There was only the void for the longest of times. Something felt off and tugged at him within it. Something that went against everything he had ever been happened. He just did not know what it was. There were so many moments of pain after that. A few moments of warmth and safety from some force that was unknown, and one moment of complete confusion. That complete confusion, is what ended the time in the void. At least, that is what he thought. The end of the void was different, the new place so odd. It was different than the eternity in the void. At first it was subtle, but then it was so obvious that it could not be ignored. Names had been lost to the void. Memories had been mixed up and sanity had passed the questioning point. He just remembered that he was. The new sensation was all there was, or had been in a long time besides the hallucinations. Even the hallucinations had left for a while.

Warmth and weightlessness were the first things that were felt for the first time in a while. When it had been felt in the first place, he didn't know. They were followed by something that was beating. Waves of beats washed over him. Warmth and dim lighting- that was barely noticeable- surrounded him. Whatever his name had been, as it was not one of the things the void let him keep, he moved slowly. It was something that had not happened before. At least, that he could remember. Nothing seemed real at the moment. Maybe it was another hallucination. He had those so often, or did. Maybe they were coming back. Some had lasted for ages while others were just glimpses.

It was such a short time in the warmth and listening to the beating before something new happened. Maybe it was a long time. But then, it felt so short. No, it must have been long. That does not seem to be the point though, does it? There was a crushing feeling, as if something was squeezing him. That was the point. It started out uncomfortable before turning into something that started to hurt. He pushed back at the walls that were crushing him, but that seemed to do the opposite than what he really wanted. He wanted the walls to stop crushing him. He was being pushed somewhere, but he did not want to leave the warmth. Was he being pushed back into the void? Please no. There was suddenly a sharp cold that had not been felt since...since? He shivered in a body he was not used to. It was called a body right? He did not cry. That was what one did in something like this, right? There was just shivering and trying to curl up. No void? What were those things wrapped around him? Something was holding him… Were they?

"Es ist ein Mädchen." What was that? It sounded familiar. It almost sounded like… what was the name? There was definitely a name for it.

"Mädchen?" He knew almost what they were talking in, but he could not place the name.

"Ja." That voice sounded sad. Was that the word? "Was ist ihr Name?" It did have a name, didn't it?

"Name? …..Sie heißt….Emil...Nimitz…" The words were breathy and shallow.

"Frau? Frau Nimitz! "

"Schatz? Komm, Schatz. Bitte öffnen Sie Ihre Augen. Jemand Tun Sie etwas! Jemand Tun Sie etwas!" There was suddenly so much happening. He could feel. Hear. Smell. Taste. Almost see light behind something that was covering his eyes. It was too much to take in after so long in nothing. There was too much stimulation, way too much. He refused to open his eyes. -They were eyes!-He refused to listen anymore.-There were sounds to hear!- He could barely take breathing. In, out. In, out. Feeling. Cold. Squeezing. Hearing. Loud. Loud. Too loud. He lost consciousness soon after.

It was dim lighting and a soft lullaby that he woke up again to. He did not open his eyes. Did he remember how? He knew that it would overload him. Did he actually know? Just listening was hard enough. Someone stopped the lullaby and came over to him. What was happening? What had been singing?

"Du muss schlafen, Kind. Schlafen." It was too confusing and still too early to think about anything that the person was saying or what it was. He chose to fall back into the blackness, the familiar, before it really started to overwhelm him. But didn't it already overwhelm him?

Waking up at odd hours and sleeping for most for the rest. That was how he spent so much time. He ate. He slept. He ate. He slept. He opened his eyes to bright and colorful things,-So beautiful- and over time he learned to handle it. A young woman was what was taking care of him, if that is what you call it. So, he grew fast-or slow- and watched.

