Behind the innermost walls of the city, the streets are a lot cleaner, Anna thought. She had always enjoyed the sense of utter calm and peacefulness of the city center, the lull of a careful routine and order. There was no beggar in sight and the girls usually walking by all looked well-fed and rosy-cheeked, trailing behind their men in dark dapper suits. There was something soothing to the utter normality of seeing careless passerby untouched by the grim harshness of poverty and base concerns of survival. Anna hated them with all her heart.
Sometimes, she would catch from the corner of her eyes bright orange flashed, and sometimes green dashes soaring with the wind like birds of prey instead of simple prey. It reminded her of her husband who had left never to return. If she were a little too careless, she could almost hear his voice. "Remember we all must die" he used to tell her. "Blessed are those of us who would die for a reason". Anna had known better than to contradict him back then. But she could never quite understand how he could have been so stupid, and how their family could have meant so little to him that he would choose his honor and disillusions of grandeur over them.
Anna was a survivor, but as she was nearing her forties, she had learned to appreciate what she could. She enjoyed the relative peace of her quiet life. She was a simple woman with simple desires. Years ago she had been greedy, but now there was little left of her youthful ambitions. Her husband had been bright and beautiful. He had always wanted more than what this life had to offer. "We live in peace, at the cost of freedom", he would have said. "A peace like that can never last".
Anna had been very much in love with her husband. He had been a handsome young soldier of the scouting regiment, talented and charismatic. But he had died like so many others, leaving her all alone with their young children and little to her name. That did not prevent her from moving on with her life, albeit with a hole in her heart. After all, Anna was a practical woman, a girl born in the underground of a secretive mother, who had risen to the upper city fighting all the way. It was no easy feat, and she could only imagine the sacrifices her mother had been forced to make in order to offer her daughter a better life. She would not, could not, let it be in vain.
She remembered enough of her youth in the sewers to know a little about how things went in this shit-stained world. She knew that she could not afford to give up on her mother's legacy, that it was still too fragile to rest easy just yet. She also knew that death in this world was all too common and that it could never be allowed to hold back the living. That if she allowed herself to wallow in self-pity, she would lose everything she ever had. There was no one in the lower rings of the city who did not know someone who had gone beyond the walls and never came back. Wives without a husband, husbands without a wife, childless parents, and orphaned children, they all knew that every expedition behind the walls ended in carnage and loss. She had not been surprised to learn about her husband's death. It had not made it any easier to bear.
The ones in power, nobles and high ranking officers of the military alike, had a history of sending the poor to war and then forgetting all about them. They had other preoccupations, and most were rooted in trying to control the population. All in the name of honor and prosperity, of course, all for the sake of humanity within the walls. On the other hand, many of the city's merchant elite were happy pretending to ignore the devils at their door, or the devils underground for that matter. They were deaf to the cries of the city rats fighting their way to freedom. They knew little about the dangers inside. But Anna, although briefly, had been one of these rats. So she could feel the tension in the air, how the silent masses were growing increasingly desperate by the day. There may be freedom in death she thought bitterly. But there is also freedom in safety, she knew. She would be far away from the inner city when it would all go to hell, she had decided. "May the city burn", her husband had said before leaving for the last time, and she could not help but agree with him a little.
Anna, a wife without a husband, knew how to survive. She had too many children and too little wealth to her name to dwell on what was and what could be. Instead, she had found her peace in knowing that today her children would eat their fill and sleep in a clean bed, tomorrow be damned. That was a duty like any other, and maybe in another life, she would have been a good soldier because she was not one to shy away from her duties. She found peace in cleaning the counter, washing stark white linens, and polishing crystal glasses worth more than all her meager possessions. It was work, easy work, as a trusted waitress in a little restaurant in the upper rings, a nice establishment without any real prestige to its name, and too wealthy owners to fail. She had been incredibly, deceptively lucky, she knew. But every unexpected fortune thrown her way she would milk for all its worth.
Work, honest work, is hard to come by for a woman all alone, and she had little to no choice but to live on. She had seen too many poor girls falling into prostitution and never regretting leaving poverty for a little while, even if it was only for a little while. She also knew the dangers of the undergrounds, and how brief fortune was sure to turn bad sooner than later. Her mother would have killed her before she allowed herself to fall so low. Survival is mindless, and many of these girls did not survive for very long indeed. Anna knew how poor, beautiful women often ended. Dead on their knees, sick and starved. She was a proud woman, once so sure of her own beauty, and the bounties her future held. Now she was defeated.
"Well, won't you come home now ? The children are getting quite restless, they've been waiting for you all day". An old woman's voice rang loud and clear from the other side of the room. The restaurant had closed early, due to a lack of customers. She was the last employee still on the premises, and she had enjoyed being all alone in the establishment.
With a start, Anna realized she had dropped the glass she was meticulously cleaning and sighed. Her mother, a former dancer of some brilliance who had lived most of her life in the underground, was still silent as an assassin in the night in her old age.
"- Don't do that mother, you scared me" she gestured toward the broken shards all over the floor. The old woman merely raised a dark eyebrow in defiance "it costs a fortune, you know? I can't afford to lose this job due to my carelessness, how are you and the children going to eat otherwise ?" It was a weak argument, they both knew. But Anna had spent too many years going through the motions to let go of all pretenses now.
"-And that would surely be the end of us, right ? Don't make yourself look more stupid than you are" the old lady scoffed. The warm, heavy summer air seemed to settle on her shoulders like a blanket of lead. There is going to be a storm soon, she thought. Anna caught a whiff of the sickly sweet scent of rotting apples carried in by the hot breeze from the back of the restaurant and felt something tighten in her throat. She would need to throw them out before the rot could spread. She went on her knees to pick up pieces of broken glass from the wooden floor. She felt dirty and tired.
