A/N: And in this chapter you finally get to learn the names of the narrator though I'm pretty sure you might have already figured it out by now, just pretend to be surprised alright? ;) And feel free to leave a review once you're done. I'd love to hear your thoughts about it.
He was a few years older than me, with mischievous eyes that were so brown and kind and lovely. And he had such a heartwarming grin that it would alleviate all your sorrows and make you feel on top of the world. And his dark, earthy hair was always messy and unkempt and it gave him the look of a Wildman, but then again, it's not like we were any more sophisticated than he. He was everything to me… He was Clow's grandson, Syaoran. Clow said that was Chinese for Little Wolf. We've never seen wolves but I think if Syaoran were to be one, he'd be the best wolf there ever was. Clow said wolves are supposed to be very brave and loyal and he was that and a lot more.
Sakura… that's what everyone calls me. Clow says it means 'Cherry Blossom' in a language that has long since been forgotten. He says when he saw me for the first time in my mother's arms, I reminded him of that fragile flower. I'm not really sure why I would remind him of something so beautiful when I'm the exact opposite. I've got dull, green eyes that resemble the moss that grows around in places in the basement. And hair that's not pale enough to be considered blond but not dark enough to be brown either. I keep it short because that way it's easier to manage.
Tomoyo and Eriol were orphans just like me, brought back by Syaoran and me when we found them wandering out in the wasteland alone and lost and almost dying. Thankfully, they had not been infected. They were almost a decade old, and although they say they don't remember how they ended up outside, I have a vague suspicion they were thrown out of their previous shelter when the sources grew too scarce there. It is not unheard of. In fact, it is a common practice in almost all shelters to turn out the orphans and the dying ones to conserve food and water for the ones that are still living. Clow is one of the few caretakers who instead of turning away the ones that are weak or dying, gives them proper care and medication to make their lives a bit easier as they die. If I had been in any other shelter, I'd have been dead by now, perhaps pushed out of the shelter on the very first day of my contamination.
They took to me and Syaoran soon after they got here, insisting on helping us whenever we left the safety of our shelter to go outside and hunt for salvageables and scraps and anything that could be used to help keep the shelter running. Most of the time, we'd manage to bring back nothing more than eroded metal but sometimes we'd get lucky and manage to find something that had somehow been sheltered from the acid. The few men that knew how to make machines work would then try and get our discoveries to function so that they may be used in some way to keep us alive another day.
Food is another thing that we used to go out in search for. Of course, with the rain and the contaminated land and the polluted air, nothing could have grown naturally but the dispensers always managed to use the scraps that we collected to create something edible for us to consume. It never tasted like much but it was all that we had to stay alive. The dispensers worked on pretty much the same principle as the recyclers, breaking down the components of their raw materials into the most basic of forms before recombining them into organic compounds fit for consumption. I heard some of the shelters broke down the bodies of their contaminated once they were dead to produce food but that's too sickening to even consider around here.
Medicine is for the infected is produced in pretty much the same manner as the food though now that I think about it, I don't understand why Clow even bothers with something like that. It does nothing but prolong the agony of the ones that are infected. There is no miracle cure out there to insure our survival so why bother trying stretching out the period we live? Wouldn't it have been better if they were to just leave us outside to die quickly? I can't really say much about that sort of death being painless because then I'd be lying but still… having to sit in bed, and count down the hours before the paralysis stopped our heart or the sensory loss drove us insane or the toxins proved too much and shut down our body was just so…
If only one of them could hear my thoughts right about now, I'm sure I'd have gotten an earful from Eriol and Tomoyo, a disapproving frown from Clow and from Syaoran… I'm not so sure anymore. After all, he's already gone through this hell.
