A Grounded Heart

Chapter 2

Clarke

   "Who are you?" I ask firmly. He isn't wearing any Grounder clothes, and he isn't wearing a hazard suit like the Mountain Men...is it possible for there to be others out there?

"My name-my name is Bellamy Blake." Pathetic. I think to myself. What a pathetic leader. His eyes are shimmering and dark. "Who are you?" I nearly snap back at him, but I stop myself. I need to give him a fake identity.

"My name is Clarke Griffin, leader of the Grounders." It's not entirely fake, I am the princess of the blood thirsty tribe. That's all that the Grounders seem to want...blood. But I'm nothing like them; I don't agree to their ways.

"Why don't you show yourself? I won't hurt you. I have no weapons to hurt you with." What? Does he think I'm an idiot? He probably has a knife or maybe some arrows under his shirt. If anyone in their right mind would travel out in these woods, they would carry some sort of a weapon. But he looks so innocent and hurt, that I step out in the moonlight, showing my strong frame. Bellamy Blake's expression becomes dumbfounded as he slowly stands and comes closer. Too close, I think.

I shove him against a tree, my knife against his throat. We both breath heavy, but he throws his hands in the air.

"No weapons remember!" He cries. He's right. Even if he tried to bring me down in hand to hand combat, I could tear him apart in 15 seconds. Carefully, I draw the knife back as he tenderly rubs the imprint on his neck. "Are there more of us? Are there more people?" I clock my head to the side and crease my eyebrows. Is he stupid or something?

"Where did you come from? There are thousands, probably millions of us down here!" He grins and chuckles a deep chuckle. For some reason it sends chills down my spine.

   "After the radiation war took place, humanity sent...well what we thought was the rest of the survivors to space. We've been living up there for 97 years, isolated from what's down here." I stare at home wide-eyed. He is one of the sky people my father keeps talking about with the Elders.

   "Your Bellamy Blake of the Sly People." I say under my breath. He squints his eyes.

   "What? Sky People?"

   "Bellamy Blake, show me your camp!" I yell. There is fire in my heart, a passion to see what it is like to be of a different group.

   "Why should I bring you?!?" He laughs and it only makes me more furious. "You held a knife to my neck!"
He slowly shakes his head, scared and confused. "How do I know that I can trust you?" He says more quietly this time. His face makes me pity him.

   "Because I can't be living the way I am much longer. My father he's-he's on his death bed, and with no sons or wife to pass the throne to, I will be the next leader." I can feel tears weld up in my eyes. "I can't do it." Bellamy opens his mouth to speak, but it is interrupted with a loud crack, and everything goes black.