To feel alive -El Eaton

Chapter One

Eleanor woke up with the sun. She stared at the grey ceiling for a while before gritting her teeth and getting out of her warm bed on to the cold grey floor. She walked over to the grey curtains and pulled them back to reveal the sun just above the horizon. From her window she could see rows and rows of identical houses. All grey and plain much like the clothes of the inhabitants. The majority of her life was dull. Everything was plain and the same, the food, the clothes, the people, the houses, the life style. She was trapped in the home with her family, and it was suffocating her, pushing her under the grey water.
She knew that she had things to do. She knew that looking out the window and appreciating the beauty of the sky line far of in the distance above the grey houses, those could never be beautiful to Eleanor, was self indulgent and that if her father caught her wrapped in her own thoughts and not doing anything in particular she would be in trouble.

Eleanor pulled her dull dress over her body, she hated all that it represented but was for once thankful for the modest clothing. It covered her visible ribs spotted with dark, almost black, purple bruises that were only now fading in to a dark blue. It hid the deep cuts in her back that were shadowed with multiple scars of previous late nights. She pulled the practical boots over her callused feet. It had been years since she got the bus instead she opted of the 5mile run, physical exhaustion was the only was way for her to sleep at night, so where ever she could she pushed her body to the limit.
"WHERE ARE YOU?" Bellowed a voice from the the sitting room.
"Coming!" She sighed as she left the safety of solitude in her room. She ran down the stairs.
"Where is my breakfast? You know what is expected of you, or at least I thought you would remember it after it was secured in you memory last night.
She shiver the memory of the fire licking her skin and the words spat in her ear.
"Yes of course I was just making my self presentable for the aptitude tests I didn't want to show you up." She returned genuinely upsetting him would just be more dangerous in the long run.
"I want you to remember that no matter what you an abnegation through and through, it's what you are and what you always will be. Going against it would only end you faction less wishing for you old life again." He all but exploded at her.
"Yes of course." She said before slipping out the room to make a meal of bread and water.
She couldn't help but believe him. Despite the what he did to her he was still her father and he knew her better that anyone except maybe Tobi... no she couldn't let her self down that route. No matter how much she detested that four grey walls of abnegation, which felt more like a prison than a home, she had no choice she didn't want to be faction less and Father knows best.
"Father!" She called.
"I've told you it Marcus to you! What do you want?"
"It's ready, your breakfast,"
"Oh about time, I'm hungry and tired."
She quickly brought his plate to the table and waited seeing if she would be deemed human enough to deserve food.
"WHAT IS THIS ITS HORRIFIC" He screamed at her.
"It's the designated abnegation breakfast that one that you agreed on" No matter how hard he tried he would not make her scared, he would not, he would not...
"I agreed on it for the others not for me, don't you think that being the faction leader I deserve something a bit better?"
To be completely honest she thought that he deserved to eat mud and starve like he made her. But this was not the time to mention that.
"I'll fetch you some fruit?"
"No it's to late now, you leave I'll get myself something,"
No breakfast today then she thought as she made her way out of the house with her stomach far past rumbling.