The Bird With One Wing // Klance

Chapter eighteen • Darling

Music attached:

"stand by me" by Ben E King (1961)

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Flashback:

My feet started to hurt and my body felt like falling over so I can finally relax in peace. I stopped running for a second; hacked and wheezed blood from my throat. My knees waned and weakened and I collapsed, laying on the dirt ground. The second it happened, heat began to escape my body at a faster rate. Catching my breath was a struggle.

"Why'd you stop!" Aki yelled and pulled on my arm. "Hurry up! Get up you quitter!"

"I *wheeze* go on without me" I coughed from the ground, laying there as Aki dragged my body off the road and onto someone's front-yard grass.

Aki looked down at me with disappointment and sighed. "But we'll never catch those guys!"

"It doesn't matter anymore" I frowned, sitting up and laying down on the grass. "They're older than us. It happened already, we can't catch them. We can't get it back now."

"We could have if you didn't stop running" my oldest brother hissed. "What am I going to do... it was so important... so valuable."

"Well, it's Chimosia" I sucked my teeth. "We're all fighting over the same things for survival and not many of us can afford such things. So I guess they resort to stealing."

"Egocentric people are the worst people" my brother huffed, getting angrier in both his tone and expression. I watched him stand and hold a hand out for me. I stood up myself and adjusted the fabric 'dress' that served as my clothing.

Those covetous imbeciles stole our lunches. Although they were only a bag of food, it was very valuable to us. Because food is rare, we hardly get to eat anything other than the same things we had at home. It was bread with tuna spread with lettuce and tomatoes inside of it. Aki spent weeks trying to scrape money by selling flowers on the streets just for two of these sandwiches. Hell... we couldn't even afford enough for the rest of our family!

I hated how unfairly expensive the market's food had to be. We're all poor so why did we have to pay all the taxes when the richer Chimosians could be doing that? Why was the markets at our place so expensive? Even the people selling the food despised the fact that they had no right to lower their own prices. It's the government's fault.

The two of us began to walk back home. Aki was cold; he hugged his arms the entire way back. I noticed goosebumps and shivering from him but didn't say a word. There wasn't much I could do for my dear older brother. I would have given him my clothing to warm him up but then i'd be nude in the public. Theres rapists and pedophiles out at night, so we had to be careful. I was just grateful that I wasn't traveling alone.

When I was a lot younger, I didn't know better. I use to go outside and leave the house on my own sometimes, not knowing the consequences until it happens. Like the time I use to meet with the soldier man at a silent massive grass-field around the barriers of the town. Around an area where Chimosians didn't dare to pass because it was located far too close to our enemies. I don't remember the name of the soldier man. But I did remember why we stopped meeting.

Once we got home safe, Aki opened the drawer under the sink and pulled out a jar. I sat on the floor with my legs crossed and watched him. I didn't know why my brother keeps jars thick of liquid under the sink without anyone else knowing but me. But I never questioned his ways. It was scary... but at the same time, he was a good brother to me and I knew it wasn't for something mysteriously horrible.