The Pariah Society

Prologue

    Walking along the narrow path - if one could even call it that - lined with towering trees, a hooded figure hurriedly moved. The urgency to find place spurred their movements greatly. Wind howled in their ears as branches whipped and scratched their face beneath the black hood. Huffing and panting, they continued to their journey to the designated spot. With goal in mind, the figure picked up its pace. It did not slow down until the trees opened up into a withering old clearing. What once must have been beautiful, was greatly suffering from lack of rain and proper care.
    Sitting with their back against the dying tree, the dark figure took out the calligraphy pen gifted to them several years ago. Putting pen to yellowing paper, they began to write in the old leather-bound journal. Moonlight served as the only source of light and crickets playing beautiful music drowned out all other sounds of the forest beyond the clearing. The scratching of pen against paper distracted the writer from the outside world as they delved deeper into the story. The memories swirled in their head as they came enraptured in the writing, seemingly unable to stop. Words flowed effortlessly for long while until they inevitably scratched out lines and pages to just rewrite nearly the exact same thing, and they continued in the same pattern as the night carried on.
The figure did not take a break until the sun began to rise. Putting the beloved pen and journal back in the backpack next to them, the figure slowly stood as joints cracked and dizziness briefly overcame them. Stretching momentarily, they swiftly slung the sack over their shoulder to head back into the woods and continue in their original direction.
    This was a process that had been going on for months - keep moving during the day, write and sometimes sleep during the night, hope there was time for food somewhere in there, repeat. They did not know how much longer they could keep this process up, but they had to hope they could hold out. Hold out for what exactly, they did not know. Whether it be help or finishing the account or their enemies giving up, they had to keep going until then. That was all that mattered. Run to survive. Write to change. Hope to escape.