Ashes

Thirty: Come Again Another Day

A/N: It's sort of sad that all of my chapters start with apologies for being late, but here's the final chapter! Enjoy, friends! 

I'm four years old. It's dark outside, with nothing but city lights keeping the stars from shining. My feet are bleeding because of broken glass, thrown in anger by the man I called my father in his frustration at my mother. All I could repeat in my head, like a sick sort of mantra, was "Don't cry,". If Titus had seen me, he would've been worried, too. That was a weakness I could not afford; my brother did not need a wimp of a sister to add to his already heavy burden, and I did not need someone to worry about me. I stole some bandages from my mother's room and forced myself to stomach the pain of my sneakers for the next week or two. It's a wonder nothing ever got infected.

I'm six years old. The sun is hidden behind clouds that bring nothing but dry lightning, but it's not like I can see it this far underground. Other children laugh as the girl from the Topside stumbles blindly after her older brother in the streets. The street kids of the lower levels are tough as nails, and I decided that day that I was going to grow up to be just as tough as they. When I first meet Felix in the spring, I learn how to laugh again. Somehow, no matter how bad things feel like they get, the boy with the scruffy dark hair and goofball grin managed to make me relearn what it meant to smile. I wish now that I had retained some of that knowledge; every day, it moves farther and farther away.

I'm eight years old. There's something like thunderstorms in the midday air, with swirling dust covering the dome that was meant to filter sunlight. At first, the ginger-haired girl who transferred into my class strikes me as sour, but the more time I spent with her, the more I realized the kindred spirit we shared. Soon, I think I was closer to Callista than to Felix, and both would remain my closest friends for many years to come.

I'm twelve years old. Winter isn't exactly thrilling when the world is consumed by desert, but somehow, the fractured culture has retained some memory of christmas. There's no snow or caroling or really any of those things talked about in the Histories, except for the lights and gifts for those who can afford them. Titus, now at eighteen, had only told me yesterday that he was leaving. Matthias, the man we thought was our father, had decided that it was time for Titus to take his place in the world as one of the dome's Guardsmen, and although we both know he'd rather be at home with me and Thea, this is what he has always been raised for. The selfish part of me knows that when he leaves, my brother, my protector, my best friend will be gone. I don't know how I'll survive it. It takes me weeks to start to come to terms with it, and it takes Thea just as long to finally come to terms with the fact that her feelings for my brother go beyond friendship. They officially start dating one month before he leaves, and a part of me is bitter because I see him very little during the time preceding his departure. I feel stupid now for my selfishness.

I'm fourteen years old. There's something almost funny about the fact that I'm choosing to follow my mother's footsteps; I had always promised myself that I would never be like her. Somehow, though, when the Headmaster of Choosing asks me which career I will be pursuing, my stupid self sticks up her chin and says, "I'm going to be a doctor." I can almost hear Felix and Callista's jaws hit the ground. My stupid teenager self almost relishes the shock my friends give me, because it proves only one thing: I am still my own. Though some part of me is apparently bound to my mother's history, I still have the power to choose. The world will not fall if I choose something selfishly, and it will not flourish if I choose selflessly. I am just Ariadne Simon, the tired girl from the shattered home of glass that wants nothing if not a choice. The shriveled husk of that girl that remains within me still longs for her beating heart; for the hope that wedged itself through her pulsing lungs.

I'm sixteen years old. The bitterness that had long since set roots in my throat only continues to grow. The few days of refuge are spent hiding in the stale smoke of the Lower Levels, the pulse of music replacing my frail heartbeat more often than not. Callista and Felix, consumed with each other, either don't notice or don't comment on the slow but accelerating fade that I'm moving towards. My life is a whirlwind of two things: my studies and my escapes. If you didn't know better, you wouldn't know where I lived... or if I had a place to live. The coldness that seeps through my veins longs for the end of schooling, to create my own life. Time flies by, and before I know it, I have to adjust to a life where I'll actually earn my place in this world by my mother's side. I'll turn these frail bones to steel, even if it kills me.