PART 13: IN THE BEGINNING AGAIN

~7~

Kera gave an uncomfortable groan as the early morning sunlight brightened her face. She turned on another side, away from the sun. Refusing to greet it, like she usually did. Its light felt cold this morning.
'Things are complicated,'Kera thought all of the sudden. She was a little surprised by that thought; ofcourse things were hard, they always were.
'No, not always. It's because I changed as a person. Everything used to be so much simpler. I used to take good care of my tribe, maybe better than Zion has… I could've been leader, but I let him become the leader instead. Why? Well, because I fancied him ofcourse, all that time. Or should I say: I was obsessed with him. And I always knew I had a chance, I was just waiting for the right time. But then that bitch Iz had to make her move, and just did it. Effortlessly. Snatched him away from underneath my nose, literally. I hate her.'
She realised that hate had made her a different person. She had never really been in touch with hate, the hate that stings you, burns you from the inside. The hate that drives people to violence. She used to be a laid-back person, non-judgemental. She hardly ever got angry and she loved easily. Now she had just… changed. All because of Iz. Great, what else could that cheap tart take away from her?
Kera cried in her pillow. She couldn't remember she had ever let anything get to her this much. Well, except for the death of her father.

*

"I'm sorry, darling. Daddy has died. Oh God, it's so terrible,"her mother said and pressed her hand against her mouth, making snorting sounds that were supposed to pass for crying. Kera completely ignored her mother and ran to her father's bedside. "Dad, no!"

*

Kera gasped, she had been half-dreaming. She felt hot tears run down her cheeks, tasted salt. She tried to remind herself of the fact that she needed to go and make breakfast, but she couldn't do anything to stop the memories from flowing over her.

*

He hadn't looked a thing like his daughter. He had thin, blonde hair (at least it used to be blonde, for all Kera could remember it was grey), small blue eyes, he was small and his fat had made him shapeless. Short, chubby fingers and big feet. And you just had to love that man, being as laid-back, good-natured and funny as he was.
And Kera did. She loved her father. She loved his jokes, his love for fun, his easy-going attitude, his warmth. She never even really noticed her mother until a certain age, and when she did, she couldn't help but feeling disappointed.
They lived in the suburbs, middle-class family. Or high middle-class really. Her father owned a company, and he did pretty well. He once ended up in the hospital after he had broken his leg, and that's where he met her mother.
Momsy (as she insisted on being called, and Kera could now honestly admit to herself that she hated the woman) had been a nurse back them, a beautiful blonde with fine manners, but with a lack of money. She was supposed to treat Kera's dad, but she did more than that. There was an age-gap of nearly ten years between them, but that didn't bother Kera's mother. She had noticed his wealth and tolerance (which she thought of as stupidity), and she cared for her patient so well that she could move him from the hospitalbed right to the altar. She had thought everything out for herself.
Ofcourse she wasn't one to stay around the house. And everyone in the nabourhood knew what she really did at all those 'teaparties with friends.' They all pitied that poor, kind man that had married her. Kera's dad was too good to say anything about his wife's little adventures with 'friends' (of which she thought he knew nothing, but some things he noticed with a pig-like intelligence), but sometimes he took revenge in his own little, clever way. Like when one of those 'friends' called in the morning, and momsy came down in her pink bathrobe with her pink daisy-slippers on… Before her father handed over the phone he would say: "Hello, this is cauliflower speaking."
And one time he had told Kera: "You better look out, because I just read in the newspaper that the curvy blonde is about to go out of style." Kera hadn't been sure if she understood that, but something about the death-glare her mother gave both her and her father, made her chuckle on the inside.
But her mother didn't have to fear Kera's dad. She had fattened him up like a price-pig, until he just sat in his chair most of times. The doctor had put him on a diet, and while Kera was around, her mother insisted that he sticked to that diet. But when time Kera had left early after dinner (like she always did), and had to go back into the diningroom to get something. She remembered the doctor's rules: her father was only supposed to have one potatoe with a tiny bit of gravy. She knew those rules were to keep daddy's liver and heart in good shape.
That night she had entered the livingroom and saw her mother scoop a lot more than just one potatoe on her dad's plate, after which she drowned the food in gravy. She only noticed her daughter when she was finished, and shot her an of those angry glares like only she could.
Only later had Kera found out for herself why: she had caught her mother red-handed, commiting murder with patience.
Everything that shocked and hurt Kera in her childhood, was always her mother's fault. Whether directly or indirectly. She once went to the beach when she was twelve, with her mother and this brown-haired man that always came around and her mother made her call 'uncle.' He had calmly pointed out this fact to her: "We've got the same little toe. You're a child of mine."
Kera had been upset for weeks.
At some points in her life she wanted nothing rather for her mother to just leave, maybe even die… But fate in its strange ways decided to take her father first. He was one of the first people to fall ill because of the virus.
He was never brought to the hospital, they kept him at home. And her mother ended the same way she started out with him: as the nurse of a fat patient.
Kera couldn't stand the side of her father rotting away, and when time she had thought, if there was a way to switch people… or at least their conditions… she would wish for her mother to lay in that bed instead, for her mother to rot away and her dad to be healthy.
In the end she got at least one part of her wish. Her father died, and only a week after that her mother succumbed to the virus. Kera had been hysterical when her father died, but didn't feel any kind of emotions when her mother did. She tried to tell herself that was because of the fact she was all cried out after her father's death, she had used up all her tears… but deep down she knew the truth.
She left. She left the village she had grown used to. She didn't know exactly for what reason, maybe she was driven by a deep instinct. Those things that tell you to go west, where there's water. Except she didn't go west, she went into the forest.
She didn't even had to spend a night under the open sky, with only moss and leaves to provide a bed for her, because soon she was found by a group of kids who had been foraging for food. She had been taken into their tribe… The Argonauts. They had become her new friends, her new family.

*

Kera got up. Treacherous. Her new family was treacherous, like the first. Iz was just like her mother, really. How could she possibly know how to make Zion happy? She was probably only in it for the sex, that little gutter-whore with her horrible ice-eyes. How in god's name could Zion have fallen for her.
Kera sighed. It was about time she made breakfast.