It took him a few years to place the gibberish that he had felt familiar with. It was German, or Deutsch as he had to say it now. He even found out that he was born a girl. Emil Nimitz was what his mother had called him before she had died. What a strange thing to do. Name things. His, or her now, name was really not necessary. It was really not even necessary to know a gender. Both are quite useless. Now, she lived with her aunt, if you could call it that. Her age was five, or at least that was what Tante-aunt- said. Emil did not quite get what was going on until a year ago. It took her so long to figure out that this was going to be her life. November 24th 1926. Her day of birth. It was strange. Why would someone care about the years passing?

"I will be back sometime around Dezember, Sonnenblume. You know how to live. Take care of this house while I am gone." Why would someone take care of a house? It can take care of itself. Tante walked into Emil's room, something put together in the attic of a small house, with her 'fancy' appearance dress. Red lipstick. Long curled Blond hair. She was always going somewhere. The first month that he was with her, when he was just a few months old, she had left her alone for a couple days. The time she left always increased over the years.

"Ja?" Tante stared hard at her. It was the stare that she usually gave her when she threatened to tell everyone that she was an unwanted. Born from another unwanted.

"Ja, Tante." German was still weird on her tongue. She did not need a language for so many years, and now she had to use one suddenly. Tante smiled happily before getting out of the dusty attic and out of the house. Humans were such strange creatures. This one that was in charge of keeping her was so far the weirdest she had seen. Then again, she had only seen four people. Tante, and three other men in uniforms that had come over a year ago. Weird people.

There was something that always kept her entertained though. She forgot if there was a word for it. She really needed to find a name to place with what she did. She found out that things tended to happen that were amazing. When she went without food, it grew in front of her. Not always or often, but enough for her. When she was hit for disobeying, crashes were heard and distracted Tante. Swirls of color and small creatures would float around her all the time -since she was born.

Tante did not know about most of it though. She 'beat it out of her' after she had seen her grow food. It had only happened once, as Emil did not really care to show her anything after that. Somehow the colors and creatures that were always around Emil were never seen by Tante, which meant that she could keep her world to herself. Emil saw so many beautiful things happen from the source that she forgot the name to. All she could remember was that something from her was stolen, and that was also where the mystical things got their beginning from.

When she had been in the void, she got a sense that her being in there and this world was going against everything she ever was. She had what felt like most of her soul taken from her, and a period of urges slammed into her. Those urges were telling her to create. To form and breathe into, but she could do nothing in the void and it had been beyond tearing her apart. Somehow she had dismissed most of those urges, feeling as though they were wrong for her to do. She felt like she should be doing the opposite of creating, but the creatures she saw were talking to her and trying to get her to do things, telling her things.

"Maybe I got the wrong urges," she whispered to herself. It was a habit of talking to herself outloud that she had from somewhere. It could not have been from Tante, as she rarely was even there to speak to her. "I could ignore it for now. Urges can be pushed back," she happily said to the room. She was always distracted by her creatures that whispered things to her, so that she was not bored like she had been in the void. They said she could bring them into the world. She could shape them. Breathe them to life. Anything to life, like how she made food grow.

Some things, though, were not the life-creatures. Some, she knew were hallucinations, and so did her life-creatures. She thought they did at least, who was to know? They came often. Bothered her. Reminded her, or told her, about things that did not happen. That were against what her life-creatures told her. What the colors said. Many of the things her heart seemed to soar to that they talked about, but something told her that it was contradictory.

"Emil." That was the name given to her, she spoke it quietly. She guessed she could go by that. It might be easier. It was stupid to use names. Everything just was, but if everything in this world held a name then it might be easier to actually use her's. At least sometimes. Emil shifted from where she was sitting and started to tug on her medium length brown hair. It was tolerable, but she was still not used to it yet. It was quiet in the attic. Not silent, but very quiet. There were still the whispers around her, but they were faint. Musical to her ears, but still faint.

She put her small hands on the floor and started to focus on them. Something flowed slowly into her hands and into the wood flooring through her fingertips. A feeling of euphoria rushed through her as she felt warmth flowing into a creation. It always happened when she decided to create. To breathe life, as her life-creatures called it. After a couple minutes, Emil lifted her hands up and looked down at a small sapling that had sprouted up three centimeters. She smiled slightly at it before Emil's face went blank.

