Of Ice and Silk

Everything was green -green grass, green leaves, green moss upon the crumbling, aging town - as nature continued to claim its rightful place amongst the earth again. Even the pebbled, barely discernible asphalt beneath my feet was ripe with ferns and wheat grass. The scent that wafted up from the remnants of what used to be a road burned in my nostrils under the heat of the blistering sun. Trees towered over building after building - home after home - as the bark seemed to swallow the walls deep into their bellies. Most of the ancient dwellings on this side of the train tracks, which were rusted and mangled from centuries of idleness, were like ones I passed on my way back to my own rundown shack of a house. Everywhere you looked was a reminder of what once was. In my arms, I hoisted a large satchel of supplies and food I had traded for at the small, but thriving, trader's market on Main Street. Or I assumed that's what the street sign said. I always glanced at the signs as I passed, many of the words far too worn and faded to read properly. The road I walked now - that my family and I lived on - used to be called "Durkly Avenue". I shifted the bulging bag of potatoes, flour, milk, and - to my delight - sugar from my left hand to my right. I clasped it in and out, trying to coax blood flow back into my fingertips. I rubbed the pad of my thumb against the red lines in my rich clay colored skin, trying to make them disappear. It had always been my job to travel back and forth to the market and I enjoyed being able to work in the fresh air and sunlight during the summer. The journey in wintertime, however, was a different story. As my home came into view, I couldn't help but notice the daunting differences between us and the people within the village boundaries. Most of the families that didn't flee to Tricynial City, migrated uptown where they could find safety in numbers. While the village was cleared of debris and unnecessary foliage, our street was not. Our house sat amongst the ancient bones of a forgotten 21st-century town. A town that no longer had a name. It was simply known as "the village just south of The Garden". The sign sitting on the edge of a crumbling highway that stretched along the edge of the village had once said something like "Cornerville", "Hornersville" or "Porterville". I wasn't sure what it actually said; the beginning of the word being too faded and chipped away. I had once asked my father why our family didn't also move closer to the market square. His earthy brown eyes had looked down at me, stubbornness shaping his shoulders. "Our family has owned this home for many, many generations. There was no need to try to force our way into the village when our house sat so close already," he had said to me, dedication and determination laced in his husky, monotone voice. My home sat between two other buildings that looked - had they not been mostly crumbled to the ground - as though they would have been the same basic layout as our own. Mountainous trees grew from the center of them, providing us with welcomed shade in the summer months. I often tried to imagine what the people who used to live there were like: a husband leaving for a job that now no longer existed, while his wife prepared their children for school - something else that no longer existed outside of the city dome. He would climb into his vehicle, the sound of the engine roaring to life, and make his journey to work at lightning speed. Perhaps they had dogs, running around in the backyard. Perhaps a cat would sit on the window seal, watching as other vehicles passed by on their way to work. Nothing of that sort ever happened here now. Only ghosts of the past lingered in the air about us. A living, breathing history. Since it was summer, our doors were removed from their hinges in order to help air flow through the house. My father had kept up with it as well as he could, the faded greenish tinted siding having been nailed in place multiple times. The once tan colored tin roof was now rusted, the coppery browns blending into the rest of the world. It no longer gleamed against the sun like it used to - or so I had been told. The foundation had begun to tilt, leaving the skeleton of it sagging as though it were sad - tired with the weight of the world and its age. The walls groaned and bowed slightly. I couldn't even say how old it was. All I knew was that it had been lived in by our family longer than anyone could remember. It brought me sadness to see it in such a state, even though I had known nothing different. When I was young, my grandmother used to tell me stories - told to her by her grandmother and so forth - of the time before The Descending. Almost two thousand years ago, humans were the leaders of the world, living peacefully amongst the lands. Our food lasted longer, ripe fields of crops stretching across the valleys as the trees did now. Innovations, such as the vehicles - now nothing more than lawn ornaments - made our lives more convenient. Medicine was so advanced that it would cure or treat almost any ailment. There wasn't a single medicine that couldn't be found. She often told me of a time when humans used technology to travel to the moon and the stars, and the depths of the oceans. When I had asked her about The Descending, her wrinkled face soured, pulling in on itself stiffly. The