.oOo.
Beckett lives in a town of living ghosts.
.oOo.
Beckett Walker, 16, American Male
He lives in a small town, where nothing ever changes other than the crops in the fields and the cows in the spring when they have new calves. The people are always there, even the oldest residents who constantly seem like they're about to fall out of the chairs that they sit in on their porches and into a coffin. They always hang on, always stay the same, just like everything in the town.
The newest thing in the town may be a house that was built twenty-odd years ago, for a family who had moved in when their mother was invited to teach at the one-room school. Even she hasn't changed for another teacher. No, Mrs. Stirling has been teaching before Beckett was even a thought in the minds of his parents and will teach until her children leave her and she has enough money to settle back down with her husband. She might not even finish then - people have a funny way of never really leaving in this town. Even when someone dies, it feels like they're still there, from the spots where they used to sit to the places where they fished to the fields that they sowed every year from when they were born to when they died.
Beckett lives in a town of living ghosts.
He doesn't mind his town, but it has a funny way of sitting in the back of his mind like a sore that never quite seems to heal. It's always been a quiet town, one of those were the people would never dream of saying something that wouldn't be accepted thirty years ago. Many attend the large Catholic church that sits at the edge of the town, and even more attend the Lutheran church that the town is built around.
Beckett attends the former church, listening to the priest in the row where his family always sits as one of the priests, often his uncle, preaches throughout a homily about how Christ has taught them to prepare for wars such as the one that had ended just a few months ago. Lately, the homilies have always been about war and peace, death and life, of how to live one's life peacefully in chaos and faithfully in boredom.
Hey, he likes it better than when the other priest tells the congregation they'll go to Hell if they don't marry and have like five kids before the age of forty.
Beckett yawns as he works away at a paper that he's writing for school, keeping an eye on the fields in case his father needs him to come out and help him with the plow. Jared Walker is a third-generation farmer and works the fields faithfully, keeping his fields full of wheat or hay every year. It feeds the cows that they keep for milk in the barn and helps sell to the flour mill that the Gensens, a family in the middle of the town, have owned for fifty years. He never keeps the crops the same in repeating years, and doesn't overwork his fields so that they can be as fruitful as possible. Jared loves his farm, and will faithfully tend to it whenever it needs him.
It's really a shame that he wouldn't do the same for his family.
When Beckett sees his father walk out of the barn and towards the house, he pulls on his boots and a jacket so that he can head outside as quickly as possible. His father doesn't like to be kept waiting, and Beckett won't dare to cross him in case there is a problem at the barn. Jared isn't the type who takes obstacles well.
As he opens the door, his father walks up to the porch and waves at Beckett to follow him. "Praise be to God that you're ready, you're in need of help right now. Come, I need you to help move a few things in the barn so that the stalls are properly cleared. They always get messy at this time of year."
Beckett nods, looking around at the muddy barnyard. The sky has been washed clean of any clouds that had been there the day before, but springtime has brought much rain to the farm and causes the cattle to have muddy hooves when they enter the dry, clean barn every night. Combined with the fact that they still have to clean out the barn of anything that they've stored over the winter instead of in the bulging storage shed, it's led to the barn being crowded and messy. It needs to be clean, and it'll be Beckett's job for the next few hours to make sure that it is.
And the barn finally looks clean when he finishes up, his broom muddy and his clothes streaked with mud and other, grimier substances. His father nods in approval as he enters the barn. "Thank you."
Beckett nods back, and follows his father out to the garden. "Do you want me to weed out the garden now?"
"Of course. Weeds are foul things, stuff that creeps up with deformities and tries to take over from the plants that deserve to live. I suppose that they want to live as much as the plants do, but they sure as Hell don't deserve to. A bit like a few deplorable humans I know, the ones who would rather live in depravity then stay in a respectable home and marry a good person to have children with. What the world is coming to, I wouldn't know."
Beckett pretends to agree, trying not to let on that he feels miserable. When his father leaves, Beckett picks through the garden and takes out the weeds, a pile of long and green misfits growing at the side of the garden plot. When he finishes, he'll take them to the compost bin and let them fester alongside the egg shells and meat scraps from last night's supper, but he'll finish his job here first.
At least his father doesn't realize that Beckett's one of the people he is referring to.
.oOo.
A pretty face can catch attention with ease.
.oOo.
Elaine LaBelle, 18, American Female
She paints a smile on her face, and holds it for the mirror as she applies a bit more blush to her face. Elaine has always liked the way her body looks. She knows that she's beautiful, someone that the older women in her Georgian town would refer to as a 'looker', but sometimes she needs a dash of make up to remind the men in her life that she's someone to take note of.
