The Sylph

the 1st chapter

 ~one year later~

Inmate 67

A sliver of light cascades into my room. I groan into the dirty pillow beneath my head as the heavy vault door clambers open, noise shrieking into my ears. I feel the light scorch my skin as I try my best to blink away the tears forming in my eyes from the sudden brilliance of colors. My body feels numb, my lips parched, and my legs burn from the blue lighting now blanketing the edge of my bed.

The vault door screeches to a stop and I glare up at the three black silhouettes now standing in front of me. A pair of guards push someone into my vault with a harsh shove, no words spoken between them save for the distressed whimper that escapes the girl's mouth.

I stare at her. My eyes grow wide and I can't help but notice the spark of intrigue igniting a rather small flame within me. The guards whip their heads in my direction as I try to sit up straighter and drag in a ragged breath. They've always been weary of me, even in my current state, though there's almost nothing I can do to them given my circumstances. I've grown far too weak.

The girl whimpers, drawing the attention away from me. I didn't know I would be getting a new cellmate today, hence the sudden excitement . . . or whatever can pass as excitement for me. I try to ignore the pain in my empty stomach as the girl stumbles further into the room. With the little strip of silver light now blanketing the concrete floor, I can see the rusty-brown streaks of blood on the walls and against the tiled ground, desperately wishing I could have cleaned them away before her arrival. She doesn't deserve to see that.

That vault door hasn't been opened in weeks.

The girl stands rigid as she stares into the room, hands shaking in their shackles, eyes looking but not seeing. She isn't particularly pretty in any notable way, but as I stare at her face, I take note of the charm in her weary, gray eyes. She's rather tall with broad shoulders, though I know that if I stand up, she will fall short of my height by a few inches. She has oily thick brown hair that meets her chest in tangles. I can see angry bruises around her neck and some red lashes in the palms of her hands, which were the same treatments administered to me in my admittance to the Vaults. Her bare skin shakes with the cold as she grips the change of clothes given to her against her chest. She wears a gray jacket but the rest of her belongings have been stripped off her. At least the Curator had the decency to let her keep one piece of garment for warmth. Everything else has been taken. She just stands naked and bare before me, trembling with fear.

Just before the guards pull the vault door closed her gray eyes meet mine, and I can see a whole world of uncertainties. I understand the look that she offers me, having felt it many times myself. Darkness consumes the concrete room, severing my sight again. I've lived for fifteen weeks in this darkness, only catching glimpses of the silver-hallway light outside when my meals come in through the small slit just above the vault's heavy wheel handle...

...Or when they take me to the chambers.

This girl isn't my first cellmate. And I know she probably won't be the last either.

Her heavy breathing fills the room's particularly comfortable silence. I can't see her, but I know she has yet to move from where she stood. I myself still sit with my back against the wall.

I haven't said a word in over five weeks—not to the guards who rotate shifts in bringing me daily meals, and I'd given up long ago talking outloud to myself. I hesitate momentarily to speak to her but quickly remember the man who'd been my cellmate last and decide I don't want that same kind of coldness to linger between us.

"Hi," I say, sounding rather boyish, though my voice has grown deeper since I last used it; or maybe it just sounds like that to my unaccustomed ears. I haven't heard my own voice in a very long time, after all.