dramatic consequences of that event had left a permanent mark on the history of mankind. That day, the Centuri came from wherever they had come – no human really knows – along with their celestial children, the Dewrathi, and uprooted our existence. Her lips had curled into a snarled line of teeth when she had told me it was due to their jealousy. Jealousy that we had transcended the abilities of any other mortal beast had ever been able to. We were growing too intelligent and unable to be controlled. They brought down their wrath upon us and took over what was ours, leaving us the scraps of the earth. That was when the Dynasty Corporation built Tricynial City - a safe haven for the human race to exist apart from the rules and expectations of the Dewrathi lords, who split the regions of land amongst themselves. I had never been there myself, but I had heard from many who traveled there in search of more exotic supplies that the dome was something to behold. The high, spectral glow of the shields were said to rise high into the sky, encompassing the entire city in security. There were times I wondered why anyone lived outside the city, besides the amount it cost simply to breathe the air. Stepping onto the cracked cement of the front porch, I slipped off my worn, tattered gray shoes. The paint that chipped and peeled from the floor was a multitude of white, gray, green and beige. I could already hear the voices of my family inside, mostly likely discussing what needed to begin being prepared for the winter months. Though we had the rest of summer and all of autumn, we didn't like starting the preparations last minute. Usually halfway through the heated, blistering summer we would start gathering supplies and food. I walked through the secondary threshold, cracked and warped at the edges where the trim met the plywood of the wall, into the main part of the house to find everyone seated around the table. My brother, six years younger than me, was the only one to look up from the plans to acknowledge my entry. His short cropped mess of hair was similar to mine, a deep earthy brown above his brow. It was shaped around his large, almond shaped eyes - so blue they mimicked ice. His skin, only a shade or two darker than mine, seemed darker still against the white scar that spanned the length of his cheek from ear to chin. When he was younger, he had gotten into a tussle with one of the stray dogs from the pack that lived just outside the village. That day, he had come home covered in his own and the dog's blood. I could still remember how blank faced he had been, even though his body was shaking so violently I thought his shoulders would fall right off. It was the first of a long list of animals he would kill as he got older. The scar had never faded, rather it glowed against his sun-kissed skin. Stephan stood from his chair, already taller than me at the age of sixteen, and strode over to take the satchel from my hand. I followed him from the dining room into the kitchen, which sat off to the left from the door. The floor, wooden and faded, had chipped away, leaving missing pieces. It faded into linoleum in the kitchen, which had torn and been patched in multiple places by duct tape. The dark black material of the tape sat brightly against the gray pattern on the floor that was intended to mimic stone bricks. The walls in the kitchen, once painted a lush green, were peeling away and stained with gods only know what. Stephan's eyes shifted to me, warmer than they had been at the table. "You got everything on the list?" I nodded, beginning to pull everything out of the bag. Sitting the salted meats down, I looked up at him as relief filled his face, his shoulders sagging slightly. Though he was the strongest hunter out of the four of us, he didn't like the act of killing animals. If we didn't desperately need the iron from red meats and the fats for winter, he most likely wouldn't hunt and kill at all. Out of our entire family, he would fit in the best if he were to go to Tricynial City. He was intelligent, reading every second he had the chance. Books had been sort of an escape for him and I growing up. It was the one thing that we humans had held tightly to - the ability to read and write. However, where I enjoyed poetry and old ballads, Stephan read everything and anything he could get his hands on - Biology, Physics, Ancient Government and Economics... I glanced up at him with a slight smile, trying to place some comfort into my voice. "You don't have to hunt as much, since we had enough to trade at the market." I was given a single nod in response, his lips pulled into a sour line, as he took the three bottles of milk I was able to acquire to the corner of the kitchen. We didn't have electricity like those rich enough to afford Dynasty services. No one in this backwater village did. So we created a cool spot down under the floor, with a hatch door, to store things that needed to stay cool. I put our potatoes, sugar, and flour into the cabinet above the counter - the only counter we had left. Most of the countertops were removed long before I was born, in order to pull the stove out of the wall. Electrical lines were removed, as well as the gas line, so that we could place wood inside and keep warm and cook our food. Our father had hooked up a pipe to run up to the roof of the house for the smoke. Why