by T. Wyse
"There's worse stuff too, and weirder stuff." Craig said, a wicked look taking him, apparently enjoying having a new audience. "Group came a couple days ago, they were in a building that was left alone, right? Well thing is something comes and takes a piece out of it, just like that! That’s not even the end of it though, they stay there, not knowing what to do, and something starts taking them in the night.” There was an almost sadistic tone to his voice now.
Aspects. Monsters roaming the world preying on the people around, trying to survive beyond the season. Real live monsters indeed, she thought.
"Eh good enough." He declared, back to his normal tone, as another of her potatoes dropped onto the platter. He moved the platter, handing it off to Lyssa, and saving Amelie the trip around the table.
"Um, thanks." She said finally, not entirely meaning it. "Which should I start next, then?" She asked looking around.
"Turnips are pretty easy." He said, pointing to one of the large sacks on the table.
Ignoring the condescension, she began cleaning and paring the white tubers.
"Well speaking of monsters moving in.” His voice regained that cruel tone. “You came at night, have you seen the crows?" He asked. "I hope for your sake that you're on third floor, or they're going to keep you up most the night." His voice was nearly a whisper again. "So where're you sleeping, anyways?"
"Um, the tower." She replied, unsure if it was the right thing to do.
His expression froze, the wheels in his head grinding for a moment. Wendy looked up at Amelie as well.
"They, uh, didn't have anywhere else to put me." Amelie lied.
"Yeah, that must be it." Craig said, his voice muffled and pensive. She wasn't entirely sure of his sincerity, but was glad to be rid of the topic.
His face brightened. "So, did anyone tell you, when you came in? About the apples?" He smiled, his pile of carrots growing neatly.
"No, I haven't really talked to anyone, except Melissan a little." She replied. "Oh, and The Professor too."
He seemed to flinch at that, something in his reaction let her know that she had said something wrong, something suspicious. He went on regardless. "Someone found an apple core, and the seeds actually sprouted, they've even grown into saplings already!" He exclaimed with delight. "Ten years of growth in three days. Good weird instead of bad weird for once."
"You should see them, day to day, I swear you can practically watch them grow. I'd be glad to show you around the crops, after we're all done in the evening." He nodded at her.
"I...I can't go outside." She looked down at the round white tuber she had been scrubbing, afraid of his eyes.
"Why not?" He asked, somewhat ruffled.
"Craig, don't be..." Wendy started, but Amelie interrupted her.
"I got attacked by the crows a few days ago. For some reason they don't attack people, but they attacked me." Amelie said, Lyssa gave an unsure glance backwards, but shrugged it off. "I'm not safe outside, especially at night." She said, to the stunned pair in front of her.
"I wouldn't...I would keep that to myself." Craig said, a pointed warning. "People might think, what with you coming three days ago, and that being when the crows came, the glass tower..." He trailed off. "People might get the wrong idea. I'd watch who I tell these things to."
Amelie looked at him with a sad guilt. She didn't know what to say.
"But then, apples." His darkened face broke into a happier visage once again. "We aren't sure if they're going to bear fruit, but we're all hoping on it. Professor Clough, the school’s botany expert, left us with some gadgets, but who knows if they’ll do the job."
"Tray up." Wendy had outpaced Craig, producing a tray of peeled and pared onions. She started into beets.
"That's not even the best of it though." He leaned in closer to her.
'No?' She asked, finding his fascination somewhat contagious.
"We managed to get wheat and corn seeds, just yesterday. A bunch of scavengers passed through and The Professor bartered for them. They've sprouted already, should be in by the end of the week!" He exclaimed happily.
"Fresh bread, now that's a treat." Amelie exclaimed, concluding what he was hinting. She couldn't suppress a wide smile at the thought of warm bread.
"Tray's up." Craig exclaimed.
Amelie felt somewhat foolish for getting so emotional over the thought of something as simple as bread. The thought was evidently mirrored by Wendy, who couldn't suppress a soft smile on her face, her expression grew somewhat less ghostlike.
