**Warning as this chapter has some disturbing imagery**
The sore ankles of a five-year-old drum a beat against a stool's wooden legs. Only the small girl's face can be seen over the countertop, still much too small for her arms to rise and easily eat off her plate as Father does at her side. The sleeves of her jacket slide down her wrists as Annie leans back and sips on her glass of chocolate milk. She's bored and Father and she don't talk much unless the knowledge of fighting and enduring broken bones isn't being communicated. The racket of laughs and chatter rises within the small restaurant and curiosity twists the small girl's head around.
This diner is much like any other diner she has been to, though there are fewer people holding bottles laying on the floor or swaying through the double doors here. Annie has seen Father drink too, but he is more controlled than some of the civilians she has seen passed out in the dirty streets of Liberio.
More people walk into the crowded diner where everyone converses pleasantly, where there are smacks on the back and guffaws so loud, nearby tables scowl in nonverbal reprimand toward the rowdy noise. There's cheerfulness around almost every table and Annie sees that unlike everyone else, both she and Father are isolated—they don't belong in such a warm atmosphere.
A pulsing ache similar to the pain her ankles radiates with spreads through Annie's chest. The dream of being on the receiving end of friendly crowds and smiling faces has always squirmed beneath her skin, but today, the yearning is unbearable. Father and she have exchanged smiles—he even gave a few pats on her head or a treat when she's done well—but he's never been so brazen with affection as the parent across the way who smiles at and strokes her happy toddler's hair.
She wonders something.
Annie takes a quick sip then coughs a little, pretending to be straining to clear her throat. The front of her body is aimed at the family, leaving a clue for Father to look where she is, to maybe see what other families do and try it on his daughter sometimes; Father is unusually perceptive but she hopes he won't see through her trick. Her next chest-shaking cough sounds more labored. Another series of ragged coughs allows Annie to hear fabric rustle—the sound of Father's body moving.
Suddenly, there's a warm, five-pronged sensation on her middle back. Annie closes her eyes, waits with bated breath toward what would happen. The air in her lungs is coughed out when a stone-firm hand drums between her shoulder blades.
"Controlled coughs, Annie." Father instructs, sounding a bit more annoyed than indifferent. "There, that outta clear that gunk out of your lungs. You get too excited when you drink that filth."
Father returns to eating and their silence is the only one shared within the lively restaurant. Annie's head hangs, her lowered shoulders hinting toward the misery stabbing her chest. After two long seconds, she successfully summons an emotionless glaze over her eyes, blocking inner torment once more.
A clack of coins rolls around on the counter. Father stands up and strips the girl hanging her head of her near-empty glass.
"Time to go." Father orders roughly.
Annie sees his plate is only half-finished and even a five-year-old conditioned to not refuse a command can't help but question, "Why?"
Did I do something wrong? She feels her question more so insinuates. Annie's heart races out of fear she's in trouble as she stares at her parent.
Rather than respond, hardened hands lift Annie up by her underarms and drop her onto the floor. He pulls on his child's smaller hand, passing through the wooden double doors and walking within the dimly lit city streets.
Curfew is nearing and the light from the sidewalk lanterns are not near bright enough to keep the pitch-black streets of the district well lit. The streets are cold, quiet, and a lonely night like this poisons a child's imagination so easily; Annie's mind conjures beasts made from shadows tailing her as she walks, stitching themselves to few passerby's shadows or running along faintly lit walls—they always hunt her from behind. Annie unknowingly clenches Father's hand a little tighter and relief trickles in when he answers with one reassuring clench.
Atop the sound of their shoes clomping along the pavement, Annie hears another noise starting to mix in with their footsteps. Father must hear the new stamping sounds too as his walking speed steadily increases. The sounds soon match their own footfalls pitch, so much so that the small girl can't keep back a whimper, unable to keep up a speed her Father's tugging orders her to keep up with.
Ice water trickles down Annie's spine when the pace behind their backs becomes so much quicker, Father quickly picks her up and darts into the closest alleyway. Curses are shouted and Annie would have shouted in alarm had Father not covered her mouth.