did we remove the counters just for that you ask? Well, simple. During the winter months, we all slept in the kitchen, around the stove. During the winter, our five room house - if you include the bathroom and two bedrooms - turned into a two room house. We closed off every room besides the bathroom and kitchen in the winter and the door that sat off the kitchen, which led out to the fenced back yard that we used for our garden, became our only entrance. The house had a second story, but it had been closed off long ago when the wall fell. My brother and I had never even been up there. To be honest, I didn't think my father had ever been up there either. The stairway had been permanently closed off from the rest of the house with a large piece of plywood. I grabbed the salted meats, mostly pork and venison, and handed them to Stephan before he closed the hatch to the cool box. In the summer months, we were sometimes able to trade some of our garden vegetables for an ice block to help keep things fresh longer. Unfortunately, this was not one of those summers. Last crop season had been horribly rough and we didn't have much of our tradable food left. The one thing we had above the others in the village were our chickens. The building in the backyard had been transformed from a large garage - I had been told that was a building to pull a car into - with an attached storage shed into a chicken coop. The storage shed became a shelter for them while the garage had the walls torn down, and wired fencing put in their place, creating a roofed pen for the chickens to roam. No one else had the amount of chickens we did, therefore our eggs and birds were greatly sought for. The sheer amount of eggs they were able to produce was as good as currency. Walking back to sit with my parents on the worn and slightly broken table, I looked at their tense faces. Mom was writing with a stub of a pencil on some crinkled paper, her knuckles white with frustration as she gripped it tightly. Her boney hand looked as though it would break as she took in a deep breath through her slightly pointed nose, that curved upward just slightly at the tip. Her nose was my nose, straight and thin. Her blue eyes were hard and cold, her light colored hair pulled back away from her pale face. She was a lot lighter than I was. Stephan and I inherited our skin from our father, who was a red hued man with dark eyes. My eyes shifted to him as he rubbed his temples. The wrinkles on his face were more defined than usual. He kept rubbing the dark salt and peppered stubble on his chin with a meaty finger. The inventory they were taking wasn't going well. I could see it in the way his forehead scrunched between two dark black brows. I looked over mom's shoulder, reading the list with a frown. We didn't have nearly enough from last year's harvest for this year's harvest to last us this winter and next. My father started scribbling things down on another scrap of torn paper, handing it to me. His callous hands reached out to place it in my hand. "See what you can get from the market with the remaining eggs. Our chickens are still laying well. Go ahead and take one of the younger hens, who aren't laying yet, and see if someone is interested in her." I bit the inside of my cheek and nodded. I didn't speak, not having anything to say in return. I looked down at the piece of paper as it crunched between my fingers: Echinacea plant Feverfew Ginger Sharpening stone for the ax Cattle hide and wool Some of these things I could get out in the woodlands north of our village...perhaps I would go out with Stephan in two days' time to gather what I could while he hunted. The woods were oddly plentiful, though my father hated us gathering anything from there. "It's filled with Dewrathi magic. Nothing there is natural." He'd turn up his long, crooked nose into a sneer any time I would mention getting anything from there. Even when Stephan went hunting, our father expected him to hunt the grasslands outside the trees. This wouldn't be a big deal if it didn't take him days waiting to find a deer or a squirrel brave enough to come out of the treeline. *** Later that night, I boiled just enough water from the barrels of collected rainwater in the backyard to crouch down in the metal trough that had replaced whatever bathing tub had originally been in the bathroom, and scrub myself down with a sponge. It was really the only time I found any sort of privacy inside the house, seeing as my brother and I both slept in, what used to be, the family room. I ran the sponge over my dirt covered skin, the red hues of my arms brightened at the roughness of my scrubbing. My hands were callous, my skin dotted with small dark freckles. I wouldn't wash my hair tonight. The thick dirt colored strands still pulled into its usual braid down my back. I also had that one patch of platinum blonde hair at my hairline, long enough to tuck into my braid along with the rest. It contrasted brightly against the muddy strands, twisting around them down between my shoulders. I could hear my mother and father talking in their bedroom, which sat next to the bathroom. Even through the hardship, they had managed to have a fairly healthy and happy marriage. They talked amongst one another often, but, as Stephan and I grew older, the less they conversed with us about much of anything besides what needed