Mythara

∑ Brogan ∑

I am sixteen today.

It's been almost seven years since my sister disappeared.

I wonder, does she still remember me?

Does she remember that this day, July 8th, 2094, is her brother's birthday?

I saved a piece of cake for her (more like a lump of cornbread, rare around these parts as people have started eating food generated from machines and made by resequencing molecules of water/air/dirt) though I knew that she wouldn't be coming to eat it. Still, I imagine her, with her bright purple eyes, coming in and toying with a strand of her dark brown hair that always seems to stray from her high ponytail. She always acted like she was an older sister. I am sure she was somewhat older. Maybe two, three years?

She came to us, an orphan, looking amazingly like a girl version of me except with purple eyes, unlike my green ones. She had dark brown hair. It was only me and Speckles the German Sheperd then. We lived in an old, run down shack off on someone's abandoned property.

I wandered there when I was six years old, not more than a mere skinny boy with a spray of freckles across across his nose. I went in search for a new home because my parents had not come home from work for many nights and I had eaten all the food there was in the pantry. My parents had always trained me on what to do when an emergency occured, probably because they knew who I really was and what had happened to their previous child. If they were ever to be killed, I was to run out of the house and toward the forest as fast as I could. This did not please me at all.

Throngs of policemen barged into the old fashioned house in the middle of the night about a week after my parents had disappeared. I had always feared policemen. Bulky and muscular, they rushed into the house, automatic, motion sensored guns at the ready. I heard a soft click of the safety trigger as they turned the light on. Then a bang, crash, shatter! as they began searching the house. But what were they searching for?

I didn't wait to find out. Ducking back into the room, I silently shut the door, terrified.

I heard heavy footsteps approaching the room. Panic leaped within me. I grabbed my stuff that I had already packed. I had known that if my parents would not come back I would have to go and find another place to live in, as I had been instructed to do.

I leaped out the already open window (I was on the first floor) and started running as fast as I could.

I tore through the forest behind my house.

That was the last I ever saw of it.

My feet hit the dirt floor of the forest with soft thumps. I was beginning to pant heavily but strove on, driven by pure fear. I tripped over a root protruding from the floor and fell face down on the ground. I cried out but immediately got up and started running again.

Stupid genetically altered trees! I thought, though being a six-year-old; I had no idea what in the world that meant.

The forest increase occured when some scientist found out how to make our trash into dirt within seconds and the smog from our cars into clean air. Compared to the beginning of the 21st century, we had begun a completely eco-friendly life style. In 2059, most of the population moved to Nilo, a planet in a galaxy on a month away, giving the Earth much more space for trees and wildlife.

When I reached the old shack, I was half dead with exhaustion. I did not even see that there was already a dog in the shack. I collapsed to the ground, unconscious. I came around in a couple hours. I knew this because of my sports watch around my thin wrist. At first, I was terrified. The dog lay curled up in the corner, snoring lustily. I shivered in the cold weather morning. Taking out my heavy gray sweater from my backpack, I wrapped it around myself.

What am I going to do? I thought glumly.

My parents were gone, I had no idea how I was going to survive out here with only a week's worth of food and water in the middle of winter.

Then she came. 

One night, the night after I had run out of food, a blizzard was at its maximum height. It whirled around the house and whistled through the cracks of the door. The floor turned damp and freezing cold. The door shuddered and the hinges rattled violently.

The dog and I had become quite acquainted with each other then, and we snuggled close to each other in the corner. 

Suddenly, the door flew open and a gust of snowflakes hit me headlong. And in waddles a snowman.

The snowman was a little taller than I was, a bit bulky and had goggles around its eyes. It shut the door and stopped, noticing me.

I screeched in terror and Speckles snarled at the figure.

It shook itself off but the snow stuck so it made a groaning sound. I was paralyzed with fear and Speckles was cautiously approaching the snowman. It grabbed the lamp on the wooden table and took out the candle. It snapped the top of its walking stick and put the candle up to it. Once the stick started burning, the snowy figure waved it around itself to melt the snow it was encased in. Water began pooling around its snow boots.

I realized then that this wasn't a snowman, it was a now sopping wet girl! I stared in shock at her and she smiled softly, wearily at me, still saying nothing this entire time. I couldn't see very much of her because it was so dark, but I could tell her hair was down to her waist and she was pretty thin. She was shivering and still had snow-encrusted hair.

She placed the smoldering stick inside the puddle of water and it hissed and sputtered before going out.

Then, in her shoulder bag, she produced a blanket. One of those soft red flannel ones, totally outdated compared to the ones that you can automatically heat adjust only by a single thought or the ones that could change into any shape, color, size, thickness you want.

She laid the blanket out on the dirt floor near the door and lay down.

I could hear her breathing which slowly eased into quiet snores.

I wasn't sure what the heck to do.

I ended up sitting awake and completely shocked in the corner the whole entire night.