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Year 39 afterImpactthe Fall
These ruins usedto be some sort of grand indoor market, but now they’re nothing but rubble and the crushed remains of what used to be inside.
Looters scavenged all the food and essentials at least two decades ago, so no one even bothers anymore.
No one but me.
I left home at dawn, and it’s now almost noon. In all that time, I found only a pair of ugly, dirty shoes and some thick fabric I stripped off a smashed piece of furniture until I managed to push over a thick metal cabinet.
Beneath it was a windfall.
Jewelry. And not the brittle type that’s now all broken or scarred. This jewelry was of a sturdier make. It’sdefinitely nicer to look at. Gold and silver metalwork and glittering stones in vibrant colors. Each one still perfect even after being buried for so many years.
With a surge of excitement, I grab piece after piece—necklaces, bracelets, earrings, and so many rings, plus one ornate hair ornament that looks like a crown—and place them in my scavenging basket. There must have been an entire room devoted to jewelry in this pre-Fall market the way I’ve found for clothing and books. Why else would there be so much of it here in one place?
There are far too many pieces to offer on one market day. I’ll have to stow most of it in my second-best hiding spot and only bring a couple of pieces to Lorraine, my stepmother. Otherwise, she’ll let it go too cheaply all at once and we won’t get what it’s worth.
Surely these pieces are rare and beautiful enough to be sold in the Capitol. In fact, I should keep the nicest ones in my very best hiding place, the spot where I keep my finest treasures. That way, if I ever summon the will to run away, I’ll have something to sell or use for bribes.
I tied up the long skirt of my dress in a knot near my hip to keep it out of the way before I started scavenging, but now that I’m done, I untie and smooth it down. Lorraine won’t spend her credits on clothes for me, so I have to improvise my own wardrobe from what I find from the old world. Today I’m wearing a faded blue dress with a pretty flower pattern on the fabric. It’s a little too big forme, but it’s better than trying to salvage what I was wearing six years ago when Father died.
I was nineteen then. Annabelle, my sister and only true companion, was seventeen.
Now she’s married to a manager in the Capitol, and I’m still here in the village, living with Lorraine and her daughter, Aria, and earning my keep by cleaning the house and scavenging supplies for them to sell in the market.
Maybe one day I’ll get out of this village.
Maybe one day I can join Annabelle in the Capitol.
Maybe one day someone will love me and not leave.
A depressing line of thought, so I surrender it to the brutal winds of reality as I reach my very best hiding place in a hole halfway up a mostly dead tree in the woods near the village. I have to climb to reach it. No one will ever stumble on it, which is why I’ve been using it since childhood.
After hiding the crown, the gorgeous necklace of red stones, and a couple of rings with huge clear jewels I suspect might be diamonds, I climb back down and walk ten more minutes to reach an ancient motor turned upside down and overgrown with vines and weeds on the edge of the woods. My second-best hiding spot.
I open the door and stow the rest of the jewelry inside. I scan the assortment of items collected there to decide what else to bring to market and finally fill most of the extra space in my basket—it’s big and made of pre-Fallplastic so it’s virtually indestructible—with dozens of balls I found in the ruins last year.
They’re weird little balls that were housed in disintegrating tube-shaped containers. A vivid yellow-green color and soft to the touch. They bounce delightfully. I uncovered so many that I’ve brought a bunch of them to the market three times already, and they always sell quickly.
Pleased with the day’s efforts, I hike ten minutes more through untended grassland and into the village.
Mondays and Thursdays are market days, so the streets and main square are crowded today. The guards at the gate know me, so they wave me in without questions. The younger man, Gregory, is friendly and freckled, and he gives me a wink as I pass.
He wanted to marry me when I was twenty, but I needed Lorraine’s permission since I wasn’t yet twenty-one, the age of majority in the Central Cities. She said no. I was too young.
Annabelle was convinced it was because she didn’t want either of us marrying before Aria, but whatever the reason, it was a deep disappointment.
I’ve always liked Gregory just fine.
And I desperately wanted out of that house.
I still do. But no one has asked since Gregory, and he married someone else six months later.
I might have the same pale blond hair and blue eyes as Annabelle, but I’ve never been nearly as beautiful. Shetook a trip to the Capitol on purpose last year to find a husband, and she found one.
She looks like a fairy princess from a storybook. I’m pale and washed out.
