Chapter 4:

Sonaya ...

I was breathing heavily, like I’d just ran a sprint, as I wiped the sweat off my forehead with the sleeves of my old sweater.

The sweat tripled even though I felt cold inside, grandma handed me our only towel to clean up the sweat as it ran down in rivulets over my forehead and neck.

My chest and back suddenly soaked in sweat.

These exact same things happened last year and as expected after a few minutes I was back to normal again.

No sweat, no cold .

Mother smiled at me. I smiled back.

I call her different names, grandma, mama, mother or by her name willow.

"Let's play some cards to distract ourselves and you from the pain or discomfort." She said as she returned the rest of the salt to its container in the middle of the table.

We played till midnight and nothing happened.

So we packed up the cards and went to bed.

We live in a tiny two room apartment in an old building.

It's a big building that houses a lot of paupers and miscreants from the south.

It's what we can afford, and we barely get by.

Mama and I work two jobs, to be able to feed, pay the rent, taxes and protection fees.

The living room serves as a kitchen as well, no one entertains people in this parts of the south.

Besides we have no family, no friends and have always kept to ourselves. It's better this way.

The kitchen takes up half of the tiny living room space, but we make do, the other half is mostly for moving around to and from the bedroom and in and out of the house.

Our apartment is on the ground floor, round the back almost at the very end of the row of apartments.

Mother and I get into the bedroom and take turns to clean up before getting into bed.

She lets me go first as always.

We laid on our tiny mattresses on the floor, on either side of the small room.

We used hand made blankets, mother made them herself, to ensure we had enough protection from cold as illness wasn't something we could afford, as the south can get terribly cold at night.

I had barely shut my eyes when the wind furiously hit the window shut.

We both shot up straight in bed, staring at each other.

We turned to look outside the window and as we feared, it was like a freaking blizzard was upon us. Thunder cracked through the sky, shaking the very foundation of our building, then Lighting and thunder, then there was more lighting and more cracking thunder.

I laid back down on the bed, but sleep wouldn't come.

Minutes later though, my body began to shake violently from cold, it was like I was suddenly having a seizure.

Mother quickly moved into action, quickly getting out of bed, she got out the ropes and began to tie me up securely to the iron rods she had, had casted into the wall by my head and the ground by my feet, last year in anticipation of this.

I screamed as pain suddenly ripped through me in sync with thunderous roar from the sky.

Was that me?

I wondered but didn't have the time to dwell on it as mother, after tying my hands and legs despite me kicking her several times in the process, pushed a cloth into my mouth and tied it in place with another, effectively gagging me, and stopping my screams.

The last thing we want is to attract attention.

It was a particularly terribly vicious ice storm.

A thundering headache began to pound through my head, almost the same time as visions began to flick through in my head.

They were of my mother, I don't remember her much, but her face stuck with me.

Tears ran down the side of my eyes as I relieved her vicious death.

Warriors of the east had come for her and my dad had called them. He'd just found out who mother was and they had screamed each other's head off.

My parents argued loudly, father was livid and disgusted, he wouldn't let grandma take me to safety. Mother was forced to use her powers on him, to make him fall asleep.

I knew what she did because mother had been teaching me that trick for months now. She'd said I couldn't get it because I was too young.

But grandma had arrived just before the warriors, to take me away.

I was so scared, I was crying , I didn't want to leave my mummy and daddy , but I didn't understand what my father had done.

Mother was hacked to death by the warriors and grandma made five year old me watch, as we stood behind a transparent sheen she’d created in a wall.

The fear of the devil and hell was instilled inside of me that day.

We never spoke a word about it since then, even though I had nightmares for two years.

We just didn't talk about it.

My mother's screams were vivid in my head. I heard those screams everyday for years, until one day I didn't hear them anymore.

It was like it never happened, almost like I never had parents.

I'd almost forgotten that memory, yet it showed up tonight of all nights in my visions.

Why??

I opened my eyes after a few minutes to hear the ice still pelting the ground and our window heavily, violently.

It went on for hours, with me writhing in pain and my screams muffled. I could have sworn, I broke my wrists and ankles, I swear I heard them break and felt the pain.

But when the storm finally stopped at some minutes past four am, my wrists and ankles were fine.

But my temperature had spiked.

Mother untied me, undressed me and covered me with a wet blanket.

She had taken it outside and soaked in the ice, she'd also brought in a bucket of ice to help bring down my temperature.

But everything hurt and my body was screaming in pain. I bit down on my lip, ground my teeth together and rode out the pain.

It was the kind of pain, I wouldn't wish on my enemy.

I did fall asleep at some point.

And when I awoke, there was no pain and no fever, it was like it never happened. But I'd barely had enough sleep.

"Happy birthday dear child."

Mother beamed at me.

She seemed relieved and elated, like a weight had been taken off her shoulders.

I smiled and opened my mouth to speak, but I only managed to croak out a sound before I went into a coughing fit.

Mother rushed into the kitchen and returned with a steaming mug of some tea I'm sure she brewed specially for me.

Hmmnn it smelt like cinnamon and lime with tea leaves.

Of course we didn't have lime, we just used the leaves from the lime tree instead.

It burned my throat as I took sip after sip.

Finally I raised my head and smiled at her. Tears pricked my eyes as I said "Thank you mama, I don't know what I'll do without you.

I'll probably just die, without you."

"No Naya, do not speak of such things. Dying would only make us weak. It would serve no purpose." She said.

We were both quiet for a while before I said.

"We need to get ready for work."

She nodded slowly as I got up to my feet. " See, I'm fine. " I said reassuring her that there was nothing to worry about.

We cleaned up in the tiny passage called a bathroom, dressed up and left for work.

We worked in a factory, mother worked in two factories.

And she was a supervisor in both of them.

My second job is with a restaurant chain. It's more flexible and pays the same with the factory, six lunars an hour.

The southern Lygion is really expensive to live in, mostly because it’s the only region that turns a blind eye to the less fortunate.

It’s the only region with a cordoned off area for people like us.

People call us the rejects, because most of the five percent that have almost no abilities live here.

We work eighteen hour days, sometimes I go as high as twenty hours.

We make about seven hundred and fifty lunars a week, sometimes a little more, but that translates to just over three thousand lunars a month and since there's two of us, that's about six thousand.

Yet we struggle and barely make ends meet. Not that we are complaining, because as long as we mind our business and stay out of trouble, pay our taxes and protection fees, we are left alone in relative peace.

But then again, peace is relative, to some its money, to others its power, to some its about the secrets that must be kept hidden.

Mother and I belong to the last category.

Our lives depend on our ability, to keep our secret.