"Why be happy from something like that?" Her voice was flat and unemotional, and Her intense green eyes were dead. "Such a weird thing," she murmured before looking off ahead of her and getting a glazed look in her eyes. She felt it in whatever was left of her soul to create, to breathe life, but something in her told her that it was unnatural. That she needed to remember death, and to crave death. Every once in a while, she had to question why it made her feel wonderful. Why it was so different from when she was in the void and different from what felt like a fact of existence. This could still be a hallucination. She has had ones before that lasted years. They were never as good as this one, but she supposed that they could be getting better.

'Yew. It is natural. It is the universe. You do not question the existence. The life. You are Life itself.' Emil looked up at a see-through blue wisp. It was shaped like a blue sea slug, as it had told her when she had first met it. She called it Fa. All of her life-creatures called her Yew. Maybe that had been her name before she had lost it to the void.

"Unnatural." Emil looked up at it. Her eyes were still dead, though they were slowly coming back to life. "I am not Life. Something is wrong." Her voice was far away and soft as she looked lost once again. Something was so wrong with this existence, and she did not know why. She did not ever really know what was going on. It was all too new to her, yet familiar. This all felt wrong.

"No, Yew. It is not unnatural. You are life." Emil faded in and out of focus, her thoughts all over the place. There was no focus after a while. She was life. Not her. Emil did not know who She was, but she was sure that she was not life. Something told her so strongly that she was not supposed to create. The things that happened were different, they felt natural- if a bit painful at times. Breathing Life was something so different.

"My, look at the thing. Such a poor creature." There was a voice that popped up above Emil. She just ignored it, not really hearing it to begin with. "Ignoring me? How rude." A harsh shove pushed Emil out of her thoughts. Another hallucination. They were getting so annoying and pushy lately. "Well? Are you going to greet me, young mistress?" Emil looked up at a creature that looked human, but not quite. It had elongated nose that was almost pointed and a slim jaw. It looked to be twice as big as herself.

'Yew, it is not a hallucination this time.' But it was...wasn't it? It always was. Fa should really not make jokes that do not make sense. Fa swirled around her head. It looked so beautiful like that. Small trails of wispy light followed after Fa as it went.

"Guten Morgan, Kreatur." Emil let her flat voice fill the silence and faraway eyes stare deeply into the other beings small eyes. She could not yet bring herself out of her own mind, but she did stop staring at Fa.

"Kreatur? I am no such thing! I am-"

"Eine Kreatur," Emil's absent gaze never broke from the other things. Her voice was soft but broke through the others words easily. The other huffed.

"Fine." It's eyes narrowed. "Since I am Kreatur, then you are Sephtis." Emil did not care. It sounded familiar, Sephtis. More familiar than Yew. She kept her eyes in contact with Kreatur without blinking. Her eyes were half-lidded, and their intense green seemed to glow in the dim attic. Kreatur froze solid for a moment. It seemed to start shaking moments later.

"You are Sephtis." It said it softly, almost just a murmur. Emil did nothing at that, and before too long Kreatur vanished. Hallucinations were always coming. They never made much sense either. They had to be hallucinations, even if Fa said differently. What else could they be? She did nothing after Kreatur left but stare up at the ceiling for hours. Sephtis. That was the first time that she had heard that, and yet it sounded so familiar. Her soul seemed to yearn it, crave it. So strange. It was just a name. The life-creatures called her Yew. Kreatur called her Sephtis. Tante called her Emil. Maybe she could just make her own name up. Maybe Emil Sephtis Nimitz. She sort of liked all of those names. She could not take Yew, though. It seemed like it belonged to someone else. Someone close to her. Who was close to her though?

When the attic was the brightest it was going to get for the rest of the day, Emil heard shouting out in the streets. She took a while before she got up slowly and walked to the only window in her 'room', crushing the small sapling that she had made earlier without too much of a thought. She felt a small cold sweeping through her as she continued on. When she looked out of the window, she watched as soldiers marched in lines down the street. Germany had apparently started a war officially a year ago, or almost a year ago. It was still Oktober, so a few more months and it would be a year.

