Catcher

Chapter 1

The pale clouds cast an icy chill across the window as Cahira traced her fingers through the morning dew, drawing patterns which sent chills racing through her fingertips. The sun she had never come to know was invisible behind a thick sheet of grey which coated the sky, plunging the vast landscape below in grayscale. Meadows of soil stretched on for miles before her, the silhouette of the woodland in the distance just peeking through the mist which hovered over the dark ground. She waited anxiously by the window, basking in the useless hope that the sun would make an appearance; that the blandness which had greeted her every morning for the past seventeen years would illuminate into a mirage of colour.
With a sigh, she turned and grasped her brother's kaleidoscope which rested on the nearby counter, and turned back to the window. Holding it to her eye, the view swiftly morphed into one of brightness, the patterns dancing across her vision as the sky and land collided and changed with the slow turn of her wrist. Flowers and shapes leapt into and out of sight as rainbows fell apart and exploded before her.

It wasn't until footsteps in the hall sounded that she realised the dew had melted, and the mist lifted, dissolving her view into one of utter clarity. She had been out too long, and without the morning fog concealing her from sight, she was exposed to anyone who may have been passing at the time, though the meadow had been curiously deserted.
Turning around and racing through the stone and wood dining room, Cahira's head swirled with the apprehension contained in the mind that approached. Doubt swirled into the forefront of her thoughts, making it difficult to focus on anything but the curiosity this feeling of uneasiness sparked inside of her.

The sound of the footsteps grew louder as Cahira raced into the laundry and folded the clothes hanger up into the wall. Concealed beneath the twisting wires was a slight rectangular outline traced into the white plaster. If she didn't know better, Cahira herself would easily have mistaken the cracks as shadows casted by the clothes hanger. But she did know better. Sliding her fingers into the bottom right hand corner of the doorway, she pried up the loose wallpaper and grasped the handle which was usually concealed from sight. Tugging it upwards, the doorway opened as she quickly slid herself underneath and let it fall closed quietly behind her.

Just as it clicked silently in place, the sound of the front door opening echoed throughout the dormitory, signifying the presence Cahira could already feel in her mind. The distant sound of heals clicking against concrete would have informed her that it was her mother, if the familiar presence Cahira felt had not already alerted her to the fact. She had grown accustomed to the tenderness of her mother's thoughts, the same way as she was used to the strained texture of her brother's, as though an elastic had been stretched to its entirety and always lay on the brink of snapping.

Cahira's mind wandered to the countless books she had been read when she was younger, to the greetings a parent would send to the household upon their arrival. She was not foolish enough to expect anything of that sort though. The walls of the dorm were paper thin and should anyone hear her mother speaking to someone who doesn't exist, she would be tried for insanity and most likely hanged at dawn in the farmland outside of the window Cahira had been tracing.

Instead of a traditional greeting, Cahira listened back to her mother's movements and heard the usual three beeps of the automatic heating dial, signifying that the dorm was safe. Still, there was no way to respond without setting her mother off. She had tried to come up with countless creative ideas to respond to her mother's usual safe greeting, but they all only put her mother's mind in a frantic distress at the idea of someone hearing. Of course, no one had found Cahira's protective prison during the search raids in the past, but one could never be too careful when concealing a child whose birth was forbidden in the first place.