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When you’ve spent all of your life underground, nothing is more breathtaking, nothing fills a heart with more hope, nothing makes you want to smile like you never have before…than to see the pale blue sky for the first time. It proves to you at last that there is indeed something beyond the bland white ceiling, metal vents and florescent lights--- things that, since you could remember, were what served as the roof, the enclosure to your world.
Yet for six-year-old Mondenkind, this feeling of elation was quickly lost to an all too familiar feeling of misery.
They’d finally got the green light. They finally were able to bring her out of the subterranean labs and onto the base itself. Sadly, she wasn’t able to see much of anything fresh and new. The inside of the humvee had been mostly metal, and the windows were narrow and far between, granting her only a violet-tinted, fleeting glance of the Air Force base’s buildings and the sky she so craved beyond them.
And before she had the chance to enjoy even this small view, the army green humvee pulled off the main road and glided down a ramp into what she registered as a parking garage.
Now the girl paused, half-stunned, after jumping down from the vehicle. Behind her, a PTA guard gently shut the door. She wrapped her arms around herself and shook from side to side in disbelief. This wasn’t what she’d thought it would be. It wasn’t bright and green and beautiful. There were no normal people to talk to, no sweets, and, without question--- no sky.
This looked almost exactly the same as the place she’d just came from: grey concrete floor, meshed with walls of plaster, held together with pillars of yet more concrete, a local favorite due to security reasons. It was big; large enough to hold several hundred cars. Huge panels of thrumming electric light were grafted into the grimy ceiling.
To the right, she could see the ramp which had led down here, striped with patterns of white paint that told where one should drive, and where one shouldn’t. At the tip-top, a stripe of white light beckoned, and she did know, very well, that that was the real world, out there, under the sun and alongside the whims of nature. But it was not going to be hers to enjoy. Not now at least…
Because they’d lied to her again.
A promise to the PTA was worth about as much as a grain of sand…you can collect however many promises you want, bucketfuls, but when the tide comes to wash them away, then they’re gone, forever intermixed and indistinguishable among the promises of everyone else in the world. She was used to this. Though that didn’t mean she would pass up the offer to be brought above ground, despite how shady that offer had been.
A hand touched on her shoulder. “Time to go,” the guard behind her whispered, and he pushed on her softly. “Come along now.”
Mondenkind did not want to go with him. She wanted to break loose from her inhibitions and run full tilt into the outside world. She wanted to feel the sun on her back, the wind in her white-blond hair, fill her mind with wonder and happiness to be alive. These things, however, were far beyond her capability. She found herself forced to follow orders, like she always was. Still hugging herself, tail dragging dejectedly on the floor, she fell in line directly in front of the guard and looked up at him with big cerulean eyes, her face contorted into an expression of passive irritation. Her stomach swirled bitterly.
The man was the one who’d driven her here alone. He was burly, tan-skinned, seemingly too big for the tight stitching and perfect seams of his black suit. Despite the way his Hollywood-esque wavy blond hair seemed like a ridiculous match for the rest of him, his drawn face did not come off as funny at all as he frowned down at her. “Good girl,” he said.
Then he started to herd her towards the elevator on the far side of the garage like a heeler herds cows, pushing and nudging, and, when she’d go too far in the wrong direction…smacking her lightly upside the head. From what he’d been told, the little girl couldn’t talk. And if she couldn’t talk, she had to also be somewhat slow in the head, making simply telling her what to do a useless venture.
He wondered, with this, exactly
how the big wigs planned on making her confess.
_______________
Anna remembered the ‘farm’ and Charlie. But that was all she wanted to remember.
Dreams came back to her…wanting to be a truck driver, later a chef. Wishes and hopes floated back into her head like a breeze through spider silk. Caught for the moment. Her father. His cows…she hadn’t wanted to raise cows.
She’d wanted to be with Charlie. And so she was now, right beside him in her unit.
What she had not planned on was joining the Air Force. Sure, the thought had come to the strapping young tomboy, but she tended to brush such aspirations away, thinking she’d be no good at it, thinking she’d only end up failing. After all, there wasn’t much to her--- she was, basically, a skinny Mexican-American, with skin like caramel and bobbed dark brown hair. And that was all.
But Charlie, her cousin, had seen something more in Anna.
Smiling, he’d flagged her down at the recruiting station and given her the paperwork…from there it was history.
History does so bend and twist, and this was how she ended up here, at the edge of Utah’s Violet Lake, a handful of miles away from the Force base itself. The new recruits, herself included, wanted to enjoy their last days of freedom before training started. So they’d snagged a few unsuspecting Jeeps, loaded up, cranked some classic rock, and had driven on down to the lake for some swimming, flirting, and sun.
Uninterested in being adventurous, Anna hung back from the others, stretched out on a beach towel atop the red sand, clad in a white one-piece. Her eyes scanned the far horizon and red-kissed cliffs, the scraggly bushes, the water…contrary to its name, the lake did not have a violet hue. The majority of it was a normal, deep green-blue, the edges clear enough to see down for several yards. All in all, very pretty.
“Hey, Anna!”
The hearty voice called out from nowhere, loud enough to carry over the loud rock music blaring around them and even over the hollers of the other recruits. But she recognized it.
She glanced up, propping herself up on her elbows and taking off her sunglasses. “What the hell do
you want, Charlie?” Her eyebrow raised when she saw where the equally skinny Latino was, perched atop a small cliff on the edge of the water, ready to dive in without fear.
“Why don’t you come jump in with me? It’s not that cold, I swear!”
“Prove it! I’m not going in there....
freaking punk...”
“Fine! I’ll come drag you in, then. Not really Air Force material, are you? Being such a chicken.” Charlie began to clamber down from the cliff, indeed coming to fetch her.
Anna rolled her eyes and repositioned her sunglasses. It was going to be a long afternoon.