It was so silly, from what she had heard from Tante. Ayran race and land. Why were they so important? She had learned about a place that was being built for those that do not belong in the 'new' Germany. Tante had talked to her about it in one of her rare moments of being talkative around Emil. It was where all the unwanted go, she had said, like what you are. They round you up, and ship you off somewhere, where you would not bother the 'superior' race. Humans had such weird ways of putting things. It was really not as scary as Tante had tried to make it. They were just words to Emil at the moment, and besides why would she worry about such trivial things?

"Deutschland erwache aus deinem bösen Traum!

Gib fremden Juden in deinem Reich nicht Raum!

Wir wollen kämpfen für dein Auferstehn

Arisches Blut soll nicht untergehen!"

It was strange to hear a language that she was just learning, being shouted down a street. She saw citizens gather around the marching soldiers, singing with smiles on their faces. They were encouraging something that had no right to be there. She could see where they were wanting something like this, out of desperation. Emil knew, from what Tante had told her, that Germany was torn apart during the Great War. That they had their economy shredded and cities destroyed, but from what Tante was saying, it was not really worth this new reign. She made it sound like they were the best and proud. Like Germany had been the best before the Great War and was going to be on top again. What was the point if it was being led by a radical group? It seemed like it was all about something trivial like pride.

"All diese Heuchler, wir werfen sie hinaus,

Juda entweiche aus unserm deutschen Haus!

Ist erst die Scholle gesäubert und rein,

Werden wir einig und glöcklich sein!"

Nazi is what they were called, the radical group. So weird, but then, Emil was coming to find that so many things were weird in this place. She hated all the songs that came from the Nazi. Hated the flag, the uniforms, the people under it, and the leader. She hated it so much, but it went farther back than the void. She had hated them before the mind-numbing void. She just did not really know all of the why. She just did. She was sure that she was not the only one in the whole country that hated the Nazi, but she only knew four humans so she could not be sure of anything. Something told her that the Nazi and this new war was as wrong as her creating if not worse.

Fa flew around her lazily, distracting her again from something deep that she might not have gotten out of for a while. Emil ignored the rest of the songs and cheers the people were throwing. She pitied them, but she could not place why. Maybe Fa would know. She turned to Fa, waiting for it to explain to her.

'I do not think I can answer any of your questions, Yew.'

"Sephtis." Fa paused in her swirling before continuing.

'Sephtis?'

"I want to be called Sephtis. Or Emil, but not Yew." Emil scrunched up her nose a little and frowned lightly.

'I do not think that Sephtis is right for you.'

"It feels right, though. Yew feels like someone else's name. Or title, but not mine." There was a long pause before Fa spoke to her again.

'Yew is for the life breather. Sephtis is for the soul collector. You breathe life, you are Yew.' So that was why they called her Yew. Emil sighed as she started to feel frustrated. There was not much that was important to her at the moment, but being called Yew was something that really needed to go. She refused to think of herself as Yew. Emil Nimitz was much better than Yew. Yew made something in her chest constrict. It made her soul ache, or what was left of it.

"Bitte. Just call me Emil if you cannot call me Sephtis, but I am telling you that Sephtis feels right. Natural." She really needed to correct Fa before she got distracted again.

'Emil, then.' Emil smiled softly in victory. . Fa swirled around her slowly as another wisp came to Emil. This one was just as transparent as Fa, but it was orange and had no real definite figure. She had called it Des when she had met it.

'Yew, I think you need some sleep.' Des swirled around her fast.

'It is Emil now, Des.' Fa circled around with Des. Emile watched for a moment, forgetting what she was doing by the window in the first place.

"I am not tired," she whispered to Des. She had slept two days ago. She was perfectly fine for a while, as she had done far more staying awake in the void.

'You are," Des said softly back to her. 'Your mind just does not register it.'

