This is an assignment I did for my English class. At the time, the only thing I could think to write, was fan fiction. So, in the end, I ended up turning in this bit of fan fiction, only passing it off as original by not mentioning places or names. If you can find all the Tamora Pierce references, I'll give you an e-cookie.
I do not own any of the characters or places that I reference. The narrator, however, is my own creation, as is her prison.
It's snowing again.
It seems endless, the small flakes of white drifting lazily from the grey sky onto a land already coated in the stuff. I know that I should appreciate this quiet, the small respite that the falling snow offers me, but I find myself unable to, distracted as I am by the chaos of my thoughts. As usual of late, you are the cause.
Yes, you.
It's not something you did, no. Rather, something you didn't. You didn't come back- haven't come back, I should say. You promised.
I miss you.
That bothers me more than a broken promise, hurriedly made in the dead of night, once, when your friends, allies, came to take you from this gods-forsaken pit. I never understood why the guards hated you so much. You were always quiet, with your hard face and eyes. You never gave nobody any trouble. They still beat you though. The hardest, everyone says so. They still demanded answers from you, answers to things that you couldn't possibly have known. You were just a refugee, taken into the service of the Commander of your camp, the famous Protector. You weren't someone important, not some to be interrogated, not someone to be tortured.
I don't think that it mattered to them I think they're monsters: they just like to hear screams. Maybe that was why they hurt you so terribly. You never screamed, not once. I tried to be like you, but I'm weaker than you are, much weaker. I'm weak and I'm scared and I'm going to die here. I don't want to die, but what other choice do I have? They hate me now, and hurt me more often. They tell me that it's all your fault, what they're doing to me. They tell me that if I told them how you escaped, I would be rewarded: better food, warmer clothes, more blankets, a way out of this damn place.
I know more than you think I do. If I told them all I knew, you would have a right to be afraid for those that helped you. The kitchen slave is kind to me, though, giving me extra food when she can, and the hostlers never mind when I watch them work.
I'm hungry. Not that it's any different from normal, but today the pain seems especially great. I curl around my empty belly and wonder how long it will take for my body to betray my mind entirely and collapse into the final rest.
I think about you all the time. You were the closet thing I've had to a mother in a long time, and I'm glad I knew you, even if you did break your promise. I'm used to promise breakers, no one has ever cared enough about me to help me. Even if you forgot about me as soon as you were beyond the prison walls, you showed me kindness while you were inside. Even if you did try and make me eat the things they try to pass as vegetables.
Now though, I would eat a plate full of vegetables without complaint. It would be better than the food they're giving me now.
If they give me food at all.
The sun is setting behind the wall. Today is not a day for food, then. My stomach protests the emptiness, and I close my eyes, trying instead to picture the far off places you would tell me about, sometimes, after I helped you with your hurts. I remember the story about your mother best, the one about how she once stood against pirates in order to protect ancient treasures. I remember all the stories that you told me about your hero. Commonplace as they were in your country, they were all new to me. Sometimes though, they seemed familiar, as if I had heard them, once, before I came here.
I miss the way you would always be here for me when the guards tossed me back into our cell, my cell now, and the way you would hug me when I woke from the nightmares that everyone suffers here. The way you would say nothing at all in these moments, because we both knew that anything you could say to comfort me would be a lie. Our whole world was a nightmare, and at least the nightmares in our sleep could only terrify us.
The nightmares out here could kill us.
Sometimes, I find myself thinking that it would be easier to just stop. Stop eating, stop sleeping, stop caring, but, most of all, stop thinking. I would die, and, in this place, sooner before later, and that would be the end of that. I remember my promises though, and the way your mouth always tightened when we heard that another one had given up, and I can't find it in myself to disappoint you, even though you've obviously forgotten about me.
I remember the night you left clearly. It had been a late summer thunderstorm, heavy and loud. The perfect cover for any noise made by an escape, though how you timed it so perfectly I will never be able to guess. The man who came to our cell, who was he? I've never seen you look so happy as you were in the moment he arrived. He motioned for you to hurry, that the guards would be shifting soon. You went to him quickly, quietly, touched his arm, and then looked back at me. The man was shaking his head. I couldn't understand the whispered words, but when you looked at me again, your hard eyes were filled with regret.
