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POV Clover


"RING! RING!" A loud noise rang from the living room. "RING RING!"

I moaned in despair, sprawling on my bed. "Ughhh! Please." My eyes fluttered open as blurry light from the window in my room filtered through them.

"RING RING!"

"Please just hang up..." I groaned. Finally, after about 30 seconds, the ringing stopped. I closed my eyes yet again, pleading to go back to sleep.
...
...
...
"RING RING!"

Only for it to ring again.

"CLOVER!" A voice bellowed from the depths of the household. No doubt my father. "ANSWER THE DAMN PHONE!"

For me to be named after a clover, I sure didn't hold a lot of good luck. Begrudgingly, I rolled off my bed, picking myself up and warily went downstairs, sighing a deep sigh along the way. "RING RING!"

I groaned.

"Hold on a minute will ya?" I said to the phone.

I picked up the phone and held it up towards my ear. A distant crackling sound comes from it. After hearing nothing for about 5 seconds, I was about to call it quits before I heard a voice. A robotic voice. I deadpanned. "Great, another bot. What a great wake up call." Yet I decided that sense it woke me up, I might as well listen to what it had to say.

"-e would like to inform you that the case of Jade Merryweather has been reopened due to constant requests. If you have any information you would like to give in relation to this case, we would greatly appreciate it if you called -" I slammed the phone down.
"Stupid officers. They don't realize she was in Mount Ebott. They think she was kidnapped, even though there's sure fire evidence she wasn't." I said to myself, I walked over to the window showing Mount Ebott in the distance.

"Six kids went over there, none of them were found." I began to pace back and forth. "No JUSTICE was found for them, and their cases all went cold or misjudged."
...
...
...
"This can't go on any longer."

I felt a fire light in my heart, one that made my entire body tremble with heat. It was a fire that couldn't be put out; that couldn't be erased. Maybe it was because my father was a cop, or maybe it was how I was raised, but either way, my SOUL pulses with the yearning for JUSTICE!

"CLOVER!" He heard his father yell. Clover frowned; feeling the fire he had dissipated. "GET DRESSED! I NEED YA IN THE BARN ASAP TODAY!"

Clover frowned again. He used to love working in the barn, but his dad overworked him, and sooner or later, he grew tired of it. With a deep sigh, he retreated back to his room to get ready for what came today.


30 minutes later


I looked up into the bathroom mirror. My young, sun-tanned face, with its usual blank expression, stared right back at me. My dad always joked about how I'm so stoic all the time, and never show emotion. I picked up a comb and tried to fix my unruly brown hair, but to no avail. My hair would never be tamed, much like my spirit.


After my usual morning routine, I grabbed my cowboy hat on the counter and mounted it on my head, tipping it at just the right angle, just opposite of my dad. My dad always told me: "A rancher always tips his hat downwards." But I'm not like him; I'm different, much to my father's disapproval.

I adjusted my yellow and blue polka-dotted bandana neck scarf to hide the scars on my neck, and smoothened out my brown leather jacket and plain brown shirt. Since I was so short, I couldn't see my belt or my blue jeans and black steel-toe work boots, but I knew they were adjusted okay, cept' for my pants.

I rolled up the leg cuffs of my blue jeans to where they didn't drag on the ground. Since my clothes were mostly hand-me-downs and they didn't fit right, I'd hafta usually wear belts and roll up my sleeves a bit to make them fit. Not even my socks were the right size, neither were they matching.

I decided I was done and went to the living room, where my dad was currently sitting on the couch watching the weather channel on his box TV. "Well what took ya so long?" I heard my dad say in his rough, hoarse voice. "If I didn't know any better I'd think you were putting make up on er somethin'."

I rolled my eyes. "Dad!" I groaned.

"What? You take just as long to get ready as a girl. Now come on! We got work to do!"

My dad jumped to his feet and walked over to me. I looked up at the muscular beast I called "dad". My dad basically wore the same outfit as me, but several times larger. I looked like an ant compared to him. But then again, I'm only like 10 years old. My dad knelt down to face me, fixing my hat much to my annoyance.

"There ya go bud... Now I know I work ya hard but today I thought I'd let ya do something easy. Just give the hay to the animals. Kay?"

I smiled. Finally, he gave me mercy. About time. Maybe today wouldn't be so bad. "Yessir," I said.
My dad smiled at me. "Now that's ma boy!"

I felt something when he said that...

We both exited the house, leaving the rest of my family with peace.

"Oh yeah! I forgot to tell ya." My father said as he closed the door.

