'ᴡᴇ ꜱʜᴀʀᴇ ᴀ ꜱᴇɴᴛɪᴍᴇɴᴛ. ɪ ᴄᴀɴ ʙᴇ ʙᴏᴜɢʜᴛ ᴡɪᴛʜ ʙʟᴏᴏᴅ ᴀɴᴅ ʀᴇᴠᴇʀᴇɴᴄᴇ.'
Only one month has passed in Daliah Viper's life trying to reintegrate at court and follow the uneasy trails her eyes have caught.
One month filled with blood, tribulations, and l...
twinge -a sharp unpleasant sensation usually felt in some specific part of the body -tingle, throb
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The name I have received is the one of another red-blooded anomaly, but he is gone when I reach his old home.
Questions asked don't retrieve any more results.
Word says that it is the same with the remaining one in Harbor Bay. Escaped from whatever confinement was planned. All in vain because they escape over and over again.
I spend a whole day in the dirt and dust, rummaging through the reminders of the villages for a trail.
Hoping perhaps they are just hiding somewhere in one meager basement. The red people in Archeon and any bigger city wear a piece of cloth around their arms to make their status even more clear. In the villages, the ruined and broken rest of rubble and bits of finer houses reserved for trade or guards posted, you wouldn't need to see any cloth. They all look the same to me in their blatant state of misery.
The faces are scared , the eyes downcast. The children are thin, the remaining parents just as hollow. The absence of anyone above a certain age is blatantly clear, even here. Those that have been conscripted, last year when the age range was still higher, or this month when it was set to 15. Collected like chicken and perched together to be shipped away.
The dogs sniff around the reminders of the buildings. We barge through doors without warning, and people bend to me and avert their gaze. In tow, I carry a strange pack of animals and people.
Hadrien is absently following my lead. But who can tell what goes on behind his bleak face. He rubs his nose from time to time and has one hand on a weapon, and another on one dog in soft command.
The banshee and the stoneskin haven't left their post. Looking for me to keep my tongue, or not step out of line. But at least they are polite, and they accept me leading with the begrudging mentality of soldiers. Their ground teeth and stiff bodies remind me of my dead husband and Ellyn every time I take a look, and it sits in my neck. The truth about the corpses and the war, and that I am one of them.
Samson was right. I am playing good soldier. And my reports are declining any victory. It would be humiliating if I didn't catch the drift that no one is successful.
I vow to keep that thought inside me and bury it, to make it hard to see for any mind reader that might try. He doesn't need to know I concede to the fear and think about him at all.
I also vow to never return to Harbor Bay. I leave my weakness like the dogs shed fur on their pillows. But with selfish, glowing content, I keep the moment on the pier, a second to breathe and talk to someone that has become a stranger over the years.
I come back home with my entourage and new, fresh scars that carry a tinge of frustration.
It is a silent return. No victory bells and voices rise over rooftops. Our group flees the grimy air by the sea and the dirty villages.
