A thunderstorm roars outside and my little brother cowers. Who could blame him? The house is shaking, and the booms sound more like gunshots then thunder. Every full moon the thunderstorms grow stronger and stronger. No one in this town can comprehend it. Meanwhile, I’m positioned by the window watching the lightning. If it strikes me down I wouldn’t mind. Whimpering, my little brother squeaks, “H-how can you deal with those large sounds by your ear? Aren’t they deafening?” Well, there isn’t really glass on the windows, so it is really loud. But even then, the sound is barely louder than my thoughts.
“I’m watching out for the lightning, scaring it away with my angry face,” I turn to him, scrunching up my face.
He relaxes a bit and laughs, “you sure that works?”
In response I poke my head outside and yell as loud as my lungs allow, “LEAVE MY LITTLE BROTHER ALONE LIGHTNING AND THUNDER, OR I’M COMING FOR YA!” To my shock, the thunder becomes even louder. Not what I was looking for. “Don’t worry Leo, it’s just bluffing.” I say as he covers his ears. Seems like I made it worse, but there’s always something I can do. I walk to Leo, who’s hiding under the table. I grab him close and cover his ears with my hands. He hugs me tightly and we wait for the thunder and lightning to calm down. At this point we’ve fallen asleep.
I wake up with Leo’s drool on my shirt. Sort of gross, but that’s what soap is for. Gently I move him onto his back, grabbing his blanket from the couch to scoop him up. I set him on the couch and prepare for the day. You know, common stuff. I go brush my teeth, throw my clothes on the ground, take a shower, then put on something more comfortable for working. Now I need to make food, I work for five hours a shift, and I have two daily. I have to make sure Leo eats, and he’s terrible at taking care of himself. I work for food and other necessities like water, electricity, and emergency trading tickets. They’re used for trading any type of merchandise which can stretch from clothes, to spices, to pretty much anything.
Anyways, I snag some potatoes and eggs out of the fridge. Four potatoes and four eggs. I chop the potatoes into cubes and prepare the spices I obtained from friends; mainly Rosemary, Thyme, Oregano, and some imported goods like salt and basil. I mix together the herbs in a small bowl with the basil and salt, coating both the eggs and potatoes in them. I use a good amount of butter for the potatoes and less for the eggs. I fry and steam the potatoes for thirty minutes or so and take a good ten minutes making sure the eggs are perfect. I cut the egg in half and put about a third of the potatoes on a plate for Leo. He eats less since he’s younger, and since I work in a field I always end up eating more.
I go to wake Leo up, he’s snoring. His light red hair is strewn all over his face, covering his eyes. I gently shake him, wafting the food over his face. He almost immediately woke up, it always works haha. He sits up sleepily, and I give him a fork. He inhaled the food, thanked me, then laid back down. I take the plate and fork and reuse them, practically copying Leo’s eating strategy.
I bike down to work, locking it up to a fence. There’s a new guy. His hair is blue and spiky, I wonder how he afforded the dye and gel, as they’re the most luxurious goods besides clothes and jewelry. He’s talking to the group leader. I walk up to them through the thick grass. “Ay, Taro, what’s up man?” The leader turns to look at me, “I was just talking about you! Meet the new recruit!” She smiles widely.
“Uh, hey,” He says, looking away, “My name’s Tempest,” what’s his problem?
“Yo, I’m Taro.”
“Starting today you’ll be in charge of Tempest! Before you can object, you’ll get one extra trading ticket an hour, plus you only need to work one shift instead of two, and earn the same and more,” the group leader's smile grows wider, knowing I have to accept. I mean, normally I get one every two hours of work. That’s five a day, and if I got an extra one an hour I would get ten a day! How could I refuse that deal?! Blinded by the thought of twice the average trading tickets, I immediately agree. At some point this dude has got to relax around me.
Suddenly his expression changes and he grins sweetly. He grabs my hand and kisses it, “Happy to be a part of this business, I hope you take good care of me.” He winks. What is that supposed to mean? This guy is so weird...
The group leader chuckles lightly, covering her mouth, “Well I’d hope so, I boosted his pay! Hahaha, anywho it starts today Taro, have fun!” She walks away, leaving me in the awkward presence of the stranger. His eyes are surprisingly beautiful. The strange thing is I swear they were jade green a second ago, but now they’re teardrop blue. Stunning but odd. Completely silent he waits for me to work. I explain to him all the boring, and what I consider interesting, information about taking care of the fields.
“Dandelions tend to sprout right here, people pay well for their roots because they’re hard to clean, and prepare. Their main use is a coffee substitute. The flowers and leaves can be steamed and are actually very healthy. Jasmine, the group leader, always lets us take home the leaves and flowers since they have such a bitter flavor, and they don’t sell well.” I grab a shovel, and show him how to pull up roots, forcing my foot upon the handle. I go in smoothly and I pull up roughly. The whole plant unroots and I pull over the wheelbarrow and throw them in.
He seems to be listening through the talk about weeds, grabbing a shovel for himself. He found a dandelion plant, put the shovel into the dirt and the light clang of the shovel against the root said he found the bottom. After the clang he began pulling up the roots with the shovel, but instead of making a stance to keep himself balanced he’s using his body weight. He’s going to fall over if he keeps doing that. The plant flies up and Tempest stumbles and I use my arm to catch him. It could have been romantic if he wasn’t crazy heavy. He ends up slipping through my fingers and falling anyways. “Sorry I’m so clumsy,” He says, pulling himself to his feet.
There’s dirt on his clothes and in his hair from falling, but instead of pointing it out I touch his hair to dust it off. It’s soft, so there isn’t gel? His eyes grow a bit wider, and the color changes. This time I know I didn’t imagine it. They’re jade green now, and he smiles. “You like my hair? I clean it every day, and naturally it grows really long. Because it’s so thick I always need hedge clippers to cut it, and I wish that was a joke.”
When I caught him before he slipped, his face was slightly red with wide blue eyes. But now, they’re jade green like a mischievous feline. I feel shocked, and as he tries to wave his hand in front of my face I grab it. If he has two separate personalities, this is how I figure it out. I press his hand to my cheek, “You know, your hand is so soft, I’m honestly worried you’ll damage them with your clumsiness. My hands used to be this soft, but now they’re like leather. If you want your hands to stay this way I recommend something that wouldn’t cause calluses.” His face isn’t red at all. Once he’s blue eyed I’ll try something similar. It’s not gay if it’s experimental in order to figure out what’s going on with the eye color changes.
“Well, my hands may be soft but I’ve had to endure a lot of accidental hand cutting, not just scissors but knives. For some reason it heals back quickly, no scar and no thickening of my hands. You don’t have to worry about me haha,” he replies heartily. Something about his eyes makes me feel strange.
Just like that we go back to work, only doing dandelions for today. His eyes didn’t change back for the rest of the day, and he asked annoyingly large amounts of questions. I couldn’t have five minutes of silence. Jasmine comes up to me swiftly at the end of my shift, exclaiming that she found something scary at the edge of the field. I walk over there, Tempest trailing behind.
“There’s a lot of blood,” She says nervously. We get there and there’s a heavily injured person, a wounded child beside them. Both covered in blood, but no signs of shooting, animal prints, or stab wounds.
Tempest walks up to them, grabbing their wrists, “only the child has a pulse,” he says calmly. His eyes changed after he came back in our direction. “I know what would stop the bleeding in the kid if you could both stand very far back,” he says calmly. Both me and Jasmine stand back, and look away. I hear a light crackle like a firecracker and he yells, “Safe!” We go back to the kid’s wounds, and they’re burned to where they could no longer risk bleeding out. Tempest still has a shovel in his hands, but he doesn’t bury the adult. Instead he picks them up bridal style and carries them to a house not far from the fields. Me and Jasmine are silent the whole way over there, and I’m holding the kid piggy back.
“This is the cemetery for the people and creatures I find dead. If you’d allow me to examine the dead person’s body I could probably figure out the source of their death,” He says, “I bought this area myself, so don’t worry about it,” He finishes. There are countless plants over the graves, so you can’t tell where people were buried. He said he buys more property each time he runs out of space, and that these plants need dead animal or human parts to live off of. He puts out human parts every once and awhile from the bodies he’s found to feed them. Looking away from the monstrous plants, Tempest leads us inside.
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