Woven at the Soul

Getting the Hell Outta Dodge

We started walking through the woods again. Fun times. After around half an hour, we reached the border of town. A tall, fenced gate stood in front of us. Get around that and we're out of here, for good.

"How are we supposed to get past that? It's not like we can climb it," Arlene commented, judging its height. Izac handed me his bag and immediately started climbing. Within two minutes, he was at the top and started climbing down. We watched in awe as he jumped from the not-so-high part of the fence and landed on the other side. He started pulling up the bottom and got it just big enough so we could climb through.

He motioned for us to crawl under it and we happily obliged. Arlene went first, then Madeleine, then I slid our bags underneath before dropping to the ground and crawling through myself. Izac tried his best to push the fence back down and we kept going.

"That was really cool, man. Where'd you learn how to do that?" I asked, still in awe of this strange, silent guy.

"My parents shipped me off to military camp every summer. It did a number on me, but now I can do cool stuff like that." For a second, I swear I saw a smile appear on his lips. "Didn't know one day I'd actually use my training." He sighed, adjusting his bag on his shoulder. I kept looking forwards, trying to adjust my eyes to the dim light. It was around 4 a.m. Great.

Judging from the time, we got taken at around 10 p.m. We must've slept at around 10:30 p.m. because we were up by 2 a.m. A good 3 and a half hours of sleep.

We kept wandering until we found another forest. That's what you get when your town is in the middle of nowhere.

We found a little, empty cave to spend the rest of our night in. We rolled out some sleeping bags and drifted off pretty quickly.

Around 4 hours later, the sun was up and so were we. We had to keep moving, otherwise someone from town would see the damaged gate and come looking for whoever did such a thing.

After a very healthy breakfast of energy bars, we packed up and kept moving. We still had no clue where we were supposed to be going but we knew we had to get as far away from town as possible.

"Parcee?" I looked down to see Madeleine looking up at me, innocent wonder in her eyes. "Are you a boy or a girl?"

I froze.

I hate this question.

Technically, I'm a boy, but I don't have boy 'parts' if you catch my drift.

Short answer, I'm transgender. I wear a binder (which I packed because why the hell not) and as described before, I have short, dyed blue hair.

Whenever I go out in public, I pass as male. No questions. But kids, kids can see through it. They aren't trying to be mean; they don't know, and that's okay.

But her question caught me off guard. No one had asked me that in a long time.

Izac and Arlene turned to face us; me, who was red-faced and flustered, and Madeleine, who was patiently waiting for a response.

Arlene must've seen the panic in my eyes, because she walked over to us swiftly, even though there wasn't anything she could do.

Izac looked over, confused but just slightly curious.

"Well, um, you see, it's kinda hard to explain..." I stammered, trying not to seem scared.

"But, wait, isn't my question easy? Are you a boy or a girl?" She asked again, still in the dark about my panic.

"I-I'm a boy. But, not a regular boy, like Izac. I'm transgender." I tried to explain, trying my hardest not to get flustered.

"What's 'transgender'?"

Fuck.

What if she thinks I'm just a masculine girl?

What if she laughs at me?

What if they all laugh at me?

I breathed out slowly in a poor attempt to calm myself.

"It means that when I was born, I was a girl, and my body is female, like yours and Arlene's, but I myself am a boy, like Izac." I said, hoping that cleared it up.

She nodded.

"That's kinda cool." She said at last.

Oh thank god.

"Yeah, you could've just said something earlier. It's not like we're gonna make fun of you." Izac said, smiling just the slightest.

"I'm pretty impressed you're brave enough to tell us. I'm glad you trust us enough to let us know." Arlene said, putting her hand on my shoulder reassuringly.

We kept walking.

That's when I noticed something I probably should've pointed out before.

Our eyes.

The colours were extremely intense and contrasted all too well our 'colour schemes'.

Have I dehumanized us enough yet?

Arlene's got dark blue eyes. And I'm not talking about acrylic paint blue, I'm talking royal, deep sea blue. Like you could get lost in their mystery.

Madeleine has lavender tinted eyes. They're the colour of lilacs and are intense and intelligent; strange for a five year old.

Izac's are probably the most prominent. They're golden and seem to shine in the sunlight. Full of secrets and nearing evil, just like him.

My eyes, well, they're silver. I was told I was born with it, it was a genetic defect, all the excuses, and I believed them. It's not like I had another explanation.

Enough about eyes, we had to leave.

We kept walking and finally found the edge of the seemingly endless forest.

What we saw was eery and blood curdling.

Standing as still as the trees we walked by, in front of us stood a ship.

A ship infested by creatures that would give anything nightmares.