Spem Alere

     The scent of pine cleaner burned her nose hair and made her eyes water. Clara “Chondee” Darin blinked at the eggshell white, pock-tiled ceiling, then rolled her eyes around. A hideous pink and yellow flower print privacy curtain looped out of the wall to surround her. Though its proximity encroached on her space, she wasn’t ready to face the shadows that passed by. The left side of her head felt as if some asshole had taken a jackhammer to it. Between the throbbing bursts of deep nerve pain, her throat ached. She vaguely recalled someone choking her. That’s what you get, Chondee told herself. Should have kept walking. Should have… She groaned under the weight of her lips. No. No. No. Repeating in her mind as she sent command after command to her uncommunicative lips. Dear Mercury, please not paralyzed. Not paralyzed. To her great dismay and infinite joy, her ocular muscles functioned normally.

Angustiis Premi

     “Stop that right now,” Mary Darin’s high-pitched voice echoed throughout the caverns. In every crevice, the children of the Servants paused in mid-action, all fearing that Ms. Darin’s wrath was directed at them. “Willem! Gerick and Jocelyn! Put those babies down!” She glared at the older children with vehemence. “Come!” she ordered.

     The twins, Gerick and Jocelyn Motown, were the eldest of the children rescued by Sirios when the town of Avalona had been destroyed two weeks earlier. Though Willem Slaughter was only a year younger than them, his well-trimmed beard and thick build made him appear much older. Being eldest and close in age, the trio had developed into the group’s de facto leaders taking discipline unto themselves—a situation that Ms. Darin simultaneously encouraged and carefully monitored—though, occasionally they overstepped their bounds. Par for the course, considering the group was overwhelmed by their immense losses. The youngest unintentionally added further stress to the situation, since they did not yet comprehend their new lot as the first orphans of the bitterest travesty in recent collective memory.