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The sun beat down on me and this frozen wasteland.  Not that it did much to the glazed over ground that held an unnatural blue hue, presumably from the thick blanket of magic that seeped from someplace in the ground.  Out here, you never could escape the raw power and magic kept to keep the Gather in a never ending submissive state to the King. 

Hateful bastard.

It's a good thing wood needed cut, or else I would have to find another way to keep my aggression with the King at bay.  Swinging the hatchet created release in the simplest of forms.  Repetitive motion soothed me.  Too bad the feeling never lasted long.

I grunted with each swing of my hatchet. The breeze waft the smells of the Gather to me; stench of feces and rotting meat. My nose has grew indifferent to most smells, but today was particularly impossible to ignore. The pungent smell could be permeating from an animal or a dead body, you never could really know for sure these days. Thick blankets of snow covered everything in sight but ironically enough the sun grew hot enough to set a person on fire. Not literally of course, but the internal flame was unnatural. Magic seemed to be thick in the air during afternoons like this; swirling and choking every commoner around. Another curse bestowed by the oh-so-generous Elite.

My leather jacket became slick with sweat on the inside, giving off an odor that resembled nothing more than hard work.  My hair stuck to the back of my neck, fighting itself out of the braid that Mare had put it in this morning.  The loose curls never could be contained with ease.  I'm sure by the end of the day my hair would become matted and messy, and nearly impossible to brush out.  My arms shook and had an all too familiar ache with each belligerent swing of my hatchet.  Another hunk of wood split clean in half.   Then half of the original half.  Then another. 

I should be unforgiving, and make each pile a little bit more on the bulky side, but I do not.  Mare would appropriate my actions more than Nesta.

The whole afternoon I have been chopping down what trees I could find, dragging them back home, and splitting the trunks into bundles small enough for Mare or Nesta to carry. Splinters lodge in the deep cracks of my hands, callouses made my fingers masculine. They bled occasionally. I never once paused.  By now I am used to the side effects of hard work. 

I spit, saliva and wood bits plopping on the scarred ground.  I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand. 

I could only imagine Denae's nasty comments about how unladylike like I was being. "Man hands for the hag," she would sing. "No wonder you don't have a man yet. You are beastly. Too manly. Disgusting." She has never been grateful for much. 

She takes nearly every amount of money I bring in.  Apparently the looming threat of death from starvation doesn't affect her; she just brushes it off, claiming eventually I'll come by more of it.  She's never wrong, but surviving would be easier if she wouldn't take the shellings.  Once I had come back from the Gather with almost forty shellings- the most money I've every seen in my life- and Denae demanded I had it over.

"I want it," she demanded, lips curled back from her teeth.  A cat on the prowl, she reminded me of.

"It's not yours," I snapped.  She never worked for much of anything, so why should she get to spend it?

"I need a new dress." And I want you to be gone, I added to myself.

"We need food.   Mare needs new shoes because hers are falling apart, I need a few more arrows. We also need chickens so we can have eggs.   Plus, you just got a new dress last month," I replied.   I remember how furious she became, how her face contorted with rage and hate.   She looked t me as if I were the vermin Their Kind claimed we were. Her grey eyes pierced right through my ice box heart, adding yet another crack.   She looked at me with pure and unfiltered hatred, a look that she always wore around me.  My blood buzzed with the heart-brokenness. I felt as if I would set fire to the whole room if it were possible.   The magic that constantly hung over the town seemed to pierce my nose more strongly than usual.

"Fine," She growled, stalking away to her room. It seemed to me like she gave up too easy; I didn't give it another thought though. That night I pried up a loose, warped floorboard in the loft of our cottage with my knife.  I stuck the shellings in an old boot, before hiding the bits of silver and copper for good.

Denae and I never talked about the shellings again after that night.  I had even forgotten about it until l one day when our stash of jerky and slop of what was supposed to be corn meal, ran out. My family and I had nothing left but a small jug of water and a small basket of vegetables quickly spoiling. Panic rose from deep within me.  Between the three of us, the vegetables wouldn't last long.  A day, or maybe three if I ration them correctly.  The water couldn't get us by a day; and somehow I had to make it stretch to a week.  The Elite only give us rations every month or two; we were in the red zone.  Part of me, the not very sane part, tried to rationalize and convince myself that I could make this work, and we would be fine.  The realistic part of me knew the consequences that were soon to come.

