Savages

Cornucopia

Autumn Equinox, Island of Hirta.

The world is basically dagged.

It's run by crooks and liars, people who think nothing of murdering someone just for trying to protect their children, just for trying to survive.

The innocent, those with nothing, those who've never hurt anyone, are regularly and systematically slaughtered by the rich just for having the impertinence to ask for help.

Money is everything. Women are sexual objects to be bought and sold, and people's fates are set before birth, decided by something as cruel and arbitrary as the colour of their skin.

Yep, the world is dagged.

But none of that is for us. Not now.

We've escaped.

Made our own paradise.

Sannah MaVae leaned back on her elbows in the soft golden sand, watching the sunlight dance platinum on the azure sea. Two young girls were laughing and splashing, the water refracting in stars as it arched fluid and brilliant around their shining wet bodies.

Suddenly they stopped their play and turned to the shore, hair and clothes slick to their skin, whooping and waving at something behind Sannah. She turned to see what it was.

A teenage boy was walking towards her. He was topless, and his body—just like the girls'—was strong with fruitful labour, glowing with the life of the sun. He carried a basket on his shoulder, which was the object of the splashing girls' whoops of delight. It was full, almost overflowing, with golden apples, blush-purple plums and plump red strawberries.

Sannah smiled at the boy as he settled the basket on the sand, sitting down beside her. The girls joined them from the sea, dripping and jolly, grabbing for sticky handfuls of the sweet ripe fruit.

"I can't skitting believe it," Merle said, pushing her wet red hair over her shoulders. "I've licit never seen so much food in my life. We're all gonna be fat as selkies."

"Speak for yourself," Merle's brother pushed her affectionately on the shoulder before moving the basket out of her reach. "The rest of us will probably starve to death if you go on troughing the way you do."

Merle launched her wet body at her brother, and soon the Cruithne siblings were wrestling in the sand like playful puppies, Gaen shouting, get off me, you're wet through, you nyaff, Merle drowning out his cries with screeches of mock-outrage and giggles.

Judit shook her head, droplets of seawater raining onto her shoulders. She raised her eyebrows comically at Sannah as she reached for another handful of strawberries. Sannah looked at her sister, golden-bronzed and happy, and smiled.

Yes, this was paradise. The whole rest of the world was dagged, but this was paradise.

They'd escaped. Made something better. Were living on their own terms.

I know that, Sannah thought, pushing her fingers into the sand, her fingertips finding the damp cold beneath the sun-warmed surface.

I know that this is paradise, and the world out there is dagged. I know that.

She frowned, blinking her eyelids' momentary darkness over the sea, the sky, the sun.

I know the world's dagged. I do.

So why do I want to go back?