The girl caught her staring, blushing a little. "Just the thought of bread, that's all." She smiled softly. Her expression went back to a pensiveness, and then slumped down. The gloom seemed to spread down her body and she began to shudder, she walked quickly out of the room covering her face. The sound of sniffling accompanied her quick exit.
"Take over the beets." Lyssa ordered Craig, shooting after the girl, into the darkness of the cafeteria. The sound of full blown crying, and soft words echoed incomprehensibly beyond the door.
"I'm sorry." Craig said, rubbing his temple, his voice trembled slightly. "Gotta make sure you keep it even, always gotta stay in control. Too sad, too dark, even too happy, it's all bad. Almost anything can bring back old memories like that." His face fell, but he controlled himself. "Eggshells. Always eggshells now."
"I know. I understand." Amelie sighed, suddenly longing for Kokopelli's company, anything familiar to quell the raising sickness of home.
"It's easier for me, I was one of the quickest to adapt. I was already miserable before." He confessed, his work stopped, leaning on the table under invisible weight.
"People treated me pretty bad, called me things, you know. Sometimes I wished bad things on them, then bad things actually happen."
"It's...it's alright, it's not your fault." Amelie looked up, his eyes weren't there to meet hers. It wasn't the fault of one person, no matter how hard they wished. "Just focus on what you can do today, what you can be today." Like Meldice, she thought to herself.
"That’s true, you sound like…” He trailed off, losing the words.
“The dumbest thing is," He began again, furiously scrubbing a beet still not looking up. "Things are better for me now, can you believe it." He choked on his words. "People see me, think I'm strong for not going crazy, for being calm, for staying smart." He put the beet down furiously, knocking two to the floor. He swore angrily, leaning down and collecting them. "The thing is, I don't know what to do, I don't know what to want."
"It'll be fine..." Amelie reached across the table, to touch his arm in a gesture meant to comfort.
"No, don't!" He hit her hand back, meeting her eyes, his expression that of rage. ”Just leave me be!"
She looked down, focusing on her pile of vegetables. He mirrored her actions. They resumed the scrubbing, the loudest sound in the room was the boiling concert of the four pots.
Lyssa returned, with a red eyed Wendy in tow. She looked between the two, and returned to her pots. Wendy went to her spot in the table, and helped Craig with the beets, unprompted.
"I trust we can keep ourselves to business now." The woman said with a pang of frustration, directed at the walls more than any of the silent children.
With the scrubbing and chopping done, Amelie made an approximation of help as Craig and Wendy tied closed the sacks on the table, loading up a few newer sacks onto the table for future convenience. The three of them sat, leaning against the counter, watching Lyssa stirring, measuring, testing the four cauldrons. Despite her meal a fairly short time before, Amelie's stomach gave a great growl, the heated savory smells igniting her interest in food anew.
She gave a meek smile, as the two beside her giggled slightly. She noticed neither of their stomachs had parroted hers, and supposed they were simply used to more meager rations.
Something Amelie noted, however dismissively so, was that both of her cohorts each had one of those spherical lanterns hanging from their waists. They had been hid
den behind the table earlier, Amelie wondered if she would be given one as well, or they had been earned through some process.
"Reminds me of home cooking, funny though." Craig remarked, breaking the silence between them. "I can't even think why, maybe it's just being in here and being a part of actually preparing it like this. That's one thing I do miss...a lot." He sighed. "Used to help her in the kitchen, when I was back home for the breaks or holidays. Used to make some great stuff too." He trailed off, then made a wincing gesture, peering carefully at Wendy's face.
"It's okay, I'm fine now." Wendy said, not moving to meet his gaze. "I remember making cookies, cakes, that sort of thing." She smiled. "I'd better not think about it too much, or I'll really start to miss it. No more chocolate for me I suppose." She rolled her head back, closing her eyes. "Well I've got memories at least."
"My mother used to send a package of homemade chocolates just before the exams in November, to tide me through to the break." Craig smiled at Wendy. "Dark, milk and white chocolate swirled up, with nuts and stuff in em..."