I felt a sense of dread.

"We have no hay, so you'll hafta get it. Grab the sickle in the barn will ya?" He then trudged on towards his tractor to check on the crops.

I sighed, "Just great."

I watched as my father drove off towards the rising sun, before walking towards the barn. Hopefully that's all I hafta do today, but something tells me it won't be.



2 hours later



"Stupid chores." I complained, piling the rest of the hay I needed into the wheelbarrow. "If only he'd given me a bigger wheel barrow, I wouldn't of hafta made so many trips back and forth." I wiped some sweat off his brow.

"Stupid sun does no good either."

I put the scythe into the latch on my belt and aggressively pushed the wheel barrow towards the barn. Luckily we have flat ground so it wasn't that bad. Then I deposited it in the last section of the stable. Usually it would've never of taken me this long, but my dad always comes back to tell me to do something else, and I'd hafta go to do that too.
Finally, now that he was at work, I could do what he had assigned me to do in the first place. I exited the stable with a smile on my face, returning to my house. I saw my mom outside the door, presumably waiting for me. I started to sweat again, praying to god that I won't hafta do to-
"-the store."

I looked up at her, dazed. "Ma'am?"

My mom looked annoyed. "I said: Can you go to the store?"

I had been defeated. Mentally I slumped, but I knew that my mom read body language like she was bi-lingual, so I braced myself instead.

"Yes ma'am."

"Good." She seemed satisfied. "Here's a list. And here's $40." She handed me the list and the two 20 dollar bills. I decided to look at what she wanted me to buy.

Flour
Cornbread
Potatoes
Apples
3 Cartons of orange juice (cause that's all your father drinks)
Coffee beans
Whisking utensil
Detergent
Shovel
Lawn Chair
Metal bucket

I looked at her like she was crazy. "Mom. This is gonna cost more than 40 dollars."

"Then make it work honey." She closed the door on me.

I took slow, deep breaths, calming myself down. Internally I was fighting a fire, but on the outside, I was sure I remained stoic. Begrudgingly, I made my way down to the dirt road, and set foot. It'd be a long journey, since we lived in the woods, but it was a journey I'd have to make.

Plus, walking through the woods wasn't so bad. Nature had a great way of cheering me up with its natural awe and beauty.



A good bit later



"So, you want me. Me. To sell you ALL of these items, for just 40 dollars?" The store clerk, and long-time friend, Daven, asked me.

I stared at him blankly. "If I had more than 40 dollars, we wouldn't be here right now."

He sighed in exhaustion, sliding his hands down his face. "Look Clover, I love ya, but I just can't. Last time we did this, my boss found out and almost fired me."

I was getting desperate. "Oh come on Daven. Please!"

"No Clover. I can't. Just... I don't know. Leave out the lawn chair. Why do you even need a lawn chair?"

"Dunno."

"FINE! Fine. Come back tomorrow and clean the windows for me. At least I'll have something to say to my boss." Daven took the $40 and put it in the cash register.

I smirked. "No change?"

"If you go somewhere Clover!"

I laughed, leaving the grocery store, buggy in tow. I had no idea what I'd do without Daven.

Suddenly my buggy hit a bump and tumbled over, the contents inside spilling out.

"NO!!!" I yelled. Mom is definitely going to kill me for this. I quickly went through the items, sorting out the ones that were damaged and the ones that survived the impact. In total, most of the produce was gone, laid out on the floor, open and cut. I briefly considered going back to Daven, but I knew he wasn't going to let me exchange these items.

My hand grazed something in the pile. It felt like paper. I cleared out the items on top to reveal a missing person's poster.

"Interesting," I said.

It showed a picture of a young girl, about the same age as me. At the bottom it read:

Jade Merryweather
$250 Reward
If found

"Mmm..."

I folded the piece of paper and put it in my pocket. For some reason, I felt that odd feeling again in my heart. It was recognizable, familiar, as if I've always had it. Something that yearned for JUSTICE inside of me. A fire. A flame. One without a candle. One without a source. It burned off something I couldn't describe. It burned off the actions I made. What I could do to fuel it. Yet even in idle hours, when I did nothing, it still burned, resonating in my SOUL.


"Something's telling me to find out what happened... No... It's telling me to find them. To bring JUSTICE."

I put the items back into the buggy and sped off, not realizing I'd accidentally stolen the cart.

"I... I think I hafta go to Mount Ebott."

At that moment, JUSTICE burned so heavily in my heart, I could feel it wafting off me into the air. 

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