"Bitte, Des. I am fine. My mind is fine." Emil walked over to her bed anyway as she spoke in her soft tones. She was cold anyway.

'Sleep like a human, Emil. At least for now." Emil frowned slightly as she slipped into her bed and under the covers. It was getting really cold, outside and in her attic.

"Why?" She hazily looked at Des and Fa as they swirled around each other. Her thoughts slowed down, but it did not help. She was always thinking. Always trying to keep aware of what was around her. Who knew when she was going to go back into the void?

'The world will be here when you wake up. Your mind will clear some, Emil." Maybe that was why she needed to do the things humans did. It helped her.

"Versprechen?" Emil looked at Des and Fa before focusing on Des. Her eyes were really heavy, now that she thought about it. Was that what told her that she was tired?

'I promise.' Emil was still for a couple minutes, before she felt her head nodding on its own accord. She looked up at Fa and Des twirling around each other as her eyes slid closed. It was so much like the void, -sleeping was- yet it was so different. It was nice. Safe most of the time, but something always happened. That was the major difference from it and the void. One she appreciated. So very much.

Emil had spent the next couple months taking care of herself and doing chores around the house to keep Tante happy when she came back- if she came back. It was September already and Tante was still not back. The food in the kitchen was all gone and Emil had been forced to grow her own for a while now. The house was clean, as Emil had the duty of keeping it that way when Tante was not there and sometimes when she was. Fa and Des were telling her things that they had found out about this world. Things that she would not have know as she was always in the house, like what was going on around Germany with the war or how humans were supposed to act.

The life-creatures had finally convinced her to create an animal. She had barely been creating food as it was, and with only the thought of need. Tomorrow she was going to try her hand at making a small animal with the help of Fa and Des. They had said that they were only going to give her vague help as they did not really know how to do it themselves, but they would try their best. It made her feel a bit better, though she would not tell the two. She woke up the next morning, she went down and into the rest of the house to make sure that she done all of the cleaning for the week before she went back into her attic.

'I think that all you do is just want it really bad, like how you do with with the food except you think of an animal instead.' Des was swirling around in the air a few feet from her with Fa as they spoke to her. Emil just nodded to them quietly and looked at her hands and then the creatures all around her. She closed her eyes and felt inward. She tried to go deep, deep within to her source. It felt like an eternity before she noticed a change in the black and saw her core. Once she felt it and saw the glittering mist, she emerged herself in it and let instincts take over. The instincts that begged to create, and not the ones that said that this was wrong and begged her to stop this nonsense. The second one was ignored- though it did not go without a fight. She was almost exhausted by the time she fought down the feeling of wrongness at creating, but she continued on.

She kept her eyes closed as she pressed her hands together and forced substance into her palms. She moved her hands around it, shaped it, and smoothed along the surface before she was happy with what she felt. She then imagined it to feel slippery and smooth, to feel soft and flexible. Then she forced the image to apply to what she had shaped. She opened her eyes to see something that looked like Fa, but felt alive and just like what Emil imagined a stingray would feel like. It was the size of her head and beautiful. It was alive, but not really. It had all of the qualities and feel of being alive, but Emil felt like it did not own an inner source or a mind yet.

She frowned softly before looking at the Life-creatures in front of her, and then struck out her hand to gently guide one to her. She pushed it into her chest and to her core, before she closed her eyes and brought up the creature she made to her lips. With a feeling of euphoria she felt so often when she made life, Emil breathed out the life-creature out of her core and into her creation. She was left breathless when she opened her eyes to look at the now fully capable and alive creature. It had a mind, and looked around. She let a few tears from the feeling of seeing and creating it, and smiled down at the , she heard something crash behind her and a sharp intake of breath. When she turned around, she saw Tante.

"Du…." Tante opened and closed her mouth like a fish as Emil grew more and more tense. Why was Tante back the day she decides to make life? Tante came to her within the next second and punched Emil before she looked around and grabbed a sharp piece of wood out of the many that was on the floor. Tante stabbed it into the creature that Emil had just made before she hit Emil with it again and again. Tante let the wood fall to the floor in the next instance.

