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Gaia NPC Story Contest Entry: The Eternal Flame |
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"Who are you supposed to be?"
The girl was staring her down fiercely, hands on her hips. Lex raised one eyebrow and settled into her best do-you-really-want-to-mess-with-me look, but the girl didn't back off. "Well?"
"If you don't know me, you don't need to," Lex snapped. "Now get out of my business."
"I'm not getting out of your business until you get out of my house," the girl said, in what Lex thought was a laughable attempt at a dignified tone. It might almost have been convincing if not for the fact that she vaguely resembled a drowned rat.
"Oh, this is your house?" she responded mockingly. "I thought it was a bunch of discarded boards." That had been the wrong thing to say to the girl, who immediately gave her a glare that could have melted steel, stepping forward until she was right in Lex's face. Lex held her ground, quietly noting how skinny the girl was. She could take her, if she had to.
"Listen to me," the girl hissed. "I don't know who you are or where you came from, but you have no business being here. I worked my butt off to be able to live here. I'm going to get into college, and I'm going to get out of this place. And you aren't going to mess with my future."
Lex gave a derisive laugh. "I'm not here to ******** with your future," she scoffed. "I'm here to get out of the ******** ninety-degree weather. You're the one too stupid to lock the door. Not very promising for your college applications, huh?"
The girl rolled her eyes. "Obviously you don't know the first thing about intelligence," she retorted. "If you want to get out of the heat, then go back to your parents." Eyeing Lex's clothes disdainfully, she added, "With that fancy designer outfit of yours, I'm sure they've got air conditioning."
Lex glanced down at herself. Truthfully, she hadn't exactly bought those clothes, but she wasn't about to tell that to some high-and-mighty freak she'd just met. "Yeah. Sure. I'm just going to go beg my parents to take me back," she said. "Doesn't matter that they're tyrants bent on repressing me. A drowned rat living in a shack told me to do it, so by gods, you've turned my life around! I'm going right back there and making nice!" She punctuated her sarcasm with a cheerful swing of her arm.
The girl tilted her head, the look of hostility fading to wariness. "You got kicked out?"
"Psht. More like they freed me." Lex folded her arms. "I do what I want now. And what I want is to avoid sweating to death, so if you don't mind..." She turned and started walking further into the house, only to be stopped by the girl grabbing her arm. "Hey!"
"Look," the girl sighed. She opened her mouth several times to speak, but stopped. Finally, she settled on, "You can hang out here. Just stay out of my way." She dropped Lex's arm, keeping her eyes averted.
Lex raised her eyebrow again. "Don't touch me, and maybe I will," she conceded testily. "Why the sudden 180?"
"I don't like you," the girl began. Lex's mouth curled up in her best really-I-never-would-have-guessed expression, and the girl rolled her eyes. "Yeah, yeah. I don't care for your attitude, and I think you're an idiot. But I don't want any more..." She sighed again. "Look, I just don't want to leave anyone out on the street, okay? I grew up there. It was hell." Her eyes softened slightly. "My name's Felicia, by the way."
"Lex," she said without thinking. Then she narrowed her eyes. "You really are one of those goody-goody sorts, aren't you?"
The newly-identified Felicia pinched the bridge of her nose, walking off down the hall. "I'm going to regret this..."
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"Well, I don't agree with it," she shrugged, sitting cross-legged on the bed. "But...I kind of see where you're coming from."
Lex's eyes widened in surprise. "You do?"
"Yeah," Felicia admitted. "I mean, I've always done what I was told. I figured I owed it to my parents, you know?" Lex nodded, knowing what had happened to Felicia's parents. "And a lot of the rules I follow, well, they're there for our own good. But I guess..." She picked up the frayed blanket and twirled a strand of it around her finger. "I guess if you've never been allowed any freedom, you just start to hate everything. You see it as part of your cage."