Sounds of sprinting feet and clattering garbage cans resonates within the alleyway's narrow channels. Father's zig-zagging through the alleyway alongside the looming shadows from the ghetto's tall buildings aid them in slipping out of sight. Breathless, he then stops next to a heap of garbage in a dark corner. Annie is set down while her anxious parent makes a hole as quietly as he can. Once the space is complete, a serious face stares into Annie's.
"Just hold your breath." He commands in his strong, level tone. "And don't make a sound."
When he picks up his daughter and places her inside, a rancid scent assaults Annie's sense of smell and the bags surrounding her leak a layer of slime into her clothes. She looks to Father pleadingly—she doesn't want to be in here—but he shushes her by putting a finger to his lips. Father places more bags oozing putrid odors over her head until she's hidden completely and with all the effect of a sneaky mouse, quietly slinks into the shadow across the way until he is absorbed by nothing but black.
Annie takes in through the hole of her refuge how the muscles within Father's silhouette are flexing, how eye-torches of focused fire blaze through a layer of night as he lies in wait. An anxious noise attempts to pry free but Annie slaps her palms over her mouth before any sound can escape.
After agonizingly long minutes of waiting, yells, cursing, and the clanging of a metallic trash can rolling makes the young girl tremble. The boots who followed them congregate in an intersection of alleyways close by.
"Did you find them?" A female voice asks.
"No, the slimy bastards got away before we could grab them." A gruffer voice responds.
"Fuck 'em." A younger but passionate voice joins in. "We can let the two be for now. It's not like the termites won't get theirs one day. Let's hurry up and re-group with the others so we can finish this."
The strange people follow the order by sprinting away simultaneously. The iron bands of panic around Annie's lungs slowly loosen and loosen until the noise from running feet grows from faint to gone.
Father walks out from his hiding spot and as moonlight highlights half his body, the white beams expose the flurry of emotions crinkling his tanned face. He scoops up the garbage bags keeping his daughter's small space of refuge hidden and as he reaches down for her, the sound of glass shattering then a blood-curdling scream permeates the air.
The tense man crouches. "Listen." He directs though Annie notices his level tone has wavered. "I'm going to pick you up and you're going to close your eyes and ears. You aren't allowed to listen or see anything until I say so. Understand?"
He's scaring her, the trembling and the widening of her eye sockets make him realize so. A cacophony of glass breaking and guns firing jolts the father and daughter. Then one scream gains the company of many, all reaching a more desperate pitch and there's a smell, something which burns Annie's nostrils so ferociously, her stomach grows queasy.
Hands the frightened child isn't used to being so consoling take hold of her shoulders. "Annie," He calls for her attention once more. "Did you hear me?"
Annie hears the signal then, the coaxing of command through an oddly tamer voice. Her bangs bounce with her ardent nod. The young girl's body floats up into the air before being tucked into her father's strong shoulder. She cups her hands over her ears, keeps her small face tucked into Father's shoulder with his hand holding the back of her head. The toxic poison of terror shakes the inside of Annie's bones when a blaring siren joins in on the loud hysteria.
Right as Father reaches the end of the alleyway, a crowd of police sprints down the sidewalk as civilians run the opposite way. The stampede of bodies bumps into the pair hard enough that Father grunts and Annie winces. Shoulders and bodies collide and through the mayhem and shifting grip of her father moving through masses of people, his grip slips and exposes her face. A light so bright shines behind her eyelids that Annie can't help but open them.
Tongues of orange and yellow swirl in an erratic twister around the diner and there are hands trying to get through the sliver-wide opening in the chained entry way—black, burned hands. People donned in black laugh as they stand in front of a line of bodies hanging before the diner and hold guns which belch bullets into the streets. The police running toward the burning eatery catch the group's attention and one lays down a suppressive fire toward the officers at the same time Father dives behind a corner, but he still wasn't in time—he didn't save her from the rest.
Etched into her brain as he runs is the image of bodies with signs hanging from their noosed necks, all the black-painted words forming a sentence:
"No peace. No home. No justice for Devil Spawn."
Father decides to keep away from the city after that day. He doesn't allow Annie off of their premises either, not that he did so initially.
