dining room.
Once outside the room, I pull the heavyset oak doors open and see the comforting sight of both my parents at the table. My father holds a mug in his right hand and a piece of paper in his left. My mother sits adjacent to him, leaning against his arm to see the page.
When they hear me, they both look up.
“Ahh, Aloy,” my mother says, smiling. “You’re up! We wanted to let you sleep as much as possible after your ordeal yesterday.”
I nod, not offering up the fact I encountered an even bigger ordeal this morning. I sit down at the table next to them and bite into a thick piece of wheat bread. It tastes bitter on my tongue, but I force myself to swallow anyway.
“Since you’re up,” my father says, “you should come with us to the town meeting today.”
Every month there’s a town hall where my father tells our people the latest news and they converse back to him with questions and comments.
“Of course,” I say.
My mother notices I’m quieter than usual. “Don’t worry. We’ll keep a larger number of guards around you. No one will be able to reach you with an assault.”
They should only know about the assault that just occurred in my own private bedroom.
“I’m not worried, Ama.”
My father smiles. “That’s the next Elected right there! Brave. Courageous. Not afraid to look the people in the eyes even a day after an attempt. This,” he points to me, “is the Elected we raised.”
I’m glad he’s proud of me. I smile slightly at my parents. My anxious expression is in sharp contrast to their open faces, but they don’t notice it. They wear huge smiles from relief that I’ll be a strong, brave leader after they leave.
We ride out on horses to the Ellipse. It’s close to our house, so we could walk, but my father wants us up high and able to travel fast in case there’s another long arrow with my name on it. The horses’ hooves thump softly upon the dirt fields between our house and the stone benches. Any pavement we used to have in East Country was either destroyed in the wars or ground up to use as building material. In the distance behind the meeting area, I see remnants of what used to be grand statues leftover from an era when our town used to be the capital of a larger country. We’ve repurposed the smooth white stone of those bombed monuments, but a few stumps lie scattered across the horizon. Tomlin’s shown me pictures of something called a Washington Monument towering high over the town. In its place now is just a thin, stone square. I once asked Tomlin why a country would waste resources to build such a tall structure that didn’t house anyone or offer any other sustenance. He’d just shrugged.
As we keep riding, I see the torso of a horse still standing tall on a pillar far off to my right. Its head is lopped off, and it stands on just two remaining legs. Perhaps once a rider sat astride its back, but the horse is now alone. We leave that one half-destroyed structure in place, calling it “Animal Remembrance,” a memorial to all the species we lost in the eco-crisis.
We’re the only family in the country with horses. Thus, the need for our own specialized veterinarian—Griffin’s father. Horses are expensive to keep, and they’re rare. Most horses died from the initial nuclear radiation, tumors growing rampant in their knees and legs, rendering them lame. Ours are the only ones left in the country, and we’ve taken great pains to keep them healthy and reproductive.
Since we don’t create electricity, our world no longer keeps cars or airrides either. Most of East Country’s population of four thousand people who come for our meeting today walked the great distance, camping for the few days it took to travel here. Or people came on bicycles. All of the bikes remaining after the eco-crisis were scavenged and distributed around our population.
Rust is a constant worry, since it can disintegrate the bikes’ metal. All families are issued a bike
Once outside the room, I pull the heavyset oak doors open and see the comforting sight of both my parents at the table. My father holds a mug in his right hand and a piece of paper in his left. My mother sits adjacent to him, leaning against his arm to see the page.
When they hear me, they both look up.
“Ahh, Aloy,” my mother says, smiling. “You’re up! We wanted to let you sleep as much as possible after your ordeal yesterday.”
I nod, not offering up the fact I encountered an even bigger ordeal this morning. I sit down at the table next to them and bite into a thick piece of wheat bread. It tastes bitter on my tongue, but I force myself to swallow anyway.
“Since you’re up,” my father says, “you should come with us to the town meeting today.”
Every month there’s a town hall where my father tells our people the latest news and they converse back to him with questions and comments.
“Of course,” I say.
My mother notices I’m quieter than usual. “Don’t worry. We’ll keep a larger number of guards around you. No one will be able to reach you with an assault.”
They should only know about the assault that just occurred in my own private bedroom.
“I’m not worried, Ama.”
My father smiles. “That’s the next Elected right there! Brave. Courageous. Not afraid to look the people in the eyes even a day after an attempt. This,” he points to me, “is the Elected we raised.”
I’m glad he’s proud of me. I smile slightly at my parents. My anxious expression is in sharp contrast to their open faces, but they don’t notice it. They wear huge smiles from relief that I’ll be a strong, brave leader after they leave.
We ride out on horses to the Ellipse. It’s close to our house, so we could walk, but my father wants us up high and able to travel fast in case there’s another long arrow with my name on it. The horses’ hooves thump softly upon the dirt fields between our house and the stone benches. Any pavement we used to have in East Country was either destroyed in the wars or ground up to use as building material. In the distance behind the meeting area, I see remnants of what used to be grand statues leftover from an era when our town used to be the capital of a larger country. We’ve repurposed the smooth white stone of those bombed monuments, but a few stumps lie scattered across the horizon. Tomlin’s shown me pictures of something called a Washington Monument towering high over the town. In its place now is just a thin, stone square. I once asked Tomlin why a country would waste resources to build such a tall structure that didn’t house anyone or offer any other sustenance. He’d just shrugged.
As we keep riding, I see the torso of a horse still standing tall on a pillar far off to my right. Its head is lopped off, and it stands on just two remaining legs. Perhaps once a rider sat astride its back, but the horse is now alone. We leave that one half-destroyed structure in place, calling it “Animal Remembrance,” a memorial to all the species we lost in the eco-crisis.
We’re the only family in the country with horses. Thus, the need for our own specialized veterinarian—Griffin’s father. Horses are expensive to keep, and they’re rare. Most horses died from the initial nuclear radiation, tumors growing rampant in their knees and legs, rendering them lame. Ours are the only ones left in the country, and we’ve taken great pains to keep them healthy and reproductive.
Since we don’t create electricity, our world no longer keeps cars or airrides either. Most of East Country’s population of four thousand people who come for our meeting today walked the great distance, camping for the few days it took to travel here. Or people came on bicycles. All of the bikes remaining after the eco-crisis were scavenged and distributed around our population.
Rust is a constant worry, since it can disintegrate the bikes’ metal. All families are issued a bike
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