A pretty face can catch attention with ease.
"Magnolia, are you ready to head to the church meeting?" she asks her younger sister, who's preparing her dress on the other side of the table. Magnolia nods and pats out her dress a bit more before standing up.
"I'm ready whenever you are, Elle."
Elaine nods and looks down at her own dress, a dark pink dress that's long and modest. She fixes a sunhat with a darling red ribbon at the top of her head, and stands up as well. "Lead the way."
The two sisters walk through the hall and out the door, Magnolia careful not to rip her dress and Elaine striding forward with a confidence that she's built over the years. Their town is small and sleepy, but the people who are walking through the roads tip their hats towards the two girls. They both look their best today, and it shows.
But more people are already at the church meeting, preparing to speak about the town square meeting that will be held tomorrow. Soldiers from the Washington capital have already arrived and have the names of the boy and girl from the United States who will be heading to Berlin. There, as she's heard too many times, they'll be presented to the people of Berlin, attend a dance with the men and women who have been promoting and creating the competition, and finally enter the arena.
Then they'll fight to the death.
Elaine shudders to think of it, but she does it out of custom more than anything. She doesn't mind death as much as others her age would, and wouldn't be afraid to fight others. If she ever wants to be respected in the world as an adult woman, it's already an uphill battle.
At least fighting to the death would even the playing field a bit more.
Magnolia is the first to reach the humble Baptist church that they both enter, opening the door for Elaine to enter before heading into the church herself. Elaine pauses to wipe her feet off outside before walking towards the row that she and her family always sit in, taking a turn and planting herself three seats into the row. Her mother and father are already sitting there, both poised and ready to listen to the speech from the minister. It's an impromptu meeting today, one that was formed to discuss the meeting tomorrow when many expressed concerns about how to approach the lottery and how to prepare their children. Elaine doesn't understand what their issue is with the event - if their child is chosen, then they can explain what's happening properly afterwards. They don't need to be told that much, after all.
When the minister walks out with a few soldiers that Elaine does not know the ranks of, the congregation applauds them mildly. Then, they all settle down into their seats and prepare to listen as the minister clears his throat. "Ahem. As you all know, we are here today to discuss our conduct tomorrow at the meeting for our national lottery. We have a few soldiers who will be making sure that we are all respectful and calm throughout the ceremony, who I will be giving the platform to so that they can tell you what to expect."
The crowd does not applaud for the soldiers, rather sitting back on their haunches and watching them with guarded eyes. The odds may be one in a million for their children to be chosen, but they're still wary of the ceremony. No one wants to let their children be the subject to the whims of a lottery system.
The first soldier taps the microphone that they had set up to make sure that it is working, then begins to speak once he's satisfied with the quality of the device. "So, tomorrow you will all be coming to the square, and we will have the children line up in rows, according to their age, throughout the square. From there, the soldiers will line up and read the speech that a German chancellor has prepared for the occasion, before we announce who will be chosen for the competition. No one knows who are the children to be chosen, and we will all open the envelopes and announce the name. If it is a person from the town, we will have them come up onto the stage and say a few words, before they will be escorted out of the town and to Germany. In the likely event that it is not, we will play the national anthem before leaving. We ask you to remain calm and do not speak out during the ceremony. Behave like the American citizen that you are, please."
"Why should we go, anyway?" A man in the crowd stands up and shouts the question at the soldiers, and the crowd begins to murmur. "The Germans can stick it up their-"
Another man hushes the shouter before he finishes, and they sit down with a quiet ripple of alarm sweeping through the crowd. Elaine can feel the tenseness of the room, like it's about to snap. If someone says something triggering, they're all going to tip over and break something.
And that never leads to something good.
She finds herself standing up, self-conscious about the fact that her hat has slightly tipped to the side and that her make-up must be close to running in the heat of the church. But the people pause to look at her, and she pauses before letting herself speak. "We're just going to have to deal with it. There is no point in making a move to fight the system, not when we don't know what's going to happen. If we stay calm, tomorrow we can begin to work something out and possibly learn how to beat the system. We can't do it alone, but I'm sure that the top minds in the country are ready to fight Schnee if needed. Right now, what we need to do is follow our orders and be prepared to fight if anything goes wrong. After all, we're Americans. We can fight."
And as the crowd mutters their approval before bursting into applause, Elaine realizes something else with more than a tinge of satisfaction.
She can lead.
.oOo.
Keenan lives in a town that never has a familiar face.
.oOo.
