Lover's Vow

Chapter 1: Introduction

POV: ???

Once every year they come. The officials, they come to take away the weak and the old. My guess is that those who are taken are killed, though no one but the officials and soldiers really knows for sure.
Sometimes they also take strong young  boys to train in one of the many secluded military boot camps. They say the boys who are taken will fight for their families but everyone knows those words are just one of the many lies told to falsely reassure the families. Anyone who leaves their home to follow the heavily armed soldiers never comes back, at least not the same. It's like their brain washed. They come and take more to become like them: cold and emotionless. Most young couples make the decision to never have kids for the fear that they will be taken away.

Hi, my name is Val. I live in the small town of Willow's Creek. People here have one certain thing in common, hunger. Most of us are starving - or near that point anyway - but we act strong in fear of being taken from our homes and families. Very few of us can find, make, or steal enough food to feed themselves and their family. Those who can are the lucky ones. Starving isn't something they know, just a fact that doesn't mean a thing. My family is not one of those families. We barely have enough for three people. That sounds like a lot but it's not, at least not to us. There are eight people in my family: Ben (father), Charlotte (mother), Nico, Ethan, Estar, Kristin, Magnus and then of course me, Val (birth order). Soon though mother will be having another child.

See unlike many others my parents wanted lots of children. I think they got tired of living in fear of raising a family, then having them taken away, whether because they or any of their children were too weak or because they were to healthy/strong and the army wanted to train them. Mother and father got lucky, none of us were too healthy and none of us were too weak. Don't get me wrong, there's never enough food but that doesn't make us weak... no, if anything it made my family stronger.