Åska

1

Åska was terrified. She barely remembered being locked up back in that tiny room. Then, all hell went loose. Somewhere between the alarm and the dark of the research facilities she felt her body explode.

Something blue coming out of her and burning through her limbs, expanding itself and destroying anything that stepped in its place.

She didn't know how had it happened, she just knew she had to use it on her way out.

So she did.

As soon as the door exploded out of its hinges she ran away.

Something buzzed in the air. Was it all inside her head? She never knew why they took her from her lovely rural house in the borders of Pozuzo, in Peru, and threw her inside of a dark hole with iron walls.

Neither did she know how much time had passed since then. She knew it was a long, long time, for she noticed the changes in her body. Obviously years went by without waiting for her.

She missed her parents. She still remembered the yelling and the fire, Åska remembered feeling the same burnt that many years ago.

While walking through the halls she noticed people in cells. Åska didn't know there were others like her, inside that place. But she wanted to help them out. Åska started opening the few doors she could.

Nurses, doctors, researchers, all of them were running in different directions, ignoring the hopeless people trapped inside the rooms. A few others helped Åska along the way. Others like her.

She was scared to touch them. She had noticed the light emanating from the tip of her fingers, the rattle when she touched something, the burnt alongside the walls while she supported her weak body on them.

Åska got to a glass panel along her way towards the exit, - any exit.

Her long platinum tresses falling over her shoulders. Her skinny arms around her chest, hugging herself from the cold. The wide clothes hanging from her small frame, too big to fit her. Her pale green eyes, lifeless and dull.

She had changed so much since the last time she got to see her reflection.

She wondered how far from home was the place she was trapped in. Åska knew the place she lived at was in the country. Her own parents, two anthropologists, had explained to her they came from another country to do social service and fell in love with the old immigrant's settlement, staying there. She wasn't ignorant. She knew geographic maps, she had learnt science and physics through books and experiments. She had learnt more with her parents and their friends than at school. In present time, Åska was no longer the same child running through the fields, but she was still a smart lad, and knew how to guide herself with the stars or the sun, she could find the way back home... At least she thought so.

Åska looked beyond the reflecting window, towards the landscape in front of her... The land was dull and icy and her eyes could only recognize snow. No wonder she was cold.

A tall boy crushed her to the wall and cover her with his body.

- Are you ok?

Big dark eyes looked at her with concern. She recognized him. He was one of the assistants, psychologist? Or something along those lines. He used to slip candy and books under her door the days he could. A few nights a week he sat next to her door and talked hours and hours about a world she was no longer familiar with.

She only listened. She liked his voice.

- Åska... Are you ok?

Åska nodded.