"-Just help clean up the mess, will you ?" She said after a long pause, a little defeated. Her mother had always seemed larger than life, and even now she did not dare reprimand her further. In any case, it would have been an utter waste of time.
"-Sure, just get ready to leave. Quick girl, I can feel it in my old bones, a storm is coming and we have a long way to go before we're home".
When they finally got back home to their little house by the outer wall on the following morning, the children were still asleep. They were beautiful, her children, she thought. Almost as beautiful as she and her husband used to be, when they were children themselves. She had loved him very much, her foolish husband. In the end, he had loved his green cloak more than their precarious family, and threw away everything they had built, all their hard work, to die a stupid death beyond the wall. They never brought home the corpses of their dead, the scouts. All that was left of him was a wedding picture torn in rage, and a plain little ring to match the one she still wore after all this time. She was a spiteful woman, after all. It made her heart ache all over again to see them.
Her pretty little boy of ten years old, with black hair soft like raven's wings and bright blue eyes clear as the sky looked much like her. Her daughter, however, looked much like her father. She looked at her delicate little girl of seven asleep on their shared bed hiding rosy cheeks and doll-like features behind a wealth of dark chocolate tresses and felt something like disgust in her gut. She was an odd one, her daughter, with her too-wide, witch-green wolf-eyes. There was a wildness, a harshness to her that did not quite match the supple grace of her step. She was much like her late husband in that way, and maybe, she hated her just a little bit for that, to remind her so much of her precious hopes for the future torn asunder by a stupid man and his stupid honor and his stupid idea of freedom.
"Mom, we made dinner last night, will you eat with us ?" her soft, gentle son asked shyly. Something in the fragile hope it held made her stomach churn. God, how she wanted to leave and never come back. Sometimes she dreamed of walking through the gates, following the ones in green to their death out in the plains. She was sure she'd never look back. God how she missed her husband.
"Yes, my love. I came all the way back from work to see you, you know ? I couldn't resist seeing my boy, you know ? I'm sorry I'm late. Our ride back was delayed" She lied easily, smiling at her son, and turned to her own mother, wondering if she, of all people, could feel the bitter undertones she was trying so hard to hide. She had been a terrible mother herself, resenting her children for stealing her youth and strengths and hampering her efforts to get out of the underground. The irony of the situation was not lost on her, and Anna hated her mother for being the better parent after all this time. Maybe someday when the children are grown, and the old one is dead she could deem her duty to them done and walk out the door never to come back.
"'-Mom, Lena fell and hit her head. She has a bad bruise, but granny said she'd be alright" He boy said slyly. He was too smart for his own good, and Anna suspected there was a lot more to this seemingly banal injury than her daughter's supposed clumsiness. They were playing with her nerves, and she did not like it at all.
"-It didn't hurt that bad" The girl whined resentfully. She was hard-headed and rash, but she was agile as a cat when she wanted to be. She would not get hurt for nothing. Anna took a deep, grounding breath.
"What happened, again ?" She asked flatly
"She lost her footing" The damned old woman said as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. Anna then knew her mother had no intention of telling her the truth. Lena looked somewhat subdued and defeated. She did not dare look up to her grandmother. Anna took an instant dislike to her son's triumphant smile. He was too much like the old woman to be up to anything good.
"-What ?" She asked, careful to smooth out the annoyance in her tone.
"-I am teaching her what you never had the patience to learn. Should she become a somewhat good dancer, she might make a good living in the future. She might go further than I did. A little grace can go a long way to make a woman's life easier, yes ?" The old woman had the gall to try and look innocent. Anna knew what game she was playing, and despite the deep resentment she held for her daughter, it did not sit well with her. That old harpy would damn them all to hell if it could be somewhat useful to her. And for some obscure reason, she appeared to have decided to make Lena her heir. They had never been anything more than pawns to her, and she would never make the mistake of blindly trusting her again. It had been far too costly the first time. But there was something to be said about her mother's relations, and arcane knowledge of the workings of their world. She had managed to offer them all the opportunity to live on the surface, something that was not supposed to be possible. She could not afford to antagonize her in the least. That was a certainty.
"-... Whatever, mother" Anna said, her tone a little sharper than she had first intended "Do you want to learn ? Do not let her drag you into starting something you do not intend to end. It will not be… easy, and it might not do you any good. It is… a hard life. You probably have no idea what you are getting into." She asked her daughter, willing herself to look as stern as her own mother. Of course, there was nothing she could really do to protect her daughter from her own mother. But planting seeds of doubt in Lena's head about her mother's intentions might spare her some pain when the old bat would grow tired of playing pretend. It might even prevent her from making the mistake of trusting her grandmother too much and obeying her too blindly, who knows.
"-I want to learn. I'll be the best dancer in the city, you'll see ! I'll be rich and I'll take good care of you mom so you won't have to work so much, and you'll wear pretty green dresses and all" The girl said with the careless vehemence of young children that do not know any better. She was oddly well articulate her daughter, and too sharp for her own good it seemed. But that would do her no good, not in their family.
"- Green dresses ?" Anna asked, feeling a morbid sense of amusement.
"- You like green don't you ? You always wear something green on you" How perceptive for such a young child, she thought. What a stupidly clever child. For the first time in days, Anna found it in herself to smile.
"-I fucking hate green my love" She said pleasantly.
Somewhere from behind the kitchen door where the old woman had slipped unnoticed a moment before, they heard a dry, mean laugh.
