Divergent Imagines

A Light in the Dark (Four)

Everyone knows about the Amity: silly smiling flower-folk who seem to be half dryad or nature spirit themselves. That's the only reason they'd willingly trade aside power and brains and glory to go spend their lives trudging in the fields, paying compliments as if they're free of charge and dishing out smiles to anyone fortunate enough to pass by. You've heard the whispers as you walked through Chicago, heard groups of Candor talk about how you must have been dropped on the head as a child to convince you to stay among the golden-clad fools. Funny, but not entirely accurate.

Some of the stereotypes are true. You've seen men and women who think that running barefoot through the shifting blades of wheat is the highest form of entertainment, that a life away from, well, everything is the only way to live out your days. You've brought up the outside world to them and watched confusion flicker in their sometimes vapid eyes. Why would you want to leave when everything was right here in front of you, gathered up by calloused hands and delivered with a smile?

Everyone seems to know this. Maybe that's why you made such a stir when you sliced open your palm with none of the usual hesitation always attributed to the Amity, drenching the blackened coals with your blood and walking emotionlessly towards the Dauntless. The dark-clad daughters and sons born without fear stare at you curiously, like you're a beast from a zoo that's accidentally wandered too far from its bars. From the way they look at you, you'd think they've never actually seen an Amity outside of your fabled halls of sunshine, half true and half just fairytale. To be honest, you're not entirely sure that this assumption is wrong.

Nevertheless, you're here now, one beam of sunlight in a darkened room. They may be trying their utmost to shutter up the windows and bar the doors, curious as to what might make you tick and fall apart, but you're no more willing to shatter than light itself. They can refract you, maybe, break you up into bits and pieces, but you always come back to yourself. Right now, you intend to go to Dauntless, so that's exactly where you'll go.

You make the jump onto the train as seamlessly as if it's a jump from one tree bough to the next, an easy leap made by every Amity child old enough to walk. You watch as others struggle, collapsing on the ground as if their legs are barely stronger than a newborn lamb's. You, however, have spent all of your life on the farms and in the stables, and if the calluses on your hands have anything to say about it, you're fairly hardy compared to these headstrong Candor with their waving tongues and bright-eyed Erudite held back by their own want to observe and record instead of simply doing. Maybe that's the benefit of being half-wild yourself- you don't have time to doubt things if you were never taught that fault at all.

You can see the other initiates shifting around you, looking for a weakness even before the fighting ring is in sight. It reminds you of a pack of wolves you'd once seen; mangy, scrawny, ears half torn off from fights. Wolves were rare to the Amity fields, usually preferring to sleep off their lost populations in the depths of the forest where no brightly clad explorers went to find them and chase their tails. These few, however, had been either too brave or too far gone to stay away. They had looked at the few sheep baaing gently by the henhouse with a look of hunger, eyes and throat ravaged by thirst.

This is how the other trainees look at you now, like your limbs are soft and you'll fall easily beneath their pawing talons. However, you've seen enough rams to know that even those that seem the most frail have horns, and so you launch yourself off of the train with a graceful leap the second it's announced you'll jump once more, not wasting time on complaints and landing with ease on your two feet without stumbling once. This marks you as a stranger to the others, who come to a rolling stop on the gravel-strewn roof and manage to scuff several shins in the process. In contrast, you look like you've just casually stepped out of your home, still yawning as if nothing at all is the matter.