"Yeah I remember. Saw you sneak em sometimes." Wendy grinned. "I always wanted to try one, but you never offered."
"Thought you'd have been offended." Craig responded, somewhat hurt. "We never talked, like at all back then, might've thought I was too forward or something."
"Offended? By chocolate? never." She gave a silly chuckle. "What about you Amelie?"
"Oh, I miss the soft breezes through the house in the summers, when we'd leave the doors open and let it through.” Her mind flowed gently into the memories. “The drapes and wall hangings would float and sway with the breeze, the..."
"No silly! The food!" Wendy cut in with a good-natured sarcasm.
"Yeah, get with it." Craig agreed.
"Oh well um..." Amelie tried to think, what things best described her experiences? "Well my father used to make incredible guacamole, and we could make fresh tortillas on the oven. We'd have that as a snack on the days when dinner came later. Sometimes we'd have fruit pastries for desert, lots of mixed soupy things, bean dishes, you know." She trailed off.
"So...no hamburgers, no lasagna, nothing like that?" Craig asked, puzzled.
"Not really." Amelie answered.
"That's an odd menu, I mean you don't look Mexican." Craig piped in.
"You doofus." Wendy hissed, striking him jokingly. "Sorry, he has a habit of talking faster'n he thinks sometimes."
"Yeah...something like that." Craig said apologetically.
“Oh, no, they…we never really have a specific kind of food, if that makes any sense? They both are, what was it Amanda said once? Artsy?” Amelie shrugged. “Really, I don’t know anything about where we came from. I had to do a project on it once. They said the family came from Western Europe and then immigrated here. So, whatever food that is I guess? It was one of those things they said it was best not to talk about.”
"Six generations back, Austrian Europe." Craig declared.
"Mine are sort of foggy, but Iceland and Britain are the best bets. Hard to place, really." Wendy chimed in.
"Hard to place over twenty generations, yeah.” Craig chuckled. “She's a bit of a perfectionist, tried to go back further than she needed."
"I never met my grandparents though. They'd never come visit." Amelie mused on one of those little things that had bothered her. "Then my parents told me they'd died. The funeral was the first time I'd ever even been there."
"Maybe they were afraid to fly." Wendy suggested helpfully.
"Maybe they didn't get along with your parents." Craig said, ringing with a more honest sting.
"Could be. Could be ashamed of them somehow. They never really talked about them, or when they were young." Amelie thought back to the funeral. One of the somber occasions where she had been forced into flightless clothing, looking around to see faces of utter strangers looking at her and her parents with a tolerant disinterest.
"Could be." She repeated, sighing. The room fell silent in reaction to her tone.
The cooking figure of the woman gave a sigh of relief, her motions ceased and she wiped her forehead. "Alright, I think we're ready for it then." Lyssa declared.
"Right." Craig moved to the door and leaned out making an unseen motion. This cued a neat line of older youths to appear through the door, marching with a military precision.
"Well, let's get to it, before they really get their pace started." Wendy gestured to the door, then disappeared into the darkness of the cafeteria.
Craig dipped through the line of ten or more who had begun moving trays into the large dark room. Amelie tried to mimic his practiced motion, trying to avoid intrusion into the paths of the servers in and out of the kitchen.
Finally, summoning her courage, she moved in between one, and followed the two into the darkness of the huge room.
The gymnasium was transformed. She had expected to return to the pitch blackness of the room, but found something else entirely. There were people, perhaps close to a hundred, perhaps more, they all chattered with one another in a panoply of indistinguishable speech.
Where there had been darkness, now there was a symphony of intermingling light accompanying each and every one of the faces. Every single person in the gymnasium had one of those blue torches, each one of them alight and glowing on the table. The lit orbs gave the illusion of a menagerie of blue spectral faces, their torsos less visible and seemingly cut in half by the reflective tables.
The servers darted in and out of the swinging doors animated fiercely by the movement. The doors gave the optical feedback of something akin to a silent lightning storm on the darkened surface of a tranquil lake of blue.
Having no light of her own, Amelie hugged the wall, her eyes flitting across the blue wisped faces, trying to find one that was familiar. The servers marched through the darkness, a glowing blue lantern bouncing on each of their hips.
She felt as a complete outsider there, hiding in the dark. The blue faces made no recognition of the dim, lightless figure standing flat against the darkness of the wall.
Finally, at one of the tables along the wall she had begun to move along, she caught sight of Wendy's face. Their table was empty, lit only by their two lamps, it had a strangely dark and almost sad sense to it. Amelie stepped out from the shadows and sat at the table, beside Wendy.
Craig jumped. "Don't do that!" He scolded.
Amelie giggled slightly. "Sorry, you left me all alone, had to find my way." She paused, then added playfully: "Or am I not welcome at your table?"
"Of course you're welcome." Wendy smiled, dropping the shock of her appearing from the darkness. "Did you not get a lantern yet?"
"No. Am I supposed to ask someone for one?" Amelie asked.
"Nah, Mrs. Roberts probably meant to give you one, just slipped her mind. Trust me, they're amazing little things." Wendy held her lantern, dangling it lazily from her hand. The play made the light swivel and dance across her face.
"How come you're all alone like this?" Amelie asked.
"Cliques, people we've annoyed." Craig declared, with a derisive snort. "Most of my friends...well they're gone now." He sighed.
"Mine too. I kind of lost the ones I had here, was defending Melissan and E. Stupid things, really." She sighed. "I'm starting to feel like she does." Wendy pointed over to an equally dim table, only two lanterns shone over the faces of Melissan and the little girl, E. The girl seemed even tinier beside Melissan.
The two of them looked so distant and distracted, Amelie wanted to go to talk to them, though really had nothing to say. The thought of stumbling around in the darkened void again cemented the reluctance.
The stew finally arrived at their table, the server doing a double take, but finally placed a bowl gently down in front of Amelie.
"You didn't lose your lantern!?" The server asked in horror.
"N-no, I just haven't got one yet." Amelie apologized meekly.
"Oh." The server nodded with relief, then disappeared into the
darkness.
The entire room was submerged into a relative silence as they ate. The tables towards the front finished first, and the chattering began again from there. The servers returned, marching back from the front, moving the platters in larger stacks.
Craig finished first at the table, giving a satisfied sigh. "So, might as well explain the uglier stuff to you then."
“What, the monsters again?” Amelie asked, a little friendly sarcasm in her voice.
“No, that’s fun stuff. The monster stories are the sort of things you get used to here.” He sighed. “No I mean the really ugly stuff, stuff you’ll need to know.”
Wendy looked up, contemplated him briefly, then went back to her stew.
"Towards the front there, that's a stage, you can't see it now cause it's not lit. Well closer to the front you get is the 'higher up' you go in terms of the cliques." He said, motioning behind him.
“Our backs are to the wall.” Wendy joked grimly.
"The front row of tables, you've got the crop managers, the people who tell us what to do, decide where to plant, that sort of thing. Beside them, you've got the greasejocks, they're the ones that are the loudest. Stay away from both of them as best you can. The crop managers all have flower emblems on their collars, they aren't weird or anything, just full of themselves." Craig paused.
"Now the greasejocks, they're something else entirely. They've got a half gear thing on their collars, but you'll know them if you ever meet one. They manage the machines, the stuff that keeps us with lights and running water."
"A very necessary thing, which we should be grateful for." Wendy said, cutting in.
"Yeah...and that's how it was at first...but they've gone a bit...off recently." Craig's voice went down to a whisper.
Amelie finished her stew, adding her empty bowl to the stack on the table.
Craig looked around furtively, then waited silently as the server snatched away the bowls. "There's something off about them, you'll see it if you talk to one for very long."
"Not necessarily." Wendy cut in, annoyed, but also in a hushed whisper. "Some people don't see anything wrong or different about them, it's probably nothing, but keep it to yourself if you do see it, alright?" She asked Amelie with a fearful urgency.