dreamwriter
%7CManiacal%7C
Pen to the paper, writing of wings, flying on dreams
Posts: 721
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Post by dreamwriter on Feb 22, 2011 13:41:13 GMT -5
Bryan “Surely they don’t do anything like that.” I tried to reassure her, but I wasn’t sure. I’d never heard of any crimes against the royal family and I’d always thought that it was because mother was well-loved. But maybe this girl was right. Mother had only ever involved me in politics in dealing with minor disputes among the nobles, never anything having to do with the regular people. Under my alarm, though, I was refreshed to find a girl that wasn’t worshiping the very ground, or floor, I walked on. “I wouldn’t let them do anything to you.”
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dreamwriter
%7CManiacal%7C
Pen to the paper, writing of wings, flying on dreams
Posts: 721
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Post by dreamwriter on Feb 22, 2011 13:41:29 GMT -5
Tia “And why would you care?” I demanded. “You’re a prince. I’m a farm girl. You live at the top of the city. The only thing that makes it that high from the bottom level is the best food from our farm, leaving us with the rotten, shriveled fruits of our labors.” I wanted to stop. At the rate my tongue was flying, I would insult the prince and he would kill me here and now with the sword I saw under his royal servants robes.
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dreamwriter
%7CManiacal%7C
Pen to the paper, writing of wings, flying on dreams
Posts: 721
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Post by dreamwriter on Feb 22, 2011 13:41:48 GMT -5
Bryan “What are you talking about? I thought that the food was distributed fairly.” Tia wasn’t telling me the same things I’d been told all my life, and I welcomed the change. And for some reason, her words felt like the truth, as though I’d heard them, or thought them myself at some point in time. But that didn’t make any sense. I’d led a life where whatever I asked for was mine. How could I possess these thoughts?
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dreamwriter
%7CManiacal%7C
Pen to the paper, writing of wings, flying on dreams
Posts: 721
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Post by dreamwriter on Feb 22, 2011 13:42:14 GMT -5
Tia I laughed, “What is defined as fair among the nobility has a very different meaning among the people of the lowest level and station of life. The food distribution is started at the top, the royal palace, your home, getting the first pick of the finest produce the lower level has to offer. Then the pick goes to the next level down, the nobility. They take the finest left and leave the average produce for the next two levels down, the merchants and craftsmen. By the time the food returns to the bottom level, it’s not fit for consumption and yet we have to make a diet of it. Meat from sickly cows, maggot-infested bread, rotten fruit and slimy vegetables. Knowing this, I want you look me in the eye again and tell me that the food is distributed fairly.”
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dreamwriter
%7CManiacal%7C
Pen to the paper, writing of wings, flying on dreams
Posts: 721
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Post by dreamwriter on Feb 22, 2011 13:42:31 GMT -5
Bryan The only thing I could say was “You would make the best diplomat I have ever had to argue a point with. Even my teacher couldn’t deliver a speech so passionately, though he can drone on for hours about the construction of city and bore his opposition to death.”
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dreamwriter
%7CManiacal%7C
Pen to the paper, writing of wings, flying on dreams
Posts: 721
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Post by dreamwriter on Feb 22, 2011 13:42:47 GMT -5
Tia I couldn’t help it. I laughed. “Well, my mother told me that my tongue breeds civil unrest.” I could honestly say that he was the easiest boy to talk to that I had ever met. It was incredible. Mother wouldn’t let me talk to anyone intelligent because she was afraid that I may actually cause a civil war with my tongue. My ideas in someone else’s head too were, in her mind, the very definition of disaster. “So,” I asked, “are we going to stay at the top of these stairs for the rest of lives?”
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dreamwriter
%7CManiacal%7C
Pen to the paper, writing of wings, flying on dreams
Posts: 721
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Post by dreamwriter on Feb 22, 2011 13:43:10 GMT -5
Bryan Tia was an intellectual enigma. I had no idea where she was coming from, except from a farm on the bottom level of the city. Who was she? Where did she come from? Why did she drop into my life? I pushed all my questions aside to answer hers. “Only if you want to.” I held out my hand so she could take it and we could go down the stairs together as the partners in exile that we were.
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dreamwriter
%7CManiacal%7C
Pen to the paper, writing of wings, flying on dreams
Posts: 721
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Post by dreamwriter on Feb 22, 2011 13:43:35 GMT -5
Tia I took Bryan’s outstretched hand and gave him a rare smile. He must have known what I wanted to do because we broke into a run at the same moment, racing down the stairs and into the tall, untamed grass of the Outside. I let go of his hand, unable to restrain myself from dancing anymore. More than anything, I’d wanted this; the freedom to be myself in front of someone and not be afraid of being scolded to act my age or mocking laughter wherever I went. To my surprise, he joined me and together, we ran up one hill and down the next, laughing the whole way down.
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dreamwriter
%7CManiacal%7C
Pen to the paper, writing of wings, flying on dreams
Posts: 721
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Post by dreamwriter on Feb 22, 2011 13:43:54 GMT -5
Bryan Once her bare feet touched the ground, the real ground, she took off, racing and dancing through the fields of tall grass and wild flowers. How on earth could she have known that was the exact thing that I wanted to do? I raced after her until the city was only a distant memory over many hills, a tall, straight structure rising higher than any of the trees. Suddenly I remembered something I’d read in my history books. Something bad. The only people ever exiled from the city were those who committed the worst crimes against the city and to whom a quick death would only be a mercy. Of course, they believed that Earth was too contaminated for any life to survive for long. But with the evidence before me, it seemed likely that those people would have survived very well indeed. “Tia!”
