Markom

2: Marked | Perri | Flashback

| TRIGGER WARNING:  State sanctioned branding. 

Perri was ten-years old when she first asked Why. Days like that are hard to forget. It was summer and the nights were short and hot, the days endless. She awoke to her youngest sibling, Aanli, tugging on her ear. "Breakfast," the tiny girl whispered. Her pale blue eyes met gold as the little one nestled into the crook of Perri's arm.

"But I just had the most wonderful dream!" Perri whispered back, lifting the younger one onto the bed to snuggle up beside her. She held her as close as she could until the summer heat became too stifling.

"If you don't get it while it's hot, you don't get it at all." A spindly, fair woman with wide-set green eyes and a wrinkled face - Mamaa - called from the other side of their one-room home. Small and weathered as it was, it was everything they needed. Full of mementos and keepsakes, their home was the glue that kept them together. She hovered above an ancient and dirty range, pouring slop into five chipped bowls. With a yawn, Perri peeled herself from the straw mattress where all four of the Viate children slept and went to the cramped wooden table where her older siblings waited patiently. It was a wonder the table and everything else in the tiny hovel didn't collapse at even the mention of wind, but just like the Viate family: it was stronger than it looked.

"What's for breakfast?" Perri asked, a feigned attempt at somberness as a mischievous grin marked her olive features. The room went still. Without looking up her mother responded:

"Mush." It was always mush. But it was far more fun for Perri to pretend it might be something else. Maybe just once the answer would change. Only, as she was constantly reminded, things rarely changed for Fives.

The oldest Viate rolled her eyes. Her upturned nose was almost as obnoxious as she was. "Questions make you stupid. You really should stop before you get yourself Taken." Perri stuck her tongue out at the eldest girl, Moniq, who responded by stomping on her foot.

Ow! Perri gritted her teeth. She wouldn't give Moniq the satisfaction of a response. "Children," Mamaa said breathily. Lately, she had been in a daze, as if nothing in this dark and tiny room was real.

"I need you on your best behavior," her mother didn't command so much as she pleaded. "Papaa needs your help on the river. It's our time to fish but things are busier than usual." The room grew silent as the younger girls stared at the floor. Perri began to kick up dust.

Summer was supposed to be a time of peace and relative freedom. The other classes were drunk off the air, lustful in the long days full of illustrious pleasures. The heavy policing, the disappearing Fives... it wasn't supposed to happen in summer. Summer was supposed to be theirs.

"We will stick together, we will be fine." Her oldest brother, Erdre, said with a half-baked smile. At sixteen he looked much older, his dark hair was neatly tucked beneath each ear. Despite his greasy appearance, he was the only Viate who could be bothered to keep clean. But his words were for their mother's benefit, not theirs. For all four of the Viate children knew they had no say in who was taken and who was blessed to live another day.

The family continued their meal in silence, Perri's stomach exploding with butterflies at the thought of wading in one of the murky rivers or estuaries that kissed the edge of their territory. So blessed they were to have fresh water to look into, to bathe in, to use for food. They may be Fives, but this one fact alone made her feel like the luckiest girl in all the territories.

Only, in recent years the rivers and streams were becoming more and more bare. There were whispers that the pollution of the inner city was becoming too great, that the excess of Science had found its way into the streams. Each season brought fewer and fewer game. For the poorest residents of Markom, this was deadly. Many groupings of Fives relied on the streams and woods to hunt, to scavenge for meat which was never available for fives in markets or available with food tokens. But the leaders of the Lows (always Fours, of course) had claimed that the estuary and rivers were being overfished. Surely if there were regulations put in place the waters would heal and resume being bountiful. Everyone agreed, they had to agree.

And today was the Viate family's summer fishing excursion. The one time a quarter when they had a long stretch of river all to themselves. The three oldest Viate children walked obediently to the 14N section where over the years they had laid rock tower over rock tower along the bank. A shared piece of heaven for them to call their own.