way through to the gated entrance and presses down on the buzzer above the keypad. Moments of silence, and then a door opening. A young woman shields her eyes from the late May sunshine, hundreds of short braids that end in red and black beads clacking around her chin. She analyses the girl before her, lips pursed, eyes grazing over ever subtle and overt difference between the two of them.

Felicity's wave of inky hair cascades down her shoulders, down to the middle of her back. Thin limbs and cheeks still round with puppy fat, soft, child-like hands free of calluses. A cropped white t-shirt with yellow daffodils printed through the centre, low rise blue jeans that show off a lithe but squishy midsection. It's so clear that she is young, and she has not yet been broken.

"Felicity Sharma," she greets, letting go of her suitcase to offer a hand to the woman before her. "I've seen you on TV, I'm a huge fan."

Thea Muldani's upper lip curls, and she turns back towards the small entryway behind her. Felicity skips a few steps to catch the door before it swings open behind her, stumbles with her suitcase and winces at the slam that echoes through the room. It's pitch dark, or at least it is until her eyes adjust to the dim red light above her. A spiral staircase descends, and Thea is long gone. Felicity sighs, hoists her tote bags higher on her shoulder, and wrestles her case downstairs.

At the bottom, the older girl is impatiently holding a door open. Felicity clocks another keypad as she passes into a marginally brighter room, but shadows still creep at every corner of her vision as Thea leads her through a recreation room, a full sized kitchen, a den with the largest TV she's ever seen in her life. Eventually, two corridors branch off.

"Black," Thea points one way, then turns the opposite. "Red. You're unimportant, so you'll never need to go to Black."

"Oh," murmurs Felicity, and follows Thea down the Red corridor, which is apparently no less black-painted than the rest of the area. They pass five, ten, fifteen doors until coming to a stop near the end of the hall. "You're bunking with Nowak."