Fire Breather

[ᴘᴀʀᴛ 𝟷]

𝘛𝘰 𝘤𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘴𝘩 𝘸𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘳𝘦𝘮𝘢𝘪𝘯𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘌𝘢𝘳𝘵𝘩 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘰 𝘧𝘰𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝘪𝘵𝘴 𝘳𝘦𝘯𝘦𝘸𝘢𝘭 𝘪𝘴 𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘰𝘯𝘭𝘺 𝘭𝘦𝘨𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘮𝘢𝘵𝘦 𝘤𝘩𝘢𝘯𝘤𝘦 𝘢𝘵 𝘴𝘶𝘳𝘷𝘪𝘷𝘢𝘭. -Wendell Berry

- - -

I sit in my cell with a dusty, old book in my hands. The book is about prehistoric animals and dinosaurs. I've always had a fascination with them. They lived millions and millions of years before me and got to experience the rawest form of Earth that ever existed. Before mankind came along and destroyed the beautiful planet, these animals lived unbothered. I was flipping the pages, looking at the illustrations and drawings when my door swung open. I squinted at the sudden brightness until a figure came into view. The figure in my cell doorway was my father, Marcus Kane. He looks at me with a straight face, yet his eyes reveal pain.

"Khaleesi," he says, "It's time to go. They're going to give you this wristband and you're going to follow them to where they take you, okay? Please don't fight or argue, just do as they say." I look at my father in confusion. Wristband? I'm leaving?

"Where am I going?" I question.

"You're going to Earth, my love."

My dad gives me a tight smile. I can tell that he doesn't wish to make me leave. I've always been his little girl. I don't respond to my father, I just nod. If I try to talk to him about it, I know I'll cry. Marcus Kane isn't my blood father. When I was a baby, my parents died. I have barely any memory of them. My father didn't know them either, no one did. They found me in a hallway of the Ark and had just assumed my parents were dead after no one came forward. I don't respond to what my father just told me, I simply nod my head and let the guards do what they need to do. I wince when there's a sudden pinch at my wrist, looking down to find a metal wristband clamped around it. The guards grab my upper arms, one on each side, and escort me to a line of my fellow delinquents. Watching many of them struggle against the force, I shake my head as I follow willingly to this dropship I see in sight. I step inside once I reach the front and find the first open seat, buckling myself in. I look to my right, at a girl a couple of years younger than me with dark hair and beautiful green eyes. She notices me staring and smiles at me.

"Hi, I'm Octavia." She holds her hand out towards me, which I gladly take.

"Khaleesa."

"Wow, what an interesting name. I've never heard it before."

She tilts her head slightly towards me as if trying to figure me out. I was about to speak when the ship started rumbling, signaling we launched.

"Good riddance Ark." I sigh. Octavia snorts and turns to me.

"What did you do to end up here?" I look down at my lap after hearing her question. My crime is not something I like to relive, let alone speak about. "I get it. You don't have to tell me. Sometimes we do some pretty hard things that we just want to forget about."

I smile at her and nod, agreeing with the wise words the girl shared with me. The entire time we were talking, Chancellor Jaha was giving some speech about what we needed to do to survive. Frankly, I couldn't care less. The only person I care about up there is my father. And Bellamy Blake. He used to sneak into my cell when he was a cadet and bring me more dinosaur books from the library. I wish I could've said goodbye to him. The visits stopped a few months ago, shortly after the masquerade dance. I never found out why the visits stopped, I just heard that he was no longer a guard and picked up being a janitor. While I was in my own thoughts, I heard some yelling and laughing. I looked up to see Finn Collins, the boy who took an illegal spacewalk, floating around the ship. I laughed in my head at the dumb idea. His life is probably about to end.