Existing (under editing)

Chapter 8*

Pepper had not been happy when he caught Alma and I sneaking in last night, sitting and was waiting right in on the porch in the shadows as we tried to open the door silently. I was glad I couldn't hear him as he exasperatingly sneezed and grovelled as he shooed us indoors, who knew what he was actually was saying, only Alma. Out of the corner of my eye as we had been getting lectured, apparently, I could see the little mischievous bunnies giggling in their little hole. It sounded almost funny how Pepper "talked", and reminded me of my own mothers' reaction when I would get in trouble. How her nose used to wrinkle and her eyes squinted into little slits as she would stare me down with hands on her hips, tapping her foot.

We were hurried straight to bed, Pepper taking on a parenting role of his own, treating us like punished children or two disobedient teenagers, nuzzling us to hurry. He even jumped up and pushed me in the direction of my own bed which was set up semi-permanent next to his in the corner of the room for the couple of weeks I had been here, going out of his way to divide me from Alma for the rest of the night as I stared after her climbing up to her room. I watched how her hair swayed as she disappeared up the ladder and couldn't help getting caught up in how we had almost kissed. I literally fell into bed with her detracting me in my mind but really I had lost concentration I fell by slipping on the blanket on the smooth wood floor boards, falling forward onto the old futon we had found in the storage room. Pepper looked to have had victory in my embarrassment and padded off to his own bed, grinning and probably laughing on the inside at my clumsiness. After an hour or two I fell asleep smiling the last image of how Alma has risked waving a sneaky goodnight hanging upside down from her room above, quickly as to not to get caught by Pepper, mud still on her cheeks.

My eyes started to open with the sunrise which was turning the inside of my lids from black to a red yellow, taking in a deep breath of fresh forest air that drifted through the window. I could see the light streaming across the room with stretched out, shadows becoming shorter as the time passed. Dreams of the fairy like insects were fading from my mind. But Alma's smile stayed, etched in, a permanent image and around it a mix of all the different times I had seen it all blurred together. Like when she would sit on the deck painting or splashing in the water with the otters. But the one right now, that is most dear to me, was that moment last night, when I had turned to her as she had swept the hair out of my eyes, that simple act of pure kindness or care, I don't know what exactly made me feel... so gooey inside. I curled in and hugged the pillow as my heart leaped at the memory. I'm supposed to be a man and yet I'm weakened by her. What is wrong with me? But she had been the most beautiful thing I think I have ever seen. At least in a long time that is. No, she was more. She was my new light, there was hope. Places like this, there had to be others. If she could survive, why couldn't everyone else. I tossed aside the old bad memories, letting the ones of Alma flourish and bloom in my mind, trying to prolong my happy mood.

I extended my arms and legs out and curved my spine, feeling my bones pop in my joints as I stretched, my feet escaping the length of the blanket. I could barely hear her as Alma started to stir up stairs, but the soft sound of the sheets brushing together as she roused more vigorously gave her away. Sitting up I rubbed at my eyes with my palms letting the sleeping sand ball up from my eyes then fall. I then, grabbing a cup of water from a chair, made sure the rest of the mud was off my face. I finished and leaned my arms on my knees, letting my chin rest on top of my folded arms and I gazed out the window as my vision adjusted, thinking of the past.

That city was where I grew up in, the one I had drawn. Destroyed from the uprising of a rebel group of mentally insane. The unprepared colony of people that had been living with the comforts and treats of technology and had become lazy and unknowledgeable was not aware of the threat inside the walls. Back before I was born, they had struggled to live with no electricity and no survival stills or lessons after the group had taken over and destroyed everything. They harboured people as slaves and limited resources. They were trapped in the city by the azure shield that had once saved many colonies like ours from the dark times, was now locking everyone in thanks to the self-pronounced supreme ruler. Thinking himself a king, just because he controlled the power and the food, everything we relied on.