Read The One-Hundred: Part 1 - The Above (Book #1) Page 15
My eyes open and I sit up straight, the rock beneath me slightly warmer from where my body had been laying. I catch my breath. Had the voice followed me into my dreams?
The door across from me opens and bright sunlight blinds me as a figure stands in the doorway. Immediately my hand goes to the conch around my neck as the voice registers in my brain.
“What happened last night, Cressa-la?” The tiny voice asks as my eyes adjust. I let out a sigh of relief as Lily-flor comes to sit down next to me, my hands tucking the shell away in my shirt. “Your house is on the ground.”
I nod and try to smile as she wraps her arms my neck, obviously worried about me. “Let’s go hunting, okay?”
I stand up and hold out a hand. Her eyebrows furrow as she takes it.
“I’m almost five years. I can keep secrets.”
“I know you can, Lily-flor. My house just fell, is all.”
“I don’t believe you, but okay,” she shrugs, leading me out of the house filled to the brim with memories.
I look down at her blonde head and shake my own. You’re not ready for a secret like this, Lily-flor. Not yet.
Rai-si walks out of his house and looks around, his hands on his hips. I try to duck away in the people of my village, praying he won’t notice I hadn’t left to hunt. Or that my house had fallen mysteriously during the night. And then he spots me.
His eyes are filled with some emotion I can’t quite place. It’s not quite anger, not quite hatred, but somewhere in between mixed with something else.
I tear my eyes away a moment later, hoping I can escape into the woods and hunt something, shoot something, get everything off my mind.
“Cressa-la,” I hear, and I know I can’t get away.
I cringe at the sound of my name as it slips off of Rai-si’s tongue. Lily-flor gives me a worried glance, and I let go of her hand to walk up to Rai-si. He glares down at me with those emotions of his and his jaw is set. I look at the ground and try to make myself small. I am not a threat to him. Or the tribe.
Or maybe I’ve recently become one…
“Come,” he says as he turns to walk into the forest behind our village.
I follow behind him, scared of what is to come of my life, of the village’s life, of everything. This could be the moment of truth, where I’m banished forever or they keep me through everything.