Chapter 13

Shade's POV

Shade

Chapter 13

 

He hurried around his little hut, picking things up and putting them back, reorganizing what needed it not, anything to not have to talk to her. Over the past few days he had relented and exchanged names and greetings with her. Her name was Misty and she came from the Planet Gloria, but that was all he had managed to get out of her before her face closed up to emotion and she had sat silent for a time, looking as if she was not within her own body, but drifting around somewhere else. He had left her alone, remembering some manners. It had been so long since anyone had spoken to him, and never had it been in a very friendly way, always distant, formal, business-like courtesies. She wasn’t like them, which was strange. He had always thought everyone was like that, either like himself or like the foreign doctors he had dealt with all his life.  For the first time in a long time he considered the possibility that there were people who could be friendly. She had awoken him from a long slumber of quiet acceptance. He stopped fiddling with things for a moment, staring out the open door to see Misty sitting in one of the apple trees.

Stepping out of the hut he went and climbed up the tree to sit next to her. She sat looking at the apple in her hand, running her thumb in a small circle on the smooth skin of it. She glanced up at him and smiled, then returned to her quiet inspection of the fruit.

“So, what is this one called again?” he smiled.

“It’s an apple.” She glanced up at him.

“You humans have such strange fruits, and the names for them are just as curious. On Gloria we have a fruit like this, but it’s much larger and it’s inside is very different from an apple’s, more like a… The fuzzy one you gave me yesterday.

“A peach?”

“Yes, a peach. Its round with an apple like skin, but the inside most reminds me of a peach, just tinted green. It is called a Gouru, and only grows in specific conditions, so they are very rare.”

                “It sounds like a very odd fruit to me, but I suppose that is to be expected, being raised on different planets.” She glanced up at him and took a bite of the apple.

                “Were you raised here?” he grimaced.

                “It depends on what you mean by ‘here’. I wasn’t raised in this hut, no, but I was raised close by…”

                “Oh, where?”

                “In the city nearby… Well... I suppose you can barely tell it was a city now.”

                “Did you have a good childhood?” He looked away.

                “I don’t know if you’d call it a childhood…” he said it under his breath, so she only just heard it.

                “What do you mean?” He glanced at her before sighing, rubbing a hand against the back of his neck.

                “Well, I didn’t go to school as a kid, in fact I barely went outside from the age of five.”

                “Why is that? Didn’t your parents want you to get an education?” he gave a tight, pained smile.

                “I never knew my parents, for the first five years of my life I was raised in an orphanage. Don’t get me wrong, they weren’t bad people, I was supposed to start kindergarten, but that was before I was taken from that place. Adoption, the orphanage keeper told me, was a rare gift and I should be grateful. She didn’t know what they were going to do, so I can’t blame her. Maybe it really was a gift to most kids, I just was unlucky.” Misty leaned forward to look at him.

                “What happened? Who adopted you?”

                “I remember one of the older kids holding my hand, walking me into the meeting room, and sitting on the couch were a man and woman dressed in suits and looking very happy to see me. They told me that I was a very special boy, that out of every one of the other children they had chosen me and I would be very, very important to them. Of course as a little boy this made me very happy and excited and I accepted them, and I said goodbye to the caretaker and they took me away in a car with blacked out windows.”

                “Did they take you home?”

                “To a home of sorts I suppose. I was lead into a huge, white washed building, kind of like a hospital. It smelt like one too, sterile and quiet. They lead me up a few floors and to a room with my name on it. They opened the door and I looked into a very plain room, with a bed and a night stand. There was a desk in one corner and a closet in the other, and around the one window in the room was an empty book shelf. The people told me that this would be my room, and as long as I cooperated I could have almost anything I wanted. Then they sat me on the bed and left.”

                “They just left you there all alone?!”

                “Well yes, they couldn’t be expected to sit and play with me I suppose.”

                “You were five years old!”

                “Well, I got use to it quickly enough. Every day a tray of food was delivered at meal times through a slot in the wall, and every once in a while, I don’t know how often, a man or woman in a white coat would come in with a clipboard and ask me questions about myself, and then I would be taken from the room and walked into a large room with lots of strange, sterile tools, and would be strapped down to a table. I don’t remember what happened after that, I would just wake up in my room with a new stitched up incision or an ache in some joint or bone, and after a while I accepted the changes, the enhanced sight, the tests they would put me through as I changed from clumsy boy to test doll soldier. They told me I was the first of my kind, that I was the first success and that with this they could make progress to the future. Then one day, they came into my room and told me that I wasn’t of use anymore, that they had use of my blood, but not me. I hadn’t been as much of a success as they had hoped for. They could change everything except that I was human and they didn’t have complete control over me, I wouldn’t kill the people they put in front of me, I wouldn’t torture them or follow instructions, so they locked my room tight. The only thing that came in was a tray of food, they stopped putting any effort into making the food any good either. They just kept me alive and every once in a long while I was tranquilized through the slot and they took my blood bag by little plastic bag.”

                “They kept you for blood?”

                “Well yes, it makes sense, if I was their first success then they would want my blood, but I wasn’t perfect. No doubt they were testing on others, trying to perfect the recipe for a obedient super soldier.”

                “But… how old were you?”

                “When they locked me away? I believe I was ten. Just beginning to gain a sense of choice and opinion.”

                “Ten? But… how old are you now?”

                “Nineteen.”

                “Nineteen? That’s a lot of years of solitude and blood draining... were you ever let out??”

                “No, and the window was bared and sealed shut.”

                “What did you do while locked away” he gave a little smile at the look on her face.

                “Read the children’s books I still had from when they answered to requests, mostly I slept or thought about what the outside world must be like.”

                “How did you escape?”

                “Simple really. The door opened. I don’t know why, but it opened, and when it did, I left. Nobody was around, the city was in ruins, long destroyed. I hadn’t even realized they had stopped coming or serving meals. I think I lost myself in the last few years of it, and the freedom woke me up. Anyway, nobody was around and I hadn’t really a clue what to do, so I walked into the forest when I couldn’t find any supplies or life. The remains of the city gave me chills. That’s where I found the remains of this hut and orchard, and here I am, about a year later, fixing up this hut and carrying on with my life.”

                “Well, that explains some things.” He looked at her sharply.

                “What?” he barked the word defensively. She blinked, wishing she hadn’t said anything.

                “I just mean, you don’t seem used to human contact.” He stared at her for a while.

                “Oh. I… I’m sorry.”

                “No, that’s okay, I mean, it’s not like there’s anything you could do about it.” Shade looked at her oddly then sighed.

                “I’m going to go for a walk, maybe collect a bit more food, check the fish trap. First though, how’s your wound?” he watched her try hard not to roll her eyes.

                “I’m fine”

                “Well, when I get back we should clean it again, it looked infected.”

                “Okay, deal.”

 “Take it easy, no swinging from tree to tree or upstream swimming, got it?” She stared at him for a minute, then understood that he was attempting a joke. She grinned at him and he grinned back, then set of into the woods , thinking about things he hadn’t touched in a long time.

Author's Note

The credit for this chapter goes to my partner, this is her character and her writing, I do not take credit for anything except minor editing and help in creating the plot line. My partner owns the rights to characters: Misty and Shade.

Reviews

[Rhianne Ney]

This is overwhelming, I'm sorry for not noticing earlier (:
Can I ask for some font extensions? I'm sorry I just can't read it properly (: