Village

Village Part 2

Celeste felt a slight elevation after taking the test. Sure, with no sleep she would crash early tonight, but for now she was certain of a B, or at the least, a high C. That was passing. Before her schooling was over, she couldn't imagine a cell in the human body that she would not be able to resolutely define in both form and function. A little confidence was slowly seeping back into her life.

She passed Sai on the way to the room and asked her how she did.

"Piece of cake, sister-girl. You?"

"The same," Celeste lied.

As Sai turned to head to her last test, she spun back around and hollered at the retreating Celeste.

"Oh, yeah. Your Uncle is waiting for you in the room."

Sai continued walking, but Celeste stopped in her tracks.

She did not have an Uncle.

Her mind went straight to the Travelers. She began walking and turning things over in her head. Why would they have sent someone out to contact her? She wasn't a rebel. A free thinker, yes. But she wasn't one of the ones that were stirring the pot. She kept to herself here. Went about her business with her head down and was only a couple of years away from a B.S. in PreMed, the pathway to true freedom. Financial independence. Maybe the stories you heard as a child were true. Maybe they never really let you leave. Maybe they show up in your dorm room and smother you with a pillow.

Ridiculous. People were everywhere. And here she was again, letting that silly fear creep into her gullible spine again. It was entrenched. Little soldiers of dogma, bore down tight in the trenches of her doubts and revelations. A constant pressure point, applied from afar by a history of conditioning from the time she could crawl. Nature and nurture. Maybe everywhere else the environment was only fifty percent, but in Herlige Eng Af Håb it was more like ninety nine percent. Let the brainwashing begin.

As she walked slower and with anticipation back to the room, she remembered the first time someone had asked her where she was from. She had answered quiet truthfully – The Glorious Meadows of Hope. There was a blank stare and an unsure smile. And that was the end of that conversation before it ever began. She learned to tell people she was from a farm. Simple enough. It seemed to paint the same benign stereotype in everyone's head. And that was fine. The more history she learned, the more she studied other cultures and countries, the more she realized that it sounded strangely like some North Korean propaganda. Come relax in our glorious meadows of hope and shining heaven.

She pushed the door open, trying to seem unabashed by the intrusion, as if she was perhaps accustomed to strange men showing up unannounced in her room. The man was standing by the window to the courtyard –

- Right where the thing would have been standing in my dream –

- and turned slowly and calmly around when she entered. He had a kind face, like a monk. A light silver beard, trimmed short and blue eyes like the sea. She knew he was from the village immediately. The man smiled a wan smile.

She had decided before entering the room that she would inject a forceful silence upon whoever it was and force them to speak first.

"Hi," she said.

The man looked stunned for a split second and then recovered immediately.

"Hi, Celeste."

He walked a little closer. They stood three feet apart and stared at each other for a moment in silence.

Celeste said, "Did I do something?"

The man looked slightly incredulous and then saw her confusion.