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by Guest 2/16/2014, 10:13 am
Another Place, Another Time
If there was an answer, he'd find it there.
Scarlett sighed.
Another day, another lost, forsaken Day.
The 14-year-old girl had no idea how long they’d been at sea. They weren’t even AT SEA! The cart they’d been riding for days on end was on a ramshackle gravel island-sort-of-thing, a man-made, raised surface above water so that trains could pass between the children’s home countries and the Castle.
More like from land to castle, never between.
The trains ventured out into the unknown and never, ever came back. The men and women of her home all toiled away relentlessly, mining metals, farming the land, producing goods all for the Ruler. And every New Year the train came, took all they had, and never brought it back. The train infuriated Scarlett. It had no right to wrench from calloused, burnt, and raw hands the last bit of pride the people owned. The cruel train took its stolen goods off to a lavish palace built for a kagillionare nobody in Scarlett’s home country even knew anything about. That train had worked the girl’s parents to their deaths. Every time Scarlett heard that shrill whistle, it felt like a knife to the heart.
Another orphan, another starving and motherless child.
Elias looked around.
Another day, another storm brewing.
He was scared. He even missed his home a bit. It was not rich, nor poor, but it was very strict. So he ran away. They wanted him to learn of poetry, reading, writing. How to sit down and make up places and people who don’t exist, never existed, and won’t exist. That was expected of the people of Falconvale, his home country. But Elias was different.
Elias wanted to be a scientist.
He saw the fog brewing around the edges of the cart, he saw the thick, dark, and low cloud layer hanging above them. He knew that the tranquil weather they had had that day wouldn’t last forever. Storms just didn’t happen at all in Falconvale; it was always sunny. He had planned to leave for Scotsbury or Myngado, lands with more extreme weather patterns. The other children just found him first.
One of the children was from Myngado, he knew. He tried to bring the conversation up with the fierce-eyed, dirty-haired girl, but she refused to speak to him. He could tell, however, there was some sort of sadness buried deep inside her. Sadness which she turned into rage. Elias didn’t know what her sadness was, however. The girl with blazing scarlet hair just couldn’t be budged.
Elias knew sadness too, being denied his dream of growing up and supplying factual information to the small, but functioning world he and the others grew up in. True, he was only 9 years old; but he knew what he wanted to do. Getting held back from that was like having his heart ripped in two, slowly but steadily.
Another dream, another dawn to break it.
Antoinette smirked at the other three people riding on the cart.
Another day, another chance to put them down.
She wasn’t from one of their poor, sickly, weak commoner regions. She came from Florah; the richest place on the continent, besides the Ruler’s castle. Antoinette knew that she was the best of the best; a true aristocrat. Her family lived in a big manor, which she was very proud of and loved to brag about. By her family she always meant about 15 slaves and her sickly mother. Her father was out on the front lines doing the Ruler’s dirty work in… um… where was he again?
Antoinette saw her father very rarely, and was too busy being taught proper manners and etiquette to worry about him. She faithfully believed that the Ruler’s way was the only way. They had been able to force the continent to work properly, hadn’t they? They had fashioned their small world into a pyramid. Lucky for her, she was second to the top.
Unlike that orangehair scum. Antoinette couldn’t believe she was within 10 feet of a slave girl from Myngado. Myngado and its residents were on the way, way bottom. Where they belonged. They had tried to rally against the Ruler a long time ago. Unjust treatment, they had claimed. Unjust? They were getting what they deserved; slavery was their punishment. Because, after all, the Ruler is peace. The Ruler is love. The Ruler is life… aren’t they?
The only reason Antoinette was kind to the scum was because the boy-captain told her to. The boy steering their cart was dreamy; at least dreamier than the man she was supposed to marry in Florah. She didn’t care for him; Antoinette wanted this guy. She turned her back to the other two filthy peasants though.
Another princess, another fairy story.
Joshua grinned.
Another day, another flawless day.
It worked! It really really worked! The contraption he had built to go travel to the Castle had really, really WORKED! And it was still working! Joshua couldn’t help but feel a rush of pride. Him, a 13 year old boy from Scotsbury, and his revolutionary invention. He and three others, slowly and steadily gliding past arsenic-colored waves, wind in their sails as they became a family.
If it were only that simple.
As one might see, the world had a government. As one might see, it formed a pyramid. As one might see, the Ruler had put them self on the top. There were five levels, based on economy and status: Myngado, Scotsbury, Falconvale, Florah, and the Castle. Joshua needed to know why, how did this happen? Joshua’s favorite thing to learn and listen to was history. And now he was here, gliding towards the shadowy figure the countries feared and loved, the Castle itself.
If there was an answer, he’d find it there.