Word count- 600

-Zoey-

Waking up here next to cold bodies every day with their open eyes staring back at her, blue around their eyes, and their pale gray skin. Makes Zoey want to play dead with them. It’s hard surviving here. They’re always cold and hungry all the time. Collars on their necks like they are animals, treated like they are slaves. To ask to wake up the next morning is a lot to ask. They lost a lot of people along the way. Zoey doesn’t remember being at another place, her friends and Zoey grew up in the camps. All their mothers died of giving birth. It’s rare when a mother survives. The lack of food and water, being so frail. Not the correct doctor equipment along with the doctors. Their kind only love once, so when their mothers die their fathers follow suit.

Zoey gets up from the pile of bodies and looks for her friends. She hears crying in the distance. Zoey hopes it’s not one of her friends.

Zoey walks over to where the crying is, and she hasn’t seen them before. She hasn’t met them.
She helps them up and how much they are crying they lost someone important. She’s assuming a mate. “You have to leave, come on,” Zoey tells them. “You will get the whip if you don’t come with me,” she tried to get her out of here. She looks slightly older than Zoey does. Her dark hair is to her hips, pale like the rest of them. Taller than her, which isn’t saying much. She’s short. Zoey can’t say how tall they don’t care to measure them.

***

The doors swing open, and she stops fighting Zoey for a second, and she pulls her up. Zoey drags her away from her mate, leaving him to be lost in the spirit world like the rest of them. When they don’t properly do a ceremony by putting them on a boat and burning them. Saying their words to their gods. Asking to give their friends peace, and live their lives in the heavens.

They all stand outside of the rundown building where they sleep. Men are in there picking up the bodies, probably doing a count. They clean every morning, but it never looks like it. So many of them die every night.

They stand in the crack of dawn outside in rags. While the soldiers wear coats, hats, and gloves. No wonder why they are dropping like flies.The men came out of this building in this camp. There are multiple different camps all over. One man goes up to the one that’s standing in front of Zoey. Whispers the amount that died last night. “A hundred died just last night,” she heard the man say. The general looks pissed off.

He dismissed them and they walked over to the Great Hall, where they ate breakfast. Which is basically a loaf of bread. Zoey heads over to the Great Hall, which is across what they call camp. The shacks are rundown falling apart. Most of them don’t have roofs and giant holes in walls. They are not in good condition.

After she gets there, Zoey looks for her friends. None of them are at their table on the way back to the room. Nobody is back here. There aren’t a lot of people here, when it’s normally fairly crowded. Her heart feels like it’s going to bounce out of her. She starts to sweat and then Zoey starts to cry, knowing what happened. They’re gone forever, and their souls will be lost forever.