In Favor of The Dreamers |Bertholdt Hoover

S1 Ch1- The Gone girl.

''Poinsettia? What is this?'' a folded paper landed in front of her almost empty plate at the table. Conveniently opened to a passage she'd been reading; Recruitment for the 104th Cadet Corps beginning soon. Brown eyes slid past the paper up to her stepfather, Jonas's hardened and concerned expression. Confusion in his cerulean eyes. Then to her mother's face. Her brown eyes fixed on her daughters face and a question was etched onto her brow;

The old news paper had been folded back to that passage where it had stayed like that as she looked over the requirements over and over. An old newspaper that was supposed to be hidden in a possession chest in her bedroom. Hidden at the bottom no less. Poinsettia's milky brown eyes slid dangerously in her brother's- who'd been overly interested in his breakfast - direction.

''Cal!'' she hissed, prompting her mother to slap an impatient hand on the table. ''No.'' she said firmly. ''Don't turn this around on him because you got caught. You're not joining the military.'' Poinsettia fought the urge to roll her eyes at her own mother before parting her lips to tell a lie. But clamped it shut again. ''I was just thinking about it.''

''You'd break your mother's heart if you charged out there and died.''

came the backhanded reassurance disguised as a talk down from her step-father. And then her mother tried to go to the extremes to get her to stay. If she thought that marrying her off to that entitled, self absorbed...

These were all the last memories that cycled through Poinsettia's mind as she stole to the shed behind her house near their chicken coop. She slipped inside. Carefully moving around so she wouldn't bump into anything or knock anything over, she decided not to light her match until the shed door had closed completely behind her as she didn't want to draw her attention with the light.

She looked around, her hand moving the candelabra around slowly until she found the rusty shears that her step-father used to cut the heads off of their older hens. She freed the textured hair from her braid in one single chop. The sound of the rusty metal and the realization that she was actually doing this brought goosebumps to her skin as her strands fell down around her and onto the flood beneath her.~

''Hmn? Wha-?'' Calix opened one sleepy eye to see his sister staring down at her, though half asleep he didn't offer anything outside of a sleepy protest. He had been sleeping so soundly he hadn't even mustered the energy to tell her off for waking him up.

Though a caring smile graced his lips as she lulled him back to sleep with the press of her lips to his forehead following him back down to his pillow.

''I love you, Calix.'' she whispered gently. Packing what she thought she needed-- including a couple of notebooks consisting of handwritten stories and the notes of the records she'd forged- she was out of the door.

Descending down from the congestion of Wall Sina had been easier than she remembered. Even easier when she had a few goods to pawn off.

A barret that had been given to her by an Aunt one year that she hadn't been the biggest fan of. But it had gotten her a fair bit of money for a small stash. As did the earrings she'd stolen from her mother- A gift from Jonas, her stepfather.

Gone she was. And everything she knew about the things around her.

Gone were her long curls now traded for an uneven shoulder length shag type hairstyle. (That was her only regret so far.) it looked a little ratty, as if a child had cut it. She'd resolved to tie it up in an almost too tight bun with a throng she'd taken from her mother.

Could she say gone was her innocence? Had that even existed to begin with? Naivete for sure. But her innocence ? in the back of her mind, she was sure she locked a tiny bit away into the most secluded part of her senses.

She was doing this.

Looking around, at first she didn't think many people had good reasons for being here. That's what her mother had said anyways. But that had obviously been a lie. There already weren't too many people who looked like her here. As evident by the way eyes followed her around HQ when she'd arrived. She tried to tell herself that they were just staring at new meat in general. But she wasn't stupid, naive? For sure. But she was never afforded the luxury of being completely stupid. But she had been told before- and seen with her eyes as sometimes people looked down at her that for some reason people, with her particular skin tone were just few and far between.