Girl of Iron and Magic

1.

Groan.

The blasting of the horn from the distance into the grey dusty dawn was like the moaning of a giant beast. Lotte gazed down at the black, hulking mass of the factory from her high perch on Sullivan tower, her goggles over her eyes and her scarf tied round her face to protect her mouth and nose from the rising fumes.

Below, like sleepy ants, the factory workers ambled towards work, moving in slow silent bunches, dragging their feet.

Her days living in the tower were numbered. Soon, very soon, she either had to find a way out of Raidox or...she didn't want to think about it.

"A war is coming, Lotte," Poe had told her the night he showed up again only to bid her farewell. His long auburn ponytail blew merrily in the hazy evening breeze.

She wanted to beg him to take her with him, she wanted to ask him to stay. She just wanted to forgive him, he was her only family, after all.

"Where will you go?" she had asked instead.

"It's better that you don't know."

The tensions that were brewing for centuries between humans and elves were fit to burst. The war that everyone whispered about was finally here. The broadcasts announced that the Alesi, the people of the high cities of Lasuran, or simply "elves" as they were known to the humans, had overstepped their bounds, growing their forests on human soil. It was not like in the past when the humans were inferior. Times had changed. The human Agathara republic had its iron machines—humans were no longer weak.
And so, the whole land stood on the brink of war.

But where did Lotte fall? She belonged to both sides and at the same time, she was neither.

"I'm sorry, Lotte," was all Poe said before he left her there, completely alone in the world.

Not that his presence had changed the state of Lotte's loneliness. Poe had saved her life, had raised her and seen to her needs, but in the end he too had abandoned her.

There was always some detachment. Even when he was there, she had always been alone.

And now he was gone for good, gone back to Lasuran to be with the other elves where he belonged. Again, she was left to fend for herself. But this time, it was in a land that would soon view half of her as the enemy.

The elves would never take her—a Lotte, a half-elf, the humans were likely going to kill her. There was only one place a mixed breed could go to in a time like this, but even that wasn't a safe place.

Serades.

Lotte gingerly edged along the platform outside her room, slouching forward to protect herself from a particularly powerful gust of wind. She had to make only the short distance from her door to her letter box but in that time she was forced to stop twice to brace herself against the railing at the edge of the platform. The morning gales of Raidox were known to pluck unsuspecting people off the platforms of the tower.
She had heard the mail-man do his rounds only a few minutes ago.

Everything, her future, her survival, depended on her acceptance letter from Serades arriving. Poe had helped her arrange the correspondence. He was disappointing, but not unkind.
Standing over the letter box, she paused, her heart hammering suddenly and her knees feeling rubbery. How soon would the Lord General announce the war? How much time did she have? She closed her eyes and placed her palm on the rusty metal lid of the box.

Please, please let today be the day it arrived. Please let the box not be empty again. She didn't know to whom or to what her heart raised the silent prayer, she just begged with every fibre of her being for it to be the way she needed it to be.