"I never thought of it like that," Lex said honestly. "All I know is, they were really weird. They barely even let me leave the house. I was home-schooled, and I had to put up with their bullshit 24/7." She scoffed. "I'm sick of being civilized. I was always sick of it. I think I was born sick of it."
"So you defied it, and now you're free," Felicia finished.
Lex nodded. "Yeah. The more they tried to mold me into the prim little princess, the more I wanted to break things." She looked at the blanket Felicia was twirling, lost in thought. "I want to break society. I want to get rid of all these rules. Everyone should be free."
Felicia put down the blanket strand. "But those rules are there for a reason," she said. "If society collapsed, people wouldn't be any more free than they are now. What we need is a good leader. One who's firm, but fair."
"Yeah, I can agree with that. The governor is so...robotic," she commented. "It's like she doesn't understand people at all. And the cops just do whatever she says." She gazed at her roommate thoughtfully. "Is that what you want to do? You want to fix the province?"
"There will still be rules," Felicia defended. "I'm not making this place into an anarchist paradise. Just...one where less people suffer."
Lex scoffed. "I think we're going to have some problems when we're older." Then she smiled. "But for now, you're kind of okay."
Felicia grinned back. "You're kind of okay too."
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"I grew up on the street, you know," Felicia said quietly, looking down at her new shoes. They were nothing fancy, but they were clean, and they fit her. "Now I'm going to college."
Lex smiled. "A good one, too." She flung her arm around her roommate, who smiled weakly back at her.
"I just don't know if...what do I do now? I mean, what if I'm not meant for this? What if I'm just supposed to live out the rest of my life the way my parents did?" Felicia looked away from Lex, speaking quickly and nervously. She hadn't dared to give voice to these thoughts before.
"Well, I grew up in a big fancy house with big fancy parents, and now I'm here," Lex grinned. "Maybe you're supposed to take my place. In the civilized world," she added with a touch of resentment.
Felicia sighed. "How did we come to this? I remember walking in here after a long day at work and arguing with a loudmouthed squatter, and now I can't imagine life without you."
Her best friend laughed. "You'll be fine. You've worked for this. And most importantly, you want it. You'll stick with it." She gave Felicia a comforting squeeze.
"Yes, but...what will you do? I'll be a hundred miles away," she whispered.
"I'll do what I've always done," Lex said confidently. "Whatever the hell I want." Felicia giggled, and they embraced. A car horn honked outside. "You should go."
"I know," mumbled Felicia, slowly letting go. "I'll miss you."
Lex's expression sobered. "I'll miss you too." As Felicia opened the door, she added, "Good luck out there."
Felicia turned back, looking more grave than Lex had ever seen her. "You're the one who'll need it," she said, and walked out to the waiting car.
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"...and for your crimes, the jurisdiction of this province has decreed that you will be executed at dawn tomorrow," finished the governor. She looked down at the kneeling Lex, who was restrained by handcuffs and two burly officers. "Do you have anything to say for yourself?"
Lex looked back up at her, the gray half-moons below her eyes making her face appear gaunt and pale. She hadn't struggled when they came to arrest her. She hadn't tried to run, and she hadn't fought back. It was as if, at the last moment, her spirit had just died. "Nah," Lex said flatly. "Nothing to say."
Felicia, governor of the province, looked into Lex's eyes for a moment longer, then turned away. "Escort her to the holding cell," she instructed, and the three people in front of her left without comment. As she watched them go, she struggled not to cry. Though she had always had a strong moral code, and stuck firmly to the law, she couldn't deny she held a soft spot for the notorious criminal. They had traveled two very different paths, but for a while, those paths had met, and they walked together. They had been friends...they had been sisters.
"I should have known it would end this way," she whispered to herself. "I'm sorry, Lex. I should have helped you..."
But deep down inside, she knew that inside the girl's spirit was an eternal flame, one she could never have quenched.
 LabTech Kestin · Wed Dec 11, 2013 @ 06:45am · 0 Comments |
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