The image of my sister's bellies swollen from starvation made my hands shake with rage and fear. The crackle of the fire grew a tiny bit louder with each breath I took. We were going to starve.

I've never been a wise girl, I have made many mistakes and had to live with the consequences, but watching my family starve was not going to be one of them. I would die before I let that happen. What more could I do?  I had no money-

Realization struck me like a whip. 

When I climbed up the ladder to the loft and ripped up the floor board I was stunned to find the boot empty.

"No. No!" I said, unable to fathom the reality.  This was my only chance.  Without the money, we had nothing.  I could turn to Gael, but I would be in debt to his family, and I couldn't keep my own family fed, let alone find the resources to feed another.  I turned the boot upside down, frantically patting the rubber sole praying to the Gods that something- anything- would fall out.

Nothing did.

I felt the sky rip open in me. Lightning caressed the dark places in my mind. It was raining fire. My family was going to starve. I had no way out of my nightmare.

I collapsed into a sobbing, screaming mess onto the floor. It felt that my bones cracked with the anguish I felt. One way out, I had one way out and it had been stolen from me so easily it might as well been screaming and jumping with a sign. I am a fool, a irrational fool who is going to get her family killed because of her reckless behavior and inability to provide. I couldn't fight the terrible demons away this time.

I must've been up there all night weeping. I ignored Nesta and Mare's pleads, I ignored everything except the wound in my ice heart.

Seeing me like that must have been too much for Denae. She confessed to Mare and Nesta, shrugging it off as if it were nothing. As if signing our death certificate were nothing.  Denae admitted to me that she still had Mother's necklace, and if I had to I could sell it.

What a stupid statement; of course we needed to sell it.  We are starving

In the end, even though I really didn't want to, I had to sell our mother's golden necklace to provide food. The merchant didn't give me anything near it's value, (to me it was priceless), however when the sky ripped open and threatened to swallow you whole what could you do?

Nothing but go with the flow of things, and fight to stay alive.

The worry that churned in my stomach reminded me that I couldn't work away my problems. Denae still had yet to return. As much of a bitch as she is, I still cared about her.  Maybe not as much as I cared about Nesta and Mare, but still I cared.  The Elite could have gotten their slimy hands on her while she painted in the woods.   She could be dead, or worse, she could be taken hostage at the castle forced to work for His Majesty.   An arrow through the eye socket suddenly sounded like a privilege when given those options.

"Stop it," I scolded. "You're only making it harder on yourself." Denae is probably still painting, enjoying each stroke of the brush.  She's probably laughing and observing how the birds loop through the air while she paints trees and streams that twine and twist around the trunks.  Denae is probably fine.  Most likely.  This isn't the first time she's ran off for a few days without telling Mare or Nesta.  She never bothered to tell me in the first place.

I resumed my previous actions.  So absorbed in my rhythmical chopping, I hardly noticed when I wasn't alone anymore.  My skin prickled, and the hairs on my arm stood up.  The strange sensation of someone watching me made me wonder if a Gather Folk had wandered to my hut and is watching me.  My grip tightened on my hatchet, but I didn't pause my work.

If it hadn't been for the glossy boots that entered my peripheral vision I wouldn't have stopped swinging my hatchet.

"Sora Edwards," A masculine voice said. I froze.

"You have been summoned to the court of the Elite.  You are to come with me.  Right now."

My eyes met with his cold ones, and I noticed how fake his smile was.  Thin lips stretched over teeth that were pointed.  Hatred radiated off of him, his formal uniform in immaculate condition.  He held a black hat matching his formal attire in a hand.

Who the hell is this guy?

I met his eyes again, nearly vomiting on the spot at the sight of his sickening grin.  It had turned form fake, to amused in the darkest of ways.  Slicked back hair and piercing yellow eyes that reminded me of piss in a jar. He is tall, nearly standing a foot over me.  Magic pooled around his hands, whispering illegible sayings in ancient voices.  There is a sort of raw beauty in the way the magic presented him. 

But the swirling of his magic didn't make me forget who he really is.  He is one of them.  One of the sick bastards that make our lives hell.  One of the bastards that take all of our food.  He is one of the bastards that contribute to the Gather Folk's suffering.

Before I could stop myself I swung my hatchet.

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Cliffhanger :)))

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Posted on December 2, 2016.

Edited on January 23, 2017.

1990 words.