A girl in disguise. An heir in hunt. A world divided.
Iris Lavera is born into the civilization of the least respected ones. The lineage where it's predicted to birth a curse. A low born who will be the downfall of an entire nation if left alive.
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The docks were not an inch of what I imagined a public transportation settlement to be. The dock wasn't a dock- neither was it open to the common orifice. Not to see not to use. It was a massive port extending acres of land laid by solid concrete. Monolithic.
I had comprehended such a site when I tried to fantasise the dynamics of books I used to read. With its legendary fictional troopers and the men training under the sky, on a floor so rich that it caused their actions and collapse to appear heroic and incredible by how it is usually described. I would draw a frame in the snow with a stick- roll a ball of shaved ice, the size of my then small fists- sculpt them into a sloppy man and have them stand in line- like a soldier inclined for battle.
But even in the infinite scope of my mind, I wouldn't have reckoned that my dream arena would be nothing more than a pathway to vessel for some in new world.
There are lines, separating us from the guarded ones. While ours weighed, searched and approved the identification and baggage we carried, the other was empty- a stark division between the highborn and aspirants even when the goal is to reach a single destination.
No.
It's not. I shake the childlike assumption.
None of their motives is similar to ours. Their success begins where the sufferings of frontliners commence. They can'tify those who believes in the merit of crumbs they rain down when they have devoured much and can't have more.
They show us a dance of illusion of what we can't have. Could never learn.
As dorin's mother would say. A victim of falsehood herself.
The guards in green shout rules, people packed in herds move, the students of scholar hood are here too, similar to how we fared in trial- they did in their academic evaluations held in Found. While we used body- they exercised their brain to reach this phase.
I was late- the absence of nightmares has spoiled me into a habit of prioritising my slumber more than this journey. It could be my last if things spiralled from our non-existent plans in Esseth. But neither the gruelling death of a girl nor the surreptitious threat of the man who killed her seem to affect my rest.
Wish it was as easy when I am awake.
They haunt me.
Her lifeless eyes, the merciless edge in man's laugh and the cold he conjured. It's the cold. Always. No matter where I run, hide or fight- memories of Ivyaki or any touch or feel that awakens my recent past coils me into nothingness.
It's as if I am reminded again and again and again that I am nothing. I was nothing there. So so helpless. So weak. I still should be nothing. A slave. Still a slave. So much a slave to fate and destiny that I sometimes am convinced that I must have been born into a bloodline of such.
