Newt Imagines

Her. (P2)

It's been a few weeks since we all arrived here, splayed on the grass in the middle of the glade with nothing but our name in our minds. Five weeks, to be exact - using the weekly deliveries in The Box as a method of keeping count. That means that my memory now spans... five weeks. I shudder at the idea of my blank mind, and wonder if my past memories are kept somewhere on the other side of that elevator shaft... or if whoever did this has just discarded them like meaningless remnants of the past. Of course, in these previous five weeks, memory has been the least of my problems.

We've spent most of our waking hours building, planning, gardening or eating. We don't have any mirrors yet, but I can tell just by looking down at my arms how much this intense physicality has affected my body. My arms are at least twice the size that they were when we first arrived here, though no where near the size of some of the other boys', and covered in scattered bruises and grazes. Nothing serious, just the marks of physical labour. Hard work that payed off.

The glade is almost unrecognisable from when we began renovations. The farm has tripled in size, with vegetables sprawling out in the garden plots and a much larger chicken coop. We even built a slicing hut for when the young calves get large enough to eat, and another shed to keep all the tools. We even built a bathhouse, but only after Y/N began to refuse to walk near any of us. But most noticeably, we built a whole new house.

Affectionately nicknamed "The Homestead", the building is double storey and situated in the corner of the glade, allowing us to use the walls as supports to build it. Downstairs are the common areas: a large meeting space in which we sit to discuss further plans for the glade, a dining hall for us to eat the food that Frypan cooks in the enormous adjoining kitchen, having to use that single frying-pan for weeks until we got more utensils in the Box, hence the nickname. The building has enough rooms upstairs to sleep all of us boys in hammocks fashioned out of some cloth that came up the day we arrived, though the temperature in the glade never really changes, day or night.

No one has questioned her choice, and I doubt anyone expected her to join the rest of us, but she still sleeps alone in her hut. Disappearing behind that wooden door at the end of every day, it only highlights the invisible barrier separating her from the rest of us, adding to the mystery that engulfs her. Despite being our leader, our sense of reason and our support all at once, she's still an enigma to us boys.

She designed this whole place; every single addition we have made was first drawn up on paper by her and her alone. We would come up with ideas over dinner, but the next morning they were already drawn to scale, with materials listed and number of workers accounted for. It makes me wonder if she ever sleeps.

Gossip around the glade has the boys whispering about her, but she doesn't seem to take notice. Some say she's crazy, some think she's a witch... Each day more questions arise about her, never to be answered, simply increasing the strange speculations. But every negative word that comes out hushed about her is followed by the only truth we know: that she is the only reason we are still alive in here. Without her confident leadership, her resolution skills and direction, we would have dwindled away into oblivion by now, or worse.

Of course, the suspicions only stem from what is unknown about her; and I have made an effort that not many of the other boys have, and have tried to get to know her.

While most of our focus the past weeks has been on upgrades to our living situation, thirty boys couldn't all work on the same thing. She took charge of that too, separating us into tasks for each day: the strongest boys like Alby and Nick are entrusted with the building jobs; Frypan takes care of all our food for the day; and the more agile ones of us are left in the garden with her.

All day, each day, except when the builders need our help with some manual labour, we sow seeds to increase the harvest. It is there that I try to talk to her.