Keenan Atherton, 17, Canadian Male
He lives in a large town that's always changing, from the buildings and stores that seem to spring up overnight to the men and women that file into and out of his town like clockwork. It's growing bigger by the day, with more families moving in to invest in the factories that control so much of the town's infrastructure. Most of the town works for the companies that place their buildings on the outskirts of the town and employ the men within their borders, but even that changes as well. Lately, more and more have been re-employed to work for the Canadian military, which recruits more people every day.
Even in the wake of the Allied defeat, Canada will still be prepared.
Just in case.
The people are always changing as well. There are the lumberjacks who work outside of the town and in the grand Canadian forests to feed the factories that convert the lumber into processed tables, chairs, houses, and everything in between, and the factory workers who make sure the process goes as smoothly and quickly as expected. There are teachers and store-owners, there are shoe-sellers and lamp-makers, there even is a group of seamstresses who darn and mend clothes for the bachelors that work in the factories and forests around his town.
Keenan lives in a town that never has a familiar face.
He doesn't mind living in the town, no, he enjoys being able to see such movement and excitement throughout the streets that he walks through every day. Keenan likes being around people, to do things that he hasn't tried before and to discuss things that he has never thought about. It's good to be surrounded with all sorts of new ideas, from his home to the high school that he'll be graduating from soon. Time passes quickly here.
"Keenan, can you pass that bottle of maple syrup over to me? I think your father brought a few bottles back from the shop last night and forgot to put them away." His mother looks up from the book that she's reading and Keenan nods. Carina Atherton likes to keep things orderly, and doesn't appreciate how disorganized her husband can be at times. From working in the forests to his maple-syrup business, where he ships bottles upon bottles of maple syrup that they harvest in the spring around the province, Brandon Atherton doesn't have enough space in his brain to remember where to put everything. More than a few bottles of milk have gone bad because he forgot to put them in the fridge.
"Here you are." Keenan picks up the bottle from the dresser where it sits, then pauses to look at the framed photo that stands firmly on the polished maple counter. The face of his brother, Francis Atherton, stares back at him. In his eyes are a different million memories that hit Keenan in the face.
Now he remembers how Francis had left on the train and what had felt like his whole street had come to say goodbye, how the letters from training camp had kept coming in to the Atherton household, cheerful letters that hid the boredom and nervousness he must have felt, and the final letter, that awful letter that was typed in a plain font and contained the news that Francis had died bravely in combat. Although people were always moving, everyone knew Francis. Everyone loved Francis.
"You're looking at Francis' portrait again?" Keenan's mother snaps him out of his thoughts, and he nods sheepishly with the bottle of his hand. "Oh, he was a good son. So thoughtful, so kind, the best I could have ever had. I'll never know a strong, kind, and loving man like Francis, you know. He was one in a kind, not the type who could ever be replaced. He was the best son I'll ever have."
Keenan tries not to feel the sting of venom that's contained in that sentence.
"Now, you go along and meet up with your friends. You said that you were meeting them at the edge of town? Be careful, there could always be bad types out there. I hope you keep using your judgement. Francis always had such good judgement, he only kept up with the best company. Oh, such a good boy." Keenan's mother turns back to her novel, a little misty-eyed.
Keenan nods, knowing that his mother isn't paying attention to him anymore, and hurries outside to his bike. He mounts it and pedals furiously, out through the streets and towards the forest.
He isn't going to meet his friends.
When he gets close to the forest, he hides his bike behind a fallen tree and begins to jog towards the border between America and Canada. His town is less than a mile away from the United States of America, and it's useful for when people want to make transactions with the States or get more options than the stores in this town.
It's also useful for meeting up with people from the other side of the border.
After running past a mile of maple and oak trees, fallen leaves littering the ground and small animals scurrying out of his way, Keenan manages to jog all the way to his destination. He reaches the edge of the border and looks both ways, the cleared vegetation forming a line that he can look down all the way to the horizon and over the mountains in the his left, over a mile away is the official road and border gate between Canada and the States. If he was closer, he'd be worried that they would see him, but it's too far for any guards to notice Keenan dodging across the border and into the States.
He breaks into a run now that he's so close to where he wants to go. A few hundred metres more - more than a few hundred in feet - and he's reached the spot where he always meets Beckett. The teen is there, just like always, and they embrace one another when Keenan reaches the small clearing. It's a long jog, but it's worth it.
Out here, no one can see them kiss.
.oOo.
Thank goodness that Ruth is only ten. It's one less lie that she'll have to worry about when she gets back home and tells her parents what she has done.
.oOo.
