*COMPLETED*
One event in history has the power to change everything. One choice...can leave an entire society shifted. For the new society, it is a constant battle between two powers, separated from one another by a defining characteristic.
...
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"I miss home, I miss dad," little Becca asserts, her tone laced with a certain sadness I've never heard come from her voice before. She holds my hand tightly, her small fingers intertwined in mine. Her once neatly cut fingernails grow with jagged edges, cutting into my palm as we walk.
I don't know how to respond to her, her reality erroneous and delusive of the truth. The person she knew as her father was as close to a father as a cobblestone in town square. She never meant anything to him, but he meant everything to her...and that's what pained me.
"I miss home too, bean," I convey after a momentary silence.
"Do you think that Quinn misses it, too?" She asks.
"Maybe, I'm sure he does," I smile down at her, as she stares at me, her beautiful auburn locks shine under the sun with a brilliant hue. Every time I look at her, all I see is Raelynn, and I have to force myself to not think of her every time I look at Becca.
It's been over a week since the run in with Raelynn, yet her caustic demeanor lives in my mind permanently. I haven't seen her since then, and strangely I haven't seen Tate either, his character like a ghost that only appears when electrical fields align. The two have been absent for virtually almost everything, from meals, to announcements, and attendance at the court once a week for safety briefings. Gage must've told him off, for that first night I learned his name, I haven't seen him nor Gage since.
I'm jarred from my thoughts to the constant sound of nagging, "Maddy, why can't I stay with you or Quinn?" She questions, her chocolate eyes glinting with wonder.
"Because your school is in Sector four and Quinn and I have jobs that don't give time for us to take you all the way there and back," I say, facing forward on the path as I speak, Becca follows right beside me.
"Why can't you or him just get a job where my school is?" She asks again, hopeful of persuasion.
"I was given a job in the kitchens, I can't leave that, silly, you would have no food to eat!" She doesn't know that there wouldn't be any food anyway, even if I was there or not
"I just miss you so much," she begins to say, that foreign hint of sorrow returning, "I miss getting to see you everyday." Her young eyes avert downward in hopelessness, her lips turning into a disappointed frown.
My heart clenches, as my own anguish floods my emotions, "I miss you, too, little bean, so much. I really miss getting to see you and everyone else so much."
One thing that Ezra left out of the job description was the fact that I wouldn't be allowed into the dining hall during meal times. Everyone back there is expected to stay back there and cook and prepare the food and clean, there's no time for us to eat until the hour is up.
Every once in a while, while walking up to the smoothed stone counter facing out into the hall, I would catch sight of them and their charismatic laughs and joyous smiles. Every time I saw them, it just reminded me of how it used to be back in the city, before any of us understood what went on behind closed doors. We all would sit, and laugh, and joke with one another, but now those moments only live on as memories. Every once in a while, I would stand at the counter for too long then get yelled at to return to my station in the back, a large smile always on my face as I tear away from the sight I gawked at, missing it terribly.
