Stolen Truth

10

I stayed up all night, my thoughts were running wild as everything that I happened over the last few hours played over and over in my head. I could be the reason that the blanks find us. I could be the reason why Bunny and all of those innocent children might die. It will be my fault if Dove, and Bear, and everyone else gets taken.

Owl think I'm hiding something, I wonder what he thinks that is? I'm hiding that I used to fight for the blanks. I'm hiding that I still want to run away. And I'm hiding the reason why I still have yet to run, maybe that's because I don't even know it myself yet, but I know that it's not worth figuring out.

Raven didn't find out all of that information from gossip, blanks are a lot of things, but they aren't stupid. I can't exactly say that she was lying though, after all, I was a blank soldier at one point. All of those boys in the prison camps were probably just like us, I maybe even met the prince.

Viper is so caught up on this prince when we don't even know him, and we certainly don't have any way of knowing if he'll actually help us or even be able to use these fabled powers of his. Even Dove is getting excited about this whole mission, although I'm sure she's far more excited about getting a sword rather than finding this prince.

I don't think I slept the night after the meeting, at least, if I did I don't remember it. My mind was too busy, going over everything over and over again for me to even register when light started to slowly creep into our tent. Owl groaned and turned over in his sleep as the soft sounds of people waking up began to fill silence.

The cooks were always up first, as soon as the sun could be seen through the trees, they were awake and preparing for the rest of us. The next people to get up were the council members, their tent was the largest as they all slept and worked there, and it resembled more of a hut than a tent. It was when the smell of food wafted through the air that everyone else began to stir, if you weren't in first, you were stuck with leftovers. Children always got to go to the front of the line for food, as soon as you turn fifteen you have to wait like everyone else.

I had learnt over my stay at the camp that I quite liked to watch everyone else. Everyone had chores, I used to clean the kitchens once they found out I was no good for cooking, ever since this mission started the people on the team had been relieved of their duties, I think the extra time is for training, but I found watching everyone else to be much more fulfilling. It was nice to see people happy and working at the same time, something I had never really experienced before, everyone had a place here and they worked to keep it running. I was used to a different sort of working environment, whenever I worked for the blanks there was always the threat of punishment looming in the air and a certain sense of misery that we could never get rid of.

"You okay?" Dove asked, snapping me out of my trance.

"Yeah, I'm good," I sighed, looking up at her and smiling slightly, it was hard not to smile around her.

"We need to go to the council tent, we have to design those swords today."

"Swords?" I asked before I could stop myself, I knew what she meant, I suppose I just forgot for a second, I let her explain anyway though, getting lost in the sound of her voice..

"Yesterday Bear said we were going to get our own swords and that we would design them in the meeting but because of everything that happened we couldn't, and we have to do it today."

"Okay," I nodded, lifting myself up and following her to the council tent.

It was only Bear who was waiting for us at the tent, Viper was nowhere to be seen and the other council members were completing their jobs around the camp. I looked around to see the whole group here, all of them waiting in anticipation, they couldn't wait to have their own weapon.