"I have to leave," you'd said, "I can't take you with me, Elodie, not tonight." The blue-eyed soldier glanced nervously about as you talked to me, he wanted to get out and get out now. I couldn't have agreed more with him, but your words confused me. Leave? No one left this place. Hundreds, maybe thousands, had died in the attempt. You were risking everything! The guards here held no sympathy for those who failed; it was pure insanity to even try. But somehow I had known this was coming, I had known. You hid it well, but sometimes, late at night, when they tossed you back into the cell, battered, bruised, beaten, I would see a spark of determination in your eyes, mixed with hatred for those that were your tormenters. You were different from everyone else here, and that mad scheme proved it.
"I'll come back for you." You whispered, hugging my small frame tightly, minding the fresh injuries, fresh pains. I didn't realize I was crying, hadn't realized that I still could.
Then you'd disappeared, following the blue-eyed man down the corridors and out of sight. Out of my life, forever, I was sure.
I still hope though.
The guards are sure I'll break any day now. They never replaced you, after the escape, and, without a cellmate, I'm lonely. No one is able to speak to me without receiving warning blows from the guards that are my constant watchers. They fear that, since I was your cellmate, I know your secrets, know how to escape, and that I'm simply biding my time until they relax and sink once again to complacency and ennui. If I could still laugh, I would. I know only that the blue-eyed man came and spirited you away, only that the kitchen slave let him in and the hostlers got you out. I wouldn't have been able to duplicate your strategy, even if I had the will to do so. I had no blue-eyed man to magic the keys from the guards, no friends on the outside who even know I'm alive. I've been here far too long.
I never could tell you my story. I wanted to, gods I did. You were so understanding, so kind. Quiet, stoic, and full of surprises, you were an uncommon kind of person. I was the only one who knew about your predawn exercises, and that calculating look in your eyes. It was just after you escaped that I realized that you probably weren't who you'd said you were. It did not take me near so long to realize why you'd lied. After the first round of new tortures, I understood. The less I knew about you, the less they could force me to say, the less I would hurt you. The scar on my throat is the only story you ever learned from me, my name you had to learn from the guards.
I would have told you so many things. How I got here, who I was before I was thrown into this place, who I had been before you came, and perhaps I would have told you about my family. My brothers, my sisters, my mother, my father, I would have told you everything about them. You would have learned that I was from your country, too. I had been born there, during one of the many stops of my family's constant journey. They had been Players then, when we were still happy, still alive, and spies, too, though I hadn't known that until later. I had an older brother, who had stayed behind in your nation to become a warrior. If he had survived all of these years and wars, he would still be there. Luck had saved him from my parent's fate, or my fate, perhaps. I'm glad that he got away. At least one of us will survive.
How long have I been here? You asked me once the first day; before you realized that my silence came not from mistrust or timidity. I don't' know, and it is doubtful that anyone really does. Records here are poorly kept, if an inmate is killed no one notices. As long as the body is accounted for, no one truly cares if it is breathing or not. Since paperwork is not necessary, no one keeps track of how long people have been here. Only those who are never to be released are sent here, so much commodities as time are no longer anything more than luxuries. Numbness is required to survive here, and that is something you had mastered.
Sometimes I wonder what kind of life you'd led to turn you into the person you were. Who were your parents? Did you have siblings? Where were you from? Where had you lived? Did you have a lover, someone to miss you? Questions always raced through my mind when you were around, but I could never ask them. Stories were well enough, but I wanted to know who you were. I shake my head, speculation and worrying will do nothing for me, not now.
Quietly, I forced myself over to the barred window of my cell. A small opening with a wide sill, I perched precariously on the edge. The cold breeze from the open air and the piling snow made this place uncomfortable, this deep into winter, but I could stand the cold, for a while at least. The cold helped me clear my mind, and to give me a little extra indifference towards the world around me. I had tried to force myself to stop hoping that you would ever return, but it still pained me that you had left. The people here had always been wary of me, the daughter of spies was likely to become a spy herself, after all, and they did not want me knowing their secrets.
I eyed the snow by the window apprehensively. I'm hungry, thirsty, and exhausted. I know that I should not eat the snow for I am already far too cold, but I am desperate fro something, anything, to enter my complaining stomach. I gather a handful and tip it carefully into my mouth. It melts slowly, gradually coating my paper dry mouth with freezing water. I swallow quickly, cringing at the sound the water makes in my empty stomach. I take another handful, and another. Soon, the drift is gone, and I am still hungry, still exhausted. The guard passing my cell is whistling a tune.
It's stopped snowing. The night is quiet, and as the cloud parts, a beam of silvery moonlight streams through my window, illuminating the shadows of my cell. I close my eyes slowly, ignoring the chill of the window. If I fall asleep now, will I still be alive to wake up? I drift in half dreams for a time before falling into the black slumber that has become my near constant companion.
Perhaps tomorrow.