I saw the grass the second I stepped outside and instantly smiled. There was no grass where I was from. Only cement. And I was glad that I would live to see it again. But I still knew there was much more to see and it took all my willpower to stay calm. Well... as calm as you can get when you finally get to see the other side of your planet. "So what do you wanna see first?" Hayden asks me. I stare at him. "I don't know anything here. You show me." I point at him and then at me, talking to him like a baby. He chuckles at my response.
"Okay. Let's start with the library." I brighten up at his words. "I know what a library is! What are the books made of?" He doesn't saying anything, his lips firmly pressed together giving me a clear sign that he wasn't going to tell me anything until we got there. We walked alongside each other where there were Anoch children playing and rolling around in the grass. "Doesn't that make them dirty?" I ask as I watch another leap into a brown puddle making the liquid splatter over the grass. I would've thought she would be disgusted and try and clean it up but instead she kept leaping up and down with a smile on her face. Her cheeks were rosy, she had a cute little button nose and wore a pink shirt and shorts. Her brunette hair was in a braid and she had a toothy smile. And instead of the polite smiles you see on the human side of the wall or the fake ones, this was genuine. She was having... what's the word?
"That's called fun." Fun. "Fun." I try the foreign word on my lips. I've heard what funny is. But fun? What's it supposed to do? "Fun is when your having a good time. Everyone should have fun in their lives. Otherwise, what's the point?" he said, almost as if he read my mind. Did he? "Life is supposed to be a test. I've always seen it as a sick and twisted game. The objective is to make it successfully in a limited amount of time. Such as being able to provide for yourself, hardworking, and following the rules. Life is supposed to be about order to keep us from chaos. And when we've finished work, we come home and relive our day before going to sleep. All our books are either on history or our work. There's nothing... fun there." I explain to him. His look holds sadness in it.
A look I clearly know from the other side. "Is that what every human thinks?" I give him a bitter smile. "I wouldn't know. Humans don't share feelings all that much. For me, it feels so wrong. And I was lucky enough to meet Caitlin. Someone I could trust. Someone I could talk to. Without her, I would have no one. Especially since we aren't allowed to visit parents. The whole idea of letting the kid leave at a young age is so they won't need the parent anymore. So I haven't seen my mom in years. My friends from work? They aren't people I would hold close and dear to my heart if you know what I mean." he nods his head and his eyes show something of pity as he urges me to continue. "Life is just so... bland. Fruitless, perhaps."
The little girl was gone. She was already carried inside by her mother. "Your mom never answered my question. Maybe you can." I say as we keep walking. I scan around trying to find a tall building towering above the others. That was what the library looked like at home. I wasn't sure about here but it should look similar. Right? "Shoot." he says. My eyes widen and I stop, stepping away from him. "Shoot what?" I ask hesitantly. His brows furrow in confusion. And then they express something the little girl showed. A smile. He burst out laughing while I just stare at him. Why is everything in this world so different?
There was no clock for me to tell how long he was laughing. But in my head I guessed another five minutes. Just like Ryker laughed at me earlier about an alarm clock. (Which I still find kind of pointless.) "Not that kind of shoot." he responds, catching his breath. "Shoot is just an expression for... ask away." Oh. Why would they use such a violent word? How would they tell the difference between an actual 'shoot' and the expression word 'shoot?' Anoch don't make any sense. "Okay, then." And we resume walking once again.
"So, why do Anoch live with their families? Don't you guys have a leader? Someone to tell you how long you have to be with parents?" A cool breeze pushed against us causing my hair to flap back in the wind. The feeling was just so...natural. Hayden looked at me, his expression unreadable. His lips were pressed together as if he were biting back a response. But his eyes showed a mixture of both agony and happiness. Anoch are far more complicated with emotions. No, emotions were complicated in general. Maybe that's why humans are so blank. So bland.
"We do have a leader. But they're not in control of what happens with families. The family chooses how they want to live. Believe it or not, families are different. Some kids live with their mom, some of them live with their dad. Some live with both or aunts or grandparents. Some are just alone. The point of being a person is so that you choose your way of life. No one should tell you how family works."
He said it with so much force and anger. "But that's the idea. That way no child will ever be alone. Everyone will have a mother to remember." He shakes his head. "Diversity is what makes you human. We used to admire that. The way you never categorized anyone unlike us. But ever since we got here it's like you guys are more machine, doing whatever the government says without question." I thought about it. I never remembered any diversity. I remember being categorized since I was a baby. But Hayden did have a point. There were no more personalities. I'm surprised I even know what that is. But the more I think about, the more I realize just how monotonous life for humans really was.
"We're here!" he says, his demeanor changing from a cold exterior to a suddenly cheerful mood. Was he bipolar? I decided to stop focusing on Hayden's mood swings and rather see what Hayden wanted to show me. "Yay, the library!" I screech, attracting the attention from nearby Anoch. They gave me weird looks for a minute before returning to whatever it is they were doing. "Yep. It's time for you to see Anoch books." I raise an eyebrow.