Father makes a deal with a vendor with whom they have known for some time, offering the baffled man who often traffics food along their home's path money; Annie isn't sure how Father has found so many of the gold pieces he shows the merchant so quickly. A couple of days later, Annie overhears the two men speaking about a newspaper the vendor had filched for her Father, but she has trouble understanding.
Words like "lynching" and "gang-related "and "posing as Eldians" escape the five-year-old though she understands when the man reads the headline of "The Worst Liberio Internment Camp Has Seen".
Annie hears a phlegmy inhale than the hacking of spit before the vendor snarls. "If they got past the guards at the gates with weapons of all things, I bet they were in on this whole plan. Bastards, I tell you. The whole lot of them. Those little shits plotted this attack and I'll be damned if they get away with it. By any means necessary, we'll get back at them. Right?"
Father never responds. His stoic nature guides him in only greeting and thanking the merchant for his goods. He sees the man off once his twin horses and wagon finally clinks and clatters away on the bumpy dirt road winding through the forest.
Stuck in a fetal position in her spot under the windowsill, trauma storms within Annie's unsupervised mind.
Father has never worn a face so hardened or as frightened as he did in the alley. Worse so, no matter how many times Annie blinks fiercely in the day or the night, the image of blackened, dangling feet swaying left to right and faces glazed in death before pillars of fire burns vividly. Her chin tucks into her chest, curling into herself tighter, fighting against flashes and whimpers which desperately want to spill out of her.
"Annie. "The booming voice of Father jars Annie from her thoughts and lifts her chin up.
He stares down at her from the windowsill, his stern face blank and unreadable. "Training yard. Fifteen seconds."
Discipline springs up her small body from the floor and sets Annie off into a sprint. Her bare feet soon stand in the dirt, ankles slammed close together and body kept straight as an arrow.
"Training will amp up considerably after today." Father informs her as he walks in front of her. "The next wave of Warriors will be chosen within the next few years. We must make sure you are prepared."
A question separates Annie's lips but the deepening frown and crinkling of the space between Father's brows drives her mouth to close.
"Frailty and a small stature are not desired characteristics in soldiers or warriors, Annie." He remarks emotionlessly. "And you are weak and defenseless, so easy to have been plucked away should that group have found us." The girl's shoulders slump dispiritedly from her parent's words before his thunderous voice rises again. "But you won't be such things forever. Not after I teach you everything. Then this world will have every reason to fear you. Now focus. I will not tolerate it if you hesitate even for a second."
Strong forearms pull up and his knee bends as his right leg pulls forward. "Show me your stance."
Annie acts as her father's reflection, stamping the ball of her foot on the ground in front of her and zipping her forearms up to match his own.
Her heart races oddly when a smirk barely raises the corner of his lips. "Excellent."
Yellow strands of hair sway with the wind as the boat steers the group away. The others with families more exuberant than her own wave goodbye and blow kisses to her comrades. Devout followers take off their caps and cheer while Father remains the odd man out, only keeping the hand not gripping his cane up high.
The older girl remembers the dullness of his eyes, the borders being so red and puffy as he sobbed his regrets, squeezing her so tightly that her shoulders ached. Annie wonders if he maintains an impassive mask to her because of how vulnerable he made himself, how he may be at risk of doing so again in public or if the fear of their near-lynching grips his attention toward his surroundings still.
A shiver runs through her. Annie looks away from the crowd, now focusing on the slice of land across their channel where their mission resides.
For decades propaganda and Marleyian insults have made her people believe in the fairytales formulated by a government whose no different than the Eldian empire they vilify. Annie ponders if unlike them, the island dwellers are living peacefully within a self-enclosed fish bowl or if they are as barbaric as everyone else.
She wouldn't be surprised. People always end up being the same and if the Paradisians genetic makeup is truly constructed of the same blood and bones, Annie expects to find creatures who are as cowardly and spineless as she and so many others here.
At the same time Annie's mind wanders, a young boy holds a beloved book close to his chest. He eagerly calls out to his bored friend who sits beside a crystalline river.