The Daughter Of Dawn

The Unknown Past - AVILA

A tiny flick of light flew over me. I tried to reach out for it, I couldn't. My hands were small, tiny. It was flying out of my reach, flying higher and higher. My tiny footsteps couldn't match it's pace. I tried running after it faster, but I tripped on my dress and fell down on the hard rocky path. My hat fell on the ground. My eyes fell on my palms, they were bleeding through my silk gloves.

"Young Miss." someone called me from behind. I didn't look back. I stood up and started running behind the little firefly. It flickered as it passed through the woods. I followed it, running and tripping over stones on the path to get it. It reached the end of the woods, in the backyard of the castle. It was flying to its kind. It's flying to where it belongs. It joined the flood of its own kind. I saw it joining them. It wasn't a firefly. They weren't fireflies. There were burning sparks of a fire. The castle was burning. My hands started shaking.

"Nooooo" I screamed running towards the castle.

"Mother" I shouted.

I was pulled from behind, my eyes were filled with tears. My vision blurred. I saw a young boy coming towards me. He looked scared, he looked like someone who got lost. His left sleeve was burnt, exposing his burnt skin underneath it. His deep brown eyes looked terrified. He was staring at me, he looked hopeless, as if everything he cherished was gone. I struggled to get out of their grip. They were holding me tight, trying to close my eyes, to save me from witnessing a disaster that will haunt me for the rest of my life, the disaster which I had just witnessed.

" Take her away. Take her into the woods." he shouted. He looked shattered. Empty.

I was crying, trying hard to set myself free, I was screaming. I wanted to save them. He came to me. Bending down on his knee, he kissed my forehead.

This is the best I can do for you, he said.

I grabbed his cape, I didn't want to let go, I wanted to save them, my mother. He looked at me, his eyes filled with remorse.

" Take her away now, before it's too late, they will be here anytime," he said, pulling out his cape from my grip. My vision blurred, I can't see him. I want to go there. I want to save them. Mother.

Nooooooo.

"Hey doc...wake up"

"Doc? Do you wanna sleep the rest of the day? It's already noon."

Hey! Avila? Are you okay?" somebody shook me.

I opened my eyes. That was a dream. A dreadful dream. I looked up. A man in his late thirties was staring at me. He poured out a glass of water from the jug.

"Are you okay? You're sweating." he asked, passing me a glass of water.

"Nothing just a weird dream." Total weird dream.

"Care to share?" He opened the tent's shed to make some room for the light.

"It's bright." I said, covering my eyes with my palm.

"Of course it has to be. You have been sleeping the whole afternoon."

I slept in his tent last night. My tent's roof blew up from last night's rain. It's bright unlike last night, dark and scary. After the river flooded our base, we had to retreat several kilometres back and stay in temporary camps.

"Hey Koch, since how long do we know each other?" I asked to get up from the bed.

"Maybe around six years. Why?"

"Do I look like someone who belongs to Nobility?"

"What? Didn't you say that you belong to some tribe?" he asked.

"No maybe, you know I can be adopted."

"Who do you think will adopt a dark kid like you with enemy's blood in her." he said pointing at me.

The enemy's blood. A Bigener. I've always been pointed out as one. Unlike the fair skinned Arcogantians I have dark skin. The people of Arcogantia inherit pale skin and pale eye color mostly blue or green or grey. We always have been attracted to delicate attributes of life. Our people are mostly artistic and fragile in nature. We don't fight, we rely on our brains, whereas the Vizophians are polar different from us. They are dark skinned people, with their eyes as dark as their skin. They are huge and muscular and always resort to fight to fix any problems. This is how people are judged, based on their looks. They are strong and bulky, we are weak and beautiful, that's how we differentiate from each other, not by how we talk or how smart or generous one is. If you're born from the blood of two nations, between Arcogantia and Vizophini, you'll be called a Bigener, they are different from the rest of the people, they are sometimes dark skinned with light eyes or the opposite or sometimes have different eye color from others. Since childhood I've always been called as the Bigener, a person with mixed blood. I wasn't, I belonged to a family of nomads, we travel from one place to another for our survival. It's natural for us to have a tanned skin due to the sun. That was a long time back, as time changed people's craze for fashion changed, nowadays the fairer wants darker skin, the darker adores the fairer ones. People over here started preferring dark skin, they tan themselves. Then contact lenses were discovered, now one can change their eye color into whichever colour they wish to. Those discrimination were done back then when I was still a kid, they don't do it anymore. They can't, to be more precise, it can be a crime to do that, since all the Bigener women were massacred, all the natives were marked in their skin, as a citizen of Arcogantia. The Vizophians were now seen as a threat for our country, calling out anyone as a Bigener or a Vizophian without any proof can be a capital punishment.

"That's clearly a tanned skin. Stop being such a hypocrite." I said rolling my eyes on him.

"I got it, got it. You can't even take a joke." He laughed raising both of his hands.

"I always have this weird dream of someone's house burning and I was dragged away somewhere because they didn't want me to be there. It's so confusing."

"Why would you think that it's your memory? Maybe it's just a story that left a deep impression in you."

"I don't know it's been months since I started seeing them again." I said getting down from his bed.

"How worse is the flood now?" I asked him.

"All the areas within 1.5 kilometres with its boundary are flooded badly. I hope we don't have to move back again. It's like the river stopped just before our doors."

"I guess luck still favours us. Now we have the Dionysia in our backyard." I joked.

"Haha. Can you please not joke like that?" He said fake laughing at my joke.

"Ummm... so no broken arms to fix today?" I asked, stretching my arms, trying to change the subject.