"Is there a different kind of language? What is it made of? Our books our made of glass so since you can't really touch it... is it made of wood?!" Hayden simply chuckled and guided me through the large set of double doors. The were so many colors here! The floor had a pattern of navy blue to sky blue and it felt soft. The tables looked like they were made from wood and so did the bookshelves. There was a huge balcony that covered the entire second floor which was stacked with more bookshelves. I walk towards one and brush my fingers along the spines of the colorful books. I pull one out at random. "Percy Jackson and the Lightning Theif? Who is Percy Jackson? What did he do to change our world?" Hayden laughs. "Right, you humans don't have fiction."
"Fiction? You mean nonfiction?" Hayden shakes his head. Then what is fiction supposed to be? "There are different types of fiction. Basically it's when you make up a story to entertain." Books can entertain? I thought they were all about shoving knowledge down our throats. "Can I read it?" He nods his head gesturing towards one of the wooden tables. I pull out a chair and sit down laying the Lightning Theif on the table and look at Hayden again unsure of what to do.
"How do these kinds of books work?" I can tell he's biting back a laugh because he momentarily holds his breath before pulling out a chair and sitting down next to me. "This is not electronic. Which means it never dies." I gasp. "You don't need to charge it? It's never ending? Wow! I wonder why humans don't have books like this." He shakes his head, chuckling slightly. "You have to turn the pages." For the next fifteen minutes or so, Hayden shows me how to use it. Once he let me try on my own, it took 30 seconds for me to become engrossed. Hayden must have been reading too because he didn't say anything for the hour it took me to finish the book. I slammed the book closed, my jaw slack, and my eyes wide open.
"I...love...books! That was amazing! The way Annabeth's character was written and the way Percy chopped off Medusa's head! And the plot twist with Grover having goat legs and being a satyr! I wasn't expecting it and-and I loved it!" He laughs and walks back to the bookshelf picking out another. "Percy Jackson and the Sea of Monsters? Is this trying to rip off this one?" I said outraged. At this point, Hayden couldn't hold back his laughter and I just stood there frustrated, my arms crossed waiting for a response. "No. There are things called a series. Some books have sequels where there is a second book based off the first one. Others are trilogies which have three books based off the same characters and the same story. It just keeps going. And some just have one." I'm still confused. "Why not just write it all in one book?" I ask.
Hayden went back to the bookshelf scanning the spines before pulling out another three. The Titan's Curse, Battle of the Labyrinth and The Last Olympian. He starts stacking the books on top of one another with the Lightning Theif on top. "Would you read this much if it were one book?" I stared at the ridiculously tall pile and shake my head slowly. Then again, anything taller than a glass pad was pretty shocking to me. "That's why they're separated."
He grabs my hand pulling me out of library and back onto the sidewalk. "Where are you taking me now? The library was cool enough." He shakes his head. "Trust me, you're going to love this next one." Curiosity prods my mind and I ultimately decide to let him take me wherever it was he was taking me. We ended up in front of something called ColdStone. I didn't know what it was but I know that you can't buy stones that are cold. Hayden pulled me inside and I was enveloped in the cold air making me slightly shiver. Okay, that was an understatement. I was visibly shivering. "Don't you have snow on your side?" I shake my head. "N-n-no." my teeth are chattering. "We h-h-have the CareB-b-bot that encases us in r-r-room temperature."
Hayden watches as I rub my arms trying to find a source of heat. Hayden shrugs off his sweater and hands it to me. "Here." I look up at him trying to find a sign of annoyance. But instead I find a sign of caring and a hint of curiosity. I take the sweater, draping it over my shoulders. "Now, I'm going to show you, ice cream." My eyes light up. It sounds interesting. A lady with a strange hat asks us what kind of... ice cream we want and Hayden orders a chocolate for me. "What's chocolate ice cream?" He doesn't respond until he pays the lady and takes two cone shaped objects and hands the one with brown goop on one. "Try it."
I stare at it. Ice cream? I lick it quickly, ready to spit it out. But instead I taste something sweet and creamy. Ice cream! I lick more of it. "So you like it?" I ignore him and keep eating my treat until it's gone. My shoulders sink in disappointment. "It's gone." I say sadly. Hayden raises an eyebrow. "Look!" I hold out my cone to him like a child. He gets up and says something to the lady once again before taking another cone with the chocolate ice cream on top. "Yay!" I clap, throwing the old cone away and taking my new ice cream. He laughs at my childishness.
"You really like ice cream." I nod. "Humans don't have ice cream." I realize he's wearing a short sleeve shirt and quickly make a move to give him his sweater back but he stops me. "It's okay. Anoch adapt. It's nice in here." I reluctantly pull away and keep eating. But before I could finish, I hear a loud bang come from the door. Hayden yanks me from my chair, pulling me behind him and I take a peek from behind his shoulder.
Ryker stood in the doorway. And he was mad.
Okay, so I realized that September is a short month which means I'll be having lots of days off. I decided to write this to get my mind off of the fact that I still don't have an ID card for school and a gym uniform. I need to take care of that tomorrow during my free period but I'm not sure how and it's freaking me out! Anyways, this is the chapter. Just so you know, Rose is kind of reacting to everything like this because she's never seen it before. She's like a highly intelligent newborn who can speak the language and knows what certain things are but have never seen the world. So Rose is kind of having a baby's thoughts right now. Anyways, here's the chapter. Sorry if it wasn't action packed. (That ending though. Haha, I'm so evil.) Stay awesome and I'll see you next chapter!