Abigail Kuepfer, 17, Canadian Female
Amos Kuepfer is out working the fields when the first jeep of Canadian soldiers rolls towards his homestead, a long line of his children lining up to see the majestic vehicle. The Amish community in these parts aren't used to visitors other than those who dot the countryside where they live, pray, and work, and children only get to see the outside world if they're lucky enough to tag along with their father and sell the crops that they have harvested in town. He doesn't notice them over the braying of his horses and the grunting of his oxen, pulling the plows over his fields. But his daughter, Abigail, does.
Making sure that her bonnet is firmly tucked into her dress and fixing the loose strands of hair that have come out of the bonnet, Abigail dusts her dress off and hurries out to greet the soldiers. Her brothers, Jonah, Isaac, and Ephram, are out working the fields with their father, and her sisters are too nervous and too young to greet the soldiers. So she takes on the responsibility of meeting these strange men who have shown up with a car that she's never seen before, giving a nervous smile and picking up the eggs that her little sister, Ruth, had left in the basket in her rush to go see the jeep. "May I help you?"
"Yes, we're here to make sure that you will attend the meeting today. How many children are in the household that are between the ages of twelve and eighteen?"
"Three - myself, Isaac, and Ephram." The lie comes all too easily to her lips - it's a sin to do so, Abigail knows that all too well. She'll have to live with that on her conscience, and tell her parents as soon as possible so they know what she's done. But she's heard her father whisper about the strange competition on the other side of the world, the television that they are supposed to receive in the household although they've never even had a radio, and how the German government in Europe wants children to be taken to Berlin to fight in some sort of competition. Abigail will not let Eve, only twelve at the time, to be forced to attend. The soldiers shouldn't have the exact ages of any of the children, and only know what she's willing to tell them.
And she won't let Eve even have a chance of being forced to leave the home.
Thank goodness that Ruth is only ten. It's one less lie that she'll have to worry about when she gets back home and tells her parents what she has done. "Is that all you need?"
"Are your parents here?" another soldier asks, casting a critical eye around the house and the fields. "I see that your father is in the fields. He won't have to attend, if he can give his consent to let us bring you to the meeting. But if your mother is able to come, that would be splendid."
"Oh, she's in the house. Shall I fetch her for you?" Abigail nods when another soldier tells her to do so, and dashes back into the house. Her younger sisters follow her and almost trip over the hem of Abigail's dress as she runs into the house. "Mother? Mother! There are soldiers at the door, and they want us to leave for the lottery meeting you and Father were talking about the other day?"
"Oh?" Lydia Kuepfer is confused for a moment, but a quick glance out of the kitchen window confirms that her daughter is telling the truth. In the distance, she can see more jeeps rumbling away from the homes of her neighbours. "So I'll be taking you and your siblings to the town. Get Ephram and Isaac, I'll get Eve ready."
"No, no, I didn't tell them about Eve." Abigail blushes, and her mother arches an eyebrow before she realizes what her daughter has done. "I don't want her to go there. I didn't mention her when they asked me who was of age to go right now, and they don't know about her. She'll be safe here at home."
"Oh, child, you're too kind to be honest, although I can't fault you for it. Get the boys, I'll tell the girls what to get ready for supper when we get back. Are you ready to go?" Lydia pats the table absentmindedly, looking around at the clean, bare kitchen before turning back to her daughter. "We'll leave as soon as they're back and change to their church boots."
Abigail looks down at her outfit, a plain grey dress with an apron tied around her waist and a bonnet keeping her blond hair down. "I believe so."
"Then go!" Lydia points to the door, then calls for Abigail's sisters. "Ruth! Eve! Come in! You'll be cleaning the bedrooms and getting supper ready while we're gone. Now listen, I want you to..."
Abigail takes off towards the men in the field, nimbly jumping over the furrows of soil that the plow has turned up. She's careful not to sprain an ankle. She doesn't want to hobble to the town. "Isaac! Ephram! Come quick! You have to come to the town!"
The men all stop, and Isaac and Ephram quickly follow Abigail when they realize what is happening with the soldiers who impatiently wait in the yard. After her father leads them in a short prayer and gives them a firm handshake, they run after Abigail at a steady pace. Although they have boots on, they're not fast enough to catch her, even in her dress. Abigail is a fast runner, and they soon reach the home where they can change into clean shoes and head to town.
But when they all settle into the green jeep and hold onto the benches that they're told to sit on as the jeep roars back to the town, she realizes that nothing could be as fast as this.
We've reached our final intros! I don't have much to say, so feel free to post a review or not and all of that :P Thanks for reading!
Oh, and I have a poll. It'd be amazing if you could fill it out.
Until next time, TheAmazingJAJ