Her heart raced, her breaths came in pants, and her sweat sprouted cold as icy fingers stroking her pounding head. She turned and looked behind her, her thin jacket flapping in the wintery breeze. The footfalls continued to echo hers, coming closer than she dared imagine. The guard's face was contorted into fury, a storm raging after the only one ever to evade him for so long. She had to shake him, but how? All others who escaped were dragged back into the compound, limp and lifeless. She would not be beaten, she would not go back alive... or dead.
That dungeon was the only place she had ever remember, so how could she escape? Her peers had whispered for months, probing her with questioning unabashed stares. How would she find food in a wilderness that promised only death. She was the only girl who was able to remember her parents standing at the guarded gate. They were weeping openly, fighting to keep her. That was the first memory she had. They crawled on the ground, reaching for her, tears forming rivers down their faces, moaning in agony. She was yanked inside the two-story black doors, never again to leave. Until now.
She ducked around a corner and quickly ducked behind a barrel. Steam colored her breaths as she panted. She sighed and lowered her head into her hands. This was her new existence- running with no hope of escape until she was dead. She had not seen her parents since that day when she was four, seeing her mother with long brown hair silky smooth and her father with shaggy brown hair equally smooth. He had a strong chin, a sort of knowledge that was uncanny in its own right. He fought strongly for he knew the tortures of her puny existence though he would never set foot in there. Her mother's green-blue eyes and the blue clarity of her father's eyes- the blue of icy water in the arctic. She pushed her mid-back dark brown silky hair behind her shoulder and raised her head towards the heavens. If there was a God out there, would He care? She let out her pent-up breath in despair. She would never know.
She got up and ran the way she came, back down the street to the spot that the guard had spotted her and ran to the right. She had to lose him. There had to be hope.
She sat down heavily on a box in the narrow alley. She was covered with grime, her eyes dulled, her hair unkempt. Her jacket had several holes and her shoes weren't going to hold up much longer. She was hungry to a point of collapse, even her hands were shaking. She shakily rubbed her face in an attempt to wake up from a headache. She rested her head, just a moments rest. Every clatter of wheels or clank of pans jarred her sanity.
WHAM. She was knocked over brutally. She was about to blow when she heard the unbelievable.
"Misa?" Her name. The name she gave herself. She looked over to the young man who ran into her. It was him. Einsame. Einsame Stieg.
He was a tall, lanky sort of fellow with startling blue eyes and black hair hanging in his eyes. Of a pale sort, he was wearing a button down white shirt and black vest and grey pants. He looked like a gentleman. But his shirt was dirty, his shoes scuffed, his vest ragged. He probably had no money.
But she saw a young man of around ten in her mind, a boy she never saw up close. He was lanky, she thought very long about him when she was starting her new job as heavy laborer. She was building quite high when she saw a figure in grey and black with jet black hair bolt through the woods. She started to dream about that figure. What was he like?
On her break she went to the recreational square, all color seeping out of even the sky in that dreaded dungeon. Her friends, if we could call the three girls she shared a room with "friends," talked quietly of what it looked like outside. She knew what the outside looked like. It was bleak. She could sometimes, if there wasn't a guard, see into the surrounding forest through a small crack in the wall, not any bigger than her finger. She would gaze into the colorless trees and look on the dull, long grass. There came a day when she was looking wishfully at the freedom offered by those trees when a head abruptly blocked out what little view there was. He had bright blue eyes pierced her soul, and black hair accentuating those eyes.
"WHOAH!" She reeled back from her seat, sprawling out onto the dust-covered ground. She groaned, as her back was already sore from strenuous labor.
"Who are you?" He asked. He blinked, not shy in any form of the word.
"Why should I tell you? You rude little boy!" She crossed her arms and pouted.
"Why I'm sorry, I just hadn't seen you there the other times I've been here. I don't get out much." He blushed, embarrased for not knowing the social wrongs he committed.
"Oh." She tucked her ear-length silky hair behind her ear and blinked her sea-blue eyes at him. "My name is... I guess... Call me Misa, for I'm miserable."
"You seem too pretty to be a Misa. It's sad that such a pretty girl live in this rotten place." He glared at the rec area, barely a bar to swing from and no playground. "You should be a Schona, for you are beautiful."
"Seriously, call me Misa." She glared at him. "Or I will punch you in the nose." Her fists curled at her sides, her face growing hot. Beautiful? Me? "What's your name, anyway?"
"Eisame. My adoptive 'rents said I was pitifully lonely. They don't really love me anyway." He looked away, truly ashamed. Truly unloved. "Will you be here tomorrow? I'll try to sneak out again."
"Um, sure. Yeah, I guess."
It was the start of a wonderful, if short, friendship. They talked of malnourishment and of slavery and a whole range of philosophical subjects her roomates found utterly boring. He told her one day of his plan, of how he would never see her again.
"Tomorrow I will run away. I can't risk coming back, so, I guess..." He winced at the error that had just occured to him. "This is... goodbye." Tears flowed down his face at the thought, joined by the one flowing down Misa's. "To me, you'll always be a Schona, Misa." She choked out a strangled sob.
Here he was, a year later, running into her once again.
"I guess I will never stop rudely getting in your way, huh?" He smiled shyly, his cheeks coloring.
"What! That! I..." She stopped, confused. The only one who ever cared since those heavy doors had shut appeared once again. She slapped him. "Don't abandon me again!" She cried as she fiercly hugged him, unabashed tears flowing freely down her face.
"I never will, never again my Schona." He lifted her face up to look her in the eyes. He kissed her lightly, pulling her back in his protective arms. "I would die first." He led her back to the home he had found. He had found his real parents at last, having been stolen from them years ago by the supervisers of the dungeon Misa was kept in. That's why he ran into her, why he ran past as she worked. He lived minutes away from her. Her parents could possibly be located, and if they could, he would find them.
They lived as Schona and Amias, beautiful and loved.
