soundless exile

Prologue

Along the main highway, an older sedan is seen riding along the road, and a young girl is seen in the back seat. She has white hair and a set of white fox ears on her head; her eyes are a bright blue; and she appears to be 7 or 8, playing with a small doll. "Dear, would you like a snack?", The young child perked up, looking at the woman with a set of ears like her own. "Yes, mommy?" The man in the driver's seat smiles as he glances off the road for a second. "Now don't spoil her lunch; we have a picnic at the beach." The child perked up very excitedly. "Picnic!", the mother looked over with a slight smile. "I thought we agreed it was a surprise", the man chuckles. "Sorry, dear." He looks back to the road, and a semi-truck is seen flying towards them. He swerves hard right and slams into the ditch, flipping the car over. The only thing heard was screams and crushing metal and glass.

13 years later

The girl looks into the mirror. Her face tired and covered in black soot marks, she punches next to the mirror and cracks the plaster on the wall "Why did they have to lay me off? I have been working in that shipyard for 3 fuckin years and never had a complaint", she thought to herself in anger.

She sees a flash of light in the corner of her eye and looks to the door. "I wonder who's here?" She walks to the door and opens it to see the apartment manager with a sly grin. He begins to speak fast, too fast for the girl to understand. By lip-reading, the girl puts her hands up and signs for him to slow down. He sneers but does so. "You missed your rent payment for the 3rd time." The girl looks back to her home dejectedly. It was a simple one-room apartment with a few books and a few other personal items, but otherwise empty except for the furniture that came with the place. She turns back to the man, grabbing a pad of paper and pencil and writing, "I'll leave in the morning." She hands it to the man.

He reads through it, smiles, and looks at the girl. "Thank you for being so prompt." He turns and leaves her to do her packing. The girl looks dejectedly at the man's back. "Ah, fuck, now I got to pack and find somewhere to stay," she thought to herself as she put together a bag of her few personal belongings, throwing it on her back and leaving out the door. She looks at the wall with the cracked plaster. "Well, I'll let the next tenant deal with it," she thought as she walked out the front and hails a cab. Getting in, she hands the driver a note saying to take her to the shipyards.

20 minutes later

She steps out of the cab and hands the driver a few bills, paying her fair. Walking to the gate and entering the yard, she looks off to the left at the incomplete hull of a few ships, and the light cruiser she was working on was nearly done, but they laid off the work crew and brought in some government-looking people, she recalled. She sighed as she looked around, looking for anyone or anything to see if she was going to be caught. Then she sees an aircraft carrier in the repair dock. She decides to get on the ship and runs over to it, dipping and dodging out of sight of random workers along the same path.

She finally got on the carrier, and she looked around, seeing not a single person on the deck. She ran over to a hatch on the tower, swung it open, and entered the depths of the ship. Looking around the dark abyss, her eyes slowly adjusted to it. Suddenly, she heard the engines engage on the ship, shuddering into motion. She stumbled into a wall and caught herself on an iron support. She took a few uneasy steps and managed to get to a crew bunk and sits in it. "Not a soul in sight yet, its moving, its impossible," she thought as she looked around. She slowly laid down on the bunk, grabbing a book from her bag and started to read.