Finding Civilization

Chapter 1

"Rhianna dear, hurry up! You cannot keep Derek waiting. He could be your husband one day!" Ugh! She puts so much stress on me. My father and my mother are very close friends with Derek's family. Since day one they have been trying to play matchmaker. Derek's father is our protector so he is a huge deal to everyone here. All of the girls dream of being with Derek so that they can be married to the protector one day. The thing is, I don't want to be married to the protector. Being married to the protector is a big responsibility. You have all of the attention on you all the time and you are responsible for reassuring everyone that everything is okay all the time. Everything is not okay. How can I reassure a large group of people convincingly that everything is okay when I know the truth? 

Very few people of our kind know the truth. Nobody knows, but I do. It is extremely dangerous. When people of our kind know the truth, they disappear. People here aren't supposed to be able to communicate with the outside world at all. Most people here don't even know there is a way to communicate with them. I don't think my clone understands the power of our communication. Sometimes she communicates with me clearly and tries to take me into consideration, but other times I think she is scared that she is going crazy because another voice is talking to her. I don't think she knows that I understand how she feels. I have to be conscious of the same thing because if people knew I talked to a voice through my head they would think I was crazy and someone would find out I knew. 

The biggest reason why nobody is supposed to communicate is because if you communicate, your connection runs stronger. In fact, your connection runs so strong that you start to have feelings for the people in the real world instead of their clones here and then things can start to go chaotic. If your feelings run strong enough then there's a chance that you will find a way to get to the outside world and if you manage to do so then they will find out about us in a way they didn't expect, which can put us all in danger. We need them to discover us so they're curious and peaceful, not the other way around.

I realized I hadn't even started getting ready yet. Oh well. I didn't care if I was late or not. Mom will have to deal with it. I walked over to my closet and searched through my clothes trying to decide what to wear. I had no idea. I knew my clone was getting ready for her date with the same man because everything they did there was only copied here, so I decided to channel her so we could decide together. We linked up minds and she began stressing out.

"Why does mom have to make this such a big deal? I know she wants me to be with him, but we should get a say in this as well! I'm so frustrated."

"I know." I told her. "Look, let's just figure out what to wear and we can stay linked through the date as long as we are careful about it okay?"

"Yeah you're right." She told me. I knew I was the only reason she was calming down. I was definitely the calmer side as our kind usually were.

We decided to wear a long royal blue gown with a diamond waistband that split off into 3 straps joining together in the back. The straps were also diamond that joined with the blue fabric at the back to form an X at the top. It was definitely a beautiful gown, the kind that you would wear to formal or prom. We didn't want to look that good for him, but we knew that we needed to appear like we were excited so nobody thought it was suspicious. 

I went into my bathroom and then proceeded to curl my hair. It was weird having my hair curled. It made my hair shorter because I had given it some volume. After my hair was done I moved on to my makeup. I started digging out all of my makeup. I never wore a lot of makeup, but tonight's banquet was a huge deal to everyone. I put on my base and powder, did a smokey eye, put on some eyeliner and mascara and finished it off with a slightly darker shade of pink than usual so my lipstick wasn't so bright. I then threw on my nude flats and checked the mirror on the way out.

I took a deep breath, as did my clone, and we both made our way to the staircase. As we descended I saw the look of approval on our mothers faces. "Well," I told her, "at least we earned the look of approval! Now hopefully they won't notice our communication."

"I'm not worried about that. They would've noticed it a long time ago if they were going to."

"Yeah good point!" I laughed silently in my head so I wouldn't draw unwanted attention from my parents.

"Maybe we ought to give Derek a chance. He may be our best hope of survival after all. And we don't want to end up alone forever.." She trailed off. I thought about her words. She was right. I mean, I can be so quick to judge Derek, but I haven't really gotten to know him at all. I at least owe it to him to give him a chance. After all, he doesn't get to choose his position in all of this. It must be hard for him to have to go through all of this. Maybe this way he won't have to go through it alone.

"Yeah, you're right. Cut off communication and talk about it after?" I suggested.

"Definitely." She spoke in agreement. And with that, we shut off communication until the nights end.