EXPLODE

eight

Later that day, I sat in my room, studying a peculiar picture on the wall facing me.

It was a map, different from the map I grew up learning, which consisted of the different areas of our kingdoms. There were different districts within the factions, but this, this, was entirely different.

It was huge. It made the world seem so big, if it even was the world. I recognized my kingdom, Auradon, on the part of the map previously named "the United States of America."

There were other familiar names too. There was Britain and France, which I assumed where the other kingdoms were placed.

I cocked my head, looking at all the other forgotten names. Of the seven kingdoms that existed, there were over 189 countries forgotten. Had that much been destroyed?

A knock on the door interrupted my thoughts, and I turned my head towards the door for a quick second to see who had entered before turning back to the map.

"Studying the map, huh?" Liam asks, quietly walking over and sitting by me on the edge of the bed.

"Aren't you mad at me?" I ask, not willing myself to make eye contact with him. I hear him sigh, and I glance out of the corner of my eye as he looks at the map too, his eyes watering.

"I realize it's not your fault; this is what you were fighting for to begin with," he tells me. He lays his hand, which is almost double the size of mine, over my hand. "I want to fight too, but I'm supposed to be loyal to the castle."

I stay quiet. What am I supposed to tell him? Things will get better? I didn't even know if things would be going better for me, how could I promise it to him, who already lost his family?

"You know that actually used to be the world before the war?" He asks, taking his hand off of mine and pointing at the map. I shake my head in response. "All the Kingdoms only make up a fraction of that."

"Where are we currently on the map?" I ask, looking at America, but not being able to pinpoint where.

"A state that used to be called Virginia," he points towards our location on the map, board lining the coast of the country. "Did you know we're only fifty miles from a beach, and yet nobody's ever been?"

"What's a beach?" I ask, wrinkling my nose at the word. It sounded disgusting, close to a swear word. Surely, it couldn't be a pleasant place.

"From the pictures I've seen, it looks beautiful. There are these magnificent blues waves, completely controlled by the moon and tide, that can rise to be over thirty feet tall. There used to be a sport where people would just try to ride them out," he begins, his eyes once again sparkling with interest, "and so many creatures lived in the ocean, that's what it was called, and get this - only five percent of it was explored. Who knows what lived beneath the current?"

I'm captivated by his speaking as he continues, his voice sounding like beautiful poetry.

"And there was this stuff called, uh, what's the word, sand! It's supposed to be able to run under the balls of your feet, that were only tiny grains of particles consisting of this big place. There were all sorts of things to be discovered in the sand - more animals, seashells- and people would just sit there for a day and just... enjoy themselves."

"It sounds amazing," I say.

"One day, I aspire to be the first person to visit the beach since the war," he tells me, tracing his fingers over the coast of our country.

"Tell me about the other countries on here," I say. "What happened to them all?"

"Only seven remain, as you know. Us, what used to be the United States, France and Britain are apart of Europe, India," he gestures towards another point on the map, "is here," he moves his finger along the map as he lists off where the final kingdoms are.