Republic of Omisha

Chapter 1: Kalea

Eliza and Kalea Spero are two sisters and they are each other's best friends. They live the small town of Edina.

This year their town has been chosen to be in the trials. The leaders use the trials to keep the population under control because of the amount of citizens and the poverty of the 80 towns. There are two parts to the trials. Every member of the families to the town are placed into an elaborate escape room. The last five families with a member still in the room are legally obligated to participate in the second trial. The second trial involves the kids of the the five families that are between the ages of five and seventeen. They are placed in an arena and four beats hunt them down. The last child alive has many incentives.

Eliza is fourteen and Kalea is seventeen. They resemble each other except for their hair color. Eliza has long brown wavy hair and Kalea has straight strawberry blonde hair that just goes past her shoulder and they share their mother's amber eyes. Kalea takes after their mother while Eliza has her Father's brown hair.

Eliza wakes up screaming the two nights before the trials began. Kalea rushes to her side. Her bedroom is down the hall and even though her parents' bedroom was just next door and there is no way that they had slept through Eliza's screams but still only Kalea comes to her aid. She holds her tight as she wales in horror of her nightmares that have haunted her every night since they discovered that the trials were going to be in their town.

Kalea sings Eliza the one song that can calm her the one song that always could calm her. As Eliza's cries diminish into a whimper, her song fades to a hum. Their mother sang them this song every night since they were born. She had died eight years ago and soon after her death their father remarried. Their stepmother wasn't mean or cruel, but she didn't have much patience for Eliza's PTSD that was a result of seeing her mother's death.

Kalea gently rocks her without lessening her grip on her that wasn't half a tight as Eliza's grip on her. She doesn't dare ask her younger sister what her dream was about. She knows that she will most likely tell her because that's usually the only way that she can calm down and seize her body's trembling.

"It-it was awful," Eliza began, "I watch them tear you apart and I tried to save you bu-bu-but I couldn't save you. I'm sorry, I'm sorry."

"Shhh," Kalea comferted. "It's okay, it's okay."

"Last night wa-was worse though. I was watching from your perspective and you just let me die. I cried out to you and you just let me die." Anger began to sneak into her fearful voice.

"It's okay, you're safe now, and I would never let anything bad ever happen to you. You know that."

Kalea stayed up with Eliza until dawn. She only left to make some warm broth as a comforting treat. When she brought it to Eliza she found her starring out her bedroom window. She was watching the sun light up the dew on the grass and the butterflies on the flowers being warmed by the sun. Kalea jumps as something brushes past her legs. It was Eliza's cat, who then jumps onto her bed. Eliza sits on the bed stroking her and Kalea enters the room.

"Now where were you when Eliza needed you?" She jokingly asks the cat while she hands a mug of broth to Eliza who smiles in admiration.

"She was hiding because it scares her when I wake up screaming." Eliza bluntly replies.

She frowns at her tone. "Hey, you can't help it."

"Yeah, but I should."

"No," she snaps, "it's my fault. It was the one time that I was away from you on a retreat. It's my fault that you had to see- that you were alone and that's when I promised you that I would always be here to protect you, and I have, haven't I?" Eliza nods in response and Kalea smiles. "You are a very special, smart and wonderful girl, and you should never be ashamed of who you are. We can't chose our flaws, just don't let them define you."

Kalea continues to cheer her little sister, who isn't so little, up. When her sister is suffering from her PTSD her brain digress into a shy personality of a six year old, so to coax "Eliza" back out she has to build up her confidence and help her like a kindergarten teacher. Once Eliza relaxes and returns to normal they hear the adults leave their bedroom.

"Shoot!" Exclaims Kalea. "I haven't made breakfast yet. Helena will be mad." They wouldn't dare call their stepmom "mother" because that would suggest that she would be a motherly figure, which she's not, and that the girls would be accepting her as a new "mother" replacing their real mother. Their mother may have passed away but she was still a very real mother that does not need replacing. Kalea is much more than a mother figure to Eliza than their stepmom.

"Let her make her own breakfast. She is an adult." Eliza protests.

"El, you know we all have our own jobs to do in order to make this household run smoothly, just because you'd rather be off heaven knows where escaping from the clutches of the police instead of tending to the wilting garden does not mean that I can avoid my duties as well."

Eliza got used to Kalea's motherly speeches although she viewed Kalea more as a best friend than an authority figure and didn't pay heed to her concern and replied in a disrespectful tone, with a smirk on her face as using her nickname as a derogatory tool. "K, k."

"K" is Kalea's nickname given to her by Eliza when she was a toddler and couldn't say her name in any respect. Eliza got the nickname as "El" from her mother and it kind of stuck.

Kalea has learned to not allow Eliza's pointless disrespect to fluster her for that would be feeding into her power. Instead she laughed slightly in spite of her response. This quickly annoyed Eliza who delivered Kalea a well deserved eye roll as Kalea leaves her room to begin her morning chores.