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dreamwriter
%7CManiacal%7C
Pen to the paper, writing of wings, flying on dreams
Posts: 721
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Post by dreamwriter on Feb 22, 2011 13:44:14 GMT -5
Tia I looked back at Bryan and the smile on my face quickly vanished. He knew something was seriously wrong here, something I couldn’t know in all my reading. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
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dreamwriter
%7CManiacal%7C
Pen to the paper, writing of wings, flying on dreams
Posts: 721
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Post by dreamwriter on Feb 22, 2011 13:44:32 GMT -5
Bryan While I mentally congratulated her for being so astute, I paled at the possibilities that sat before us. If conditions had been that bad, those who survived its harsh conditions would have been changed in frightening and supernatural ways. “There were people sent through those doors as a punishment because we thought that the conditions were worse than this. The people were the worst of society, who committed crimes against humanity itself. I don’t think it’s safe here.” I took her hand so we could go back to the city. But no sooner had I done this then I found that we were surrounded by the very people that I was so afraid we’d meet.
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dreamwriter
%7CManiacal%7C
Pen to the paper, writing of wings, flying on dreams
Posts: 721
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Post by dreamwriter on Feb 22, 2011 13:44:49 GMT -5
Tia I trusted Bryan with my life, though I couldn’t have known him any more than an hour. And deep within me, I could feel the truth of what he was saying… and it was reinforced by the sudden appearance of many people who I had never seen in the city before. They looked unlike anyone I would ever see there, with their wild eyes and sun-bronzed skin. When I found my tongue again, I demanded, “Who are you?” in the strongest voice I could manage.
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dreamwriter
%7CManiacal%7C
Pen to the paper, writing of wings, flying on dreams
Posts: 721
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Post by dreamwriter on Feb 22, 2011 13:45:13 GMT -5
Bryan “Oo,” crooned one of the men. “Look at the li’le princess ord’rin’ us about. Well, yer ‘ighness, welcum ‘o the Outside.” I put an arm around Tia, in a pathetic gesture of protection. “Better watch it, Patch,” said a more cultured, and decidedly feminine voice. “The little princess has a protector. Grab him.” Three of them threw themselves at me before I could move. I heard Tia squeak with fright. The woman who had spoken stepped forward, drawing back a hood as black as night to reveal a scarred but beautiful face. Tia gasped when she saw her. The woman pulled aside my jacket, revealing my sword. “Have you been raiding the royal armory to get a sword with the Lionspaw crest?” she asked in a voice that was sweet, low and menacing.
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dreamwriter
%7CManiacal%7C
Pen to the paper, writing of wings, flying on dreams
Posts: 721
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Post by dreamwriter on Feb 22, 2011 13:45:33 GMT -5
Tia “No!” I cried on an impulse. I recognized this woman. She looked like me or, technically I looked like her, the way a daughter resembles her mother, the way I’d never resembled either of my parents. “He’s… he’s my bodyguard. I’m Tia Lionspaw.” The woman looked at me with a vain and contemptuous scowl. “You’re my sister’s child? I thought she had a boy. She always was perfect, flawless to the people who saw her. They thought she could do no wrong. And I, her twin, could I not also be so considered? Of course not!” The woman grabbed me. “What have you done to be exiled from the city? Tried to run away with this whelp?” She slapped Bryan and, with a cry of anger, I launched myself at her, only to be stopped in mid-air by an unknown force that I could not fight. “Silly child,” the woman laughed. “Did you not guess that in this atmosphere, in this Garden of Eden, I would not find the forbidden fruit that gave me the power to halt my enemies in their tracks? Your mother has been remiss in her lessons for you. Now tell me. What has happened to my daughter? I was allowed to stay in the city only so long to birth my child, then I was exiled by my traitor of a sister, who birthed you in the same hour.” I knew I’d seen the woman before. There was the slightest, most remote possibility that I was her daughter. I looked at Bryan. He looked as surprised as I did. “I have no knowledge of your daughter.” I told her truthfully, because my suppositions held little weight and she would never believe it after the lie I just told her. She stood over me and the last thing I saw a hand slapping me to the ground and the stone that turned everything black.
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dreamwriter
%7CManiacal%7C
Pen to the paper, writing of wings, flying on dreams
Posts: 721
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Post by dreamwriter on Feb 22, 2011 13:46:00 GMT -5
Bryan Because they believed me only to be a royal bodyguard, they didn’t regard me as much of threat because of my age. The woman, who I now knew to be my aunt, the one mother never talked about…well, as far as I could tell, she’d done something perfectly awful which had gotten her exiled. Their camp was incredible, constructed out rather than up, but I supposed they didn’t have any materials to extent upward. They had the makings of clay buildings that I’d only seen in books and it was into one of these that they threw me. “Where’s Tia?” I demanded. The men guarding me only laughed. My aunt smiled at me. “Don’t worry, little bodyguard. My niece is perfectly safe with me.” There was something in the way she said it that made me shiver and considering the fact that Tia had hit her head and was bleeding when I last saw her, I was far from comforted. And as much as I tried to tell myself that Tia was fine, every time I closed my eyes, my imagination wove a picture of her dead body mutilated by my, not her, vengeful aunt. I was coming dangerously close to telling that woman the truth about my lineage. I sat myself down in a corner of the clay prison where the light wouldn’t reach me and I tried to plan an escape while mindlessly doodling in the dust that coated the floor.
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