to be done. Due to this, my brother and I had grown close throughout the years. When he was younger, he would look up to me for a lot of things. I had to admit, I sometimes missed the admiration. I shivered as the water started to cool, leaving raised hairs along my body. Stepping out of the frigid tub, the cool air of the evening clung to my body, forcing me to wrap myself in my towel and shiver. I looked in the cracked mirror hanging above the useless bathroom sink, pieces of sharp edged glass missing. I didn't look at my reflection often. Not due to having any insecurities or fuss over my weight or anything similar to it. I was confident in myself. At least, I would have been if it was something that ever crossed my mind. My dark skin contrasted deeply with my crystal clear eyes, the same eyes that sat inside my brother's face. I'd have to say, in comparison, mine were far duller in the flickering candle light of the room. I didn't have the spark of hope - hope for a better future for himself. One day, he would move onto bigger and better things than a tiny village sitting on the edge of Dewrathi infested territory. Me, on the other hand, I would stay in the same house, the same village, for the rest of my life. Perhaps, I would eventually marry a young man who would be willing to move into this house with me and I would continue to raise chickens and children. My body was lean, though I had enough to keep me warm for the winter months. My hips wide and my thighs slightly larger than most of the petite girls inside the village. My waist pulled in just above my hip bones, curbing back out just below my ribs. My shoulders were slight enough to be considered feminine, I suppose. My breasts were of average size. My long neck sat upon my collarbone, holding up my sharp face. As I kept looking at my thin chin, up to my full, heart-shaped lips, continuing on to my pointed nose, high cheekbones, almond eyes, arched brows... I suppose I was a pretty girl, so long as "pretty girl" didn't equal "petite and porcelain". Pulling my gray, weathered t-shirt and equally drab cotton pajama pants onto my body, I took the opportunity to glance at myself one more time. It would be the last time in a while. I blew out the three candles sitting on the sink and made my way from the bathroom. Trailing around the corner, through the kitchen, the dining room, and into my room, I looked over at Stephan as he was reading in his cot, sprawled out on his back. He was far too tall, his feet hanging off the edge of the metal frame. Our beds were across from one another, in each of the far corners. Our shared dresser sat in the corner across from the doorway, which was covered by a thin, holey sheet. He didn't acknowledge me as I walked in and laid down on my own cot, which had an old, tattered quilt of many colors draped over the thin, tent-like fabric that served as a mattress. I covered up, admiring the worn patches of the quilt. I ran my fingers along the stitching of each intricately placed square. "You want to ask me something. So why don't you just spill it already?" Stephan looked at me from under the book in his hand. Chemistry and Physics. Why wasn't I surprised? I glanced over at him. He was always so intuitive. I had been meaning to talk to him - ask if it would be too inconvenient for me to go with him during his hunt. His dark brows raised as he sat his book down on the ground below the bed. He turned to his side to look at me, his high cheekbones blazing with light from the candle. He eyed me, his face tight. He always looked at me with those icy eyes, like he was disappointed that I didn't have bigger aspirations for my life than what I had now. I think, somewhere unspoken, I knew he resented me for it. I just wasn't sure why. It didn't affect his chances of moving on to other things in life. I shot him a look back, my teeth grinding against my cheek. I hated when he looked at me with such distaste. His eyes were far too old for someone so young. I swallowed deeply. I wasn't sure why I was asking for permission. I was an adult, after all. In reality, I would go regardless, but I wanted to be courteous to him and, well...I didn't want him to accidentally shoot me with an arrow when he saw me, thinking I was an animal. "Do you mind if I go with you the next time you hunt? Try to scavenge for some herbs and other things." It was received with a slight tightness in his jaw, but he nodded. "Just don't let dad know you're going into those woods. We'll never hear the end of it." What he meant to say was he would never hear the end of it for letting me go out there. I had to admit, being treated like I was younger than him because I was a woman really irritated me. Two thousand years ago women were created equal, or so I had been told. "He doesn't have to know," I agreed, turning over in my cot. I watched the light from the kerosene lantern between our beds dance along the plastered wall, licking at the patched drywall, creating images in the shadowy bits. I watched the figures dance until Stephan blew the flame out and shifted in bed, the springs creaking under his weight. Silent darkness fell throughout the house, the walls sagging with exhaustion. You could hear the mice scratching in the walls, scurrying with clawed paws through the wooden beams. It was a lullaby I listened to each night as I drifted off to sleep.