"I don't think they will come for a while. Everyone is trying to digest the Royal Decree. They will lay low, unless they don't want to go home sooner."

"We are not even sure if it was Vizophini. If it's not them, isn't it just a waste?"

"We don't know about it yet, but what if they did. We have to protect our country. We cannot let our future depend on uncertainty."

"What if it's not them?"

"If it's not them doesn't mean they won't ever attack us. It's better to be prepared beforehand than it's too late to do anything." He replied giving out a sigh.

"I hope it's not them, we don't want things to get more uglier than this." My eyes fell on a photo frame that was kept on the table beside his bed.

"If things are already ugly they can only get uglier." He said, I listened to him but my eyes were fixed on the photo. The photo was unclear, almost had blurred out everything, no would even recognise it is him if not me. It was him and a teenager, that's what it looked like. He must be around his early twenties when he took the photo. They had their arms around each other's shoulders, they seemed close. I took the photo and turned it towards him.

"Who is he? Never heard of you mentioning him?" I asked him.

"Just a distant cousin of mine." He said grabbing the frame out of my hand.

"Don't worry, I don't have my eyes on him." I replied by giving up on the frame.

"Doesn't matter, he won't look at you." I said rolling his eyes on me.

"Blah blah..."

"Aren't you awake now? Go ahead and do your job. Don't waste my time here." He pushed me towards the opening of his tent.

"Wait wait wait, I need something before I leave."

"What do you want?" He asked as I turned towards his table to grab the water bottle.

"Water." I said showing him the bottle.

"Can I ask you something?" I asked him as I sipped water.

"Why? What now?" He asked, trying to sound annoyed. He can't actually be annoyed at me, or that’s at least what I think.

"It's been a week since the dam gates broke. Do all these years that they have already served in the ARMY count in the 5 years term?"

"I don't think so. The terms will get restarted the next month, the 1st of the month will be marked as the starting day."

"What why? Does it make sense? The people staying in the border for all these years is now nothing? Isn't it a bit too unfair?"

"What can I do, I'm not the king." I can see how eagerly he wanted me to get out of his tent.

"Well then I think it's better to break their arms and legs and go home for a week before the term starts. It is not worth staying in border districts away from your family if it's not getting added in your term." Yes I speak nonsense sometimes.

"You might get punished if someone hears you saying that other than me." He said showing me the way out.

"Yeah yeah, I'm leaving."

I got out of the tent. The sun is blazing unlike last night's terrible hailstorm. My tent almost came out due to the wind. I don't know how much time it'll take to fix all the damage. I looked around, it was like any other day of a Army camp. You can see soldiers all around. Some of them doing their drill, others standing in their post in front of the official's tent and some running around doing military errands.

Ours is district 23, out of all the 14 border districts of the country. The most north-Eastern district of the country. We share a common boundary with Vizophini's southern border, with the holy river of Dionysia separating us from each other.

"Have some." Koch came out of the tent handing me a sandwich while munching his own.

"Thanks"

I looked at him. He walked with a limp, in his right knee. It has been there since we met each other first. When I first saw him, he was brought to me in a stretcher, his lower body was drenched with blood. He had a motorbike accident, the bike fell on the right leg. That's how I first saw him, as a patient. It was me who attended him, I took care of all of his wounds before the surgery. He was my first patient, the first one to survive. The patient whom I saved. It took him six months to walk again but since then I've seen his hairs growing white and wrinkles appearing on his tough face. He was growing old.

"Open it up." he said, chewing loudly. It annoys me, and he knows that well.

"Just close your mouth, Please." I said looking at the clouds. They looked so clear, unlike yesterday's night. They are calm, peaceful, ethereal.

"Oh sorry I can't, I've to annoy someone." He replied, laughing out loud with his mouth open. I couldn't care more about him, I was busy looking at the sky. It looked so real, as if it really does exist. I want to touch it, I want to go to it.

"Have you ever thought of running away from here?" I asked, trying to reach out my hand to the sky.

"Why would I?" he said, turning his face towards me.

"Sometimes it becomes so suffocating to stay here. All you can see here is pain and suffering."

"Really? I think it's different, we can see here how people are striving hard to protect their nation. How one's desire to protect their loved ones makes them endure all the pain in the borders. Even in scarcity we always live here happily, living to see the sunrise everyday. Isn't it a blessing?" He sounded intelligent, he always does. He can always talk about bigger responsibilities and duties.

"I guess" I said, opening my sandwich's wrapper.

"What about you? You came here to escape? Is this choking you more than when you were in the Capital. Isn't this better than being tied down with someone you don't want to be with."

" It is suffocating there, so much that I'm ready to live in hardship here on the border. But for how long can I escape?" I took a bite of the sandwich.

" You think you're escaping? You know it better, why haven't you been deployed to any districts even after serving for more than 2 years. Do you think he can't reach you just because you don't want him to? No I'm sure he knows what you're doing even when you're chewing this sandwich down."

"Don't say. Let's not talk about him. It's already creeping me out." I waved at him, signalling him to stop it already.

The nobility, of course they can do whatever they want to do. Unless you're a noble, you cannot dare to point a finger at them, no matter how wrong they are, no matter how much they control your life.

"If you want to get away from him stop feeling pity for him. He'll never let go if you keep having a soft corner for him." He turned towards the tent after gobbling up his sandwich, wiping his hands on his uniform.

"I don't pity him, he was just a lonely child back then who needed someone to lean on." Yes, I pitied him once. That's the reason why I couldn't push him back, but I can't agree to Koch, he gets arrogant very fast.

"You might regret it later." he said going inside.

I might.

"That's gross though, it's your uniform Koch!" I shouted at him before leaving for my tent.