"You abomination!" Tante scowled at Emil as her face burned red with rage. Tante picked up a purse that she had let crash with the floor earlier and quickly got out of the attic, slamming the door and locking it loudly. Emil looked on silently, not feeling anything. She was in too much shock to do anything but be still where she was at on the floor. There was screaming and crashes down and in the main floor of the house. Emil finally put the dead creature down on the floor an hour later when the violence stopped. She looked on numbly at the blood that pooled on the floor. She felt her eyes well up with water and then drip down her face.

It was silent for once in her attic. The life-creatures were all quiet for once and not even a hallucination came to her. Emil stayed there for a few more hours before she got up and numbly crawled into bed. Her room in the attic was locked away from the rest of the house. Tante never came back to unlock it, in fact, Tante was not even back into the house until a few days later with what sounded like a man. Emil had listened in her bed as disgusting noises filled the silence through a vent that connected to the rest of the house. She cried silently on and off, trying not to look at the dead carcass on her floor. It was a mystery to her why it upset her so much, but it did and it hurt.

Tante never came to unlock her attic door, until it was winter again. Emil had to fend for herself, find a way to get food and water. When she grew desperate enough to live food grew and water came, but it was only when she was not in shock or felt empty. It meant that she did not eat regular or take care of herself much. She was too skinny and malnutritioned and was in need of a shower by the time her door opened for the first time in a while. Whatever Emil had thought would happen- or if she had simply given up hope that it would open at all again- was quickly stopped. There were two men with Tante.

Emil felt her breathing pick up slightly. She was being taken away, just as Tante had threatened a while ago. She was still confused, unsure of everything, and could feel a deep seed of wrongness off of these men. It felt terrible. She had felt the wrongness that came from these men and the group they were in, but up close it was much worse.. She was just finding out that the wrongness was much more than just them. It seemed to be spread all over the world and deep within it, but she only knew that from what her life-creatures told to her and probably from experience soon.

"The freak was hiding in my attic this whole time! Bitte, nehmen sie von mir weg! I do not want an unerwünscht." What? She was kept locked up here all along for something that could have been said months ago? Why did it take Tante so long to finally face her? Large men in uniforms were grabbing harshly on Emil's arms. They were bruising her, she was sure. Tante had finally had enough of her. It was almost funny in a hysterical kind of way. All she had to do was create a small life form, an animal for the first time, with Tante watching- without Emil really knowing- and she was deemed an abomination and carried away. She had been deemed uncorrectable by Tante as it would appear, but it still left the question of why Tante would wait so long to deem her this far gone.

She was dragged past the corpse of her creation, past the door to her room in the attic, down stairs and through hallways, past rooms and finally out of the front door. She had not really been out of the house for many reasons, and was wishing that she could go back into her attic once more. She hated Tante and did not like being there, but it was all she knew. She should be glad that she was not killed, instead being gathered up with what looked like a few more people, but she was not grateful at all. Death seemed to be a more familiar and happy thought, whereas being forced into this situation was new and scary.

"Vielen Dank für den Hinweis auf diese Frau." Tante talked more with one of the men while the other dragged Emil along with a small group of people that looked forlorn. She was still working on her Deutsch, so Emil did not understand all of what was being said, but she had an idea from the body language and tone. She did not want to think about it at all. She had been doing so well with not showing anyone anything, and Tante just had to see her finally create her first life that was for one of the life-creatures. Tante was really good at lying as well, Emil found out. She made an elaborate excuse and charmed her way with the two men that came to take her away. Emil wished she was in the safety of the attic, of being alone. She had no idea what was going to happen nor did she know what she was going to do. It was making her nervous. She was starting to feel fear, especially after she felt the wrongness start to pore into her full force.

Emil was walking beside an older woman in her thirties. Tante had gotten tired of her, so she told a man in a uniform that she was an unwanted hiding in her attic. That had been almost two years ago. A couple more months and it really would be two years. Emil was eight now, going to be nine if she survived until November. She had been put into a crowded area for the past year, where all the unwanted went before being shipped off to a camp. It had taken a lot in her to stop talking out loud like she used to or to ignore the things that were not seen by anyone but her. The woman beside her had her two children die of starvation just before Emil came to the cramped living arrangement. Emil calls her Frau Ann, as the woman had suggested. Frau Ann had taken her in, helped Emil survive in her new 'home'. Frau Ann had made her lie about her age, telling her that children under ten did not survive long. She was the one to help her look older, more healthy and fit, and now she was holding on to her. They were walking with so many others to wherever the men in uniforms were kept silent, knowing that this was serious to everyone. She had seen a couple of bodies alongside the road. Some of those people had many small holes in them.

They were lead onto a train that had no seats and crammed everyone close. It was hot, disgusting, and painful on the train ride. Emil clung to Frau Ann, not liking how everything was turning out. Tante had made good on her threat, and Emil has hated every moment of it. She missed her attic, her solitude, and freedom to do as she pleased. She never dared to talk to Fa or Des around anyone. The hallucinations were fully ignored and Emil tried her best to hide her magic- a word she found fit the things she was able to do. Frau Ann had told her the rumors of what was done with those with special qualities in the camps. Frau Ann told her everything that she dared to tell an eight year old about what was happening, as well as school her in subjects she deemed important.

There was almost no room to move around in the train's box. There was only one small window in the compartment, that Emil and Frau Ann had been pushed up near when they moved into the train cart thankfully, and when the door had slid closed and trapped her in with so many people Emil had found herself even more thankful for the window. It turned hot very fast, which was not surprising seeing as it was Juni -June- and she was surrounded by warm bodies, and grew suffocating almost to Emil as time passed in the train. The only thing that help was that she was by the only window and thus allowed more circulation near her. Night and day passed by slowly in the train. There was no stop to let them out and stretch, no person to give any of them food or water, nor was there any person to come and take away any of the bodies from the recently deceased. There was so little ventilation that the people furthest from the window died. Add to that the lack of food and water completely and being at the mercy of anything like sickness, and the numbers were growing in dead. Five days. That was how long they were in the train.

Emil was wary of what was to come, finally getting an idea on why she had hated the Nazi group a few years earlier. If the camps were worse than the crowded living space she had just been at, then the future was not looking very pretty. Everything was getting progressively worse. First the cramped living area- ghetto is what Frau Ann had once said- then the train and the camp that they were being lead to was almost expected to be worse. When the train stopped- finally stopped- everyone was forced out and forward by the men in uniforms. All of the unwanted walked in one deformed line until they got to a point where everyone was sorted through. The very young, old, and anyone that did not look very well was sorted onto one side while everyone was sorted to another. Emil was hidden very well by Frau Ann, and was thankful that she got to stay with the woman. Then, they were sorted again. Women on one side and men on another.

No one had anything, as they had been forced to leave all possessions behind before boarding the train, but the clothes on their backs. They were coldly ordered around by the men in uniforms and pushed around. Emil had to strip and change into what looked like rags. She had her medium hair shaved off to nothing, and a tattoo placed on her left forearm. It had hurt, so bad. Still did. When Emil looked around through her tears, she saw that all of the women were getting the same things as her happen to them. She shook slightly as she saw Frau Ann and grabbed hold of her, not daring to let go again. Now that she was at a camp meant for undesirables, she understood why it was meant to be taken as a very serious threat. The wrongness the she had been feeling more and more, was so strong here that it was choking Emil. How no one noticed, was beyond her.

She could feel small tremors rack through her arms and legs. There was a terrible smell that hung in the air, and stung her eyes. It made her want to throw up and curl in a ball and cry. Something was tugging at her soul and making her feel a force weigh down on her, pushing her with a force of something that she had not felt before. She looked down at her left arm with wide eyes and read the numbers that will from now on be forever embedded into her skin. Numbers that held so much significance in that instance than in any other:

71403