I think that moment right there was what -- to me -- proved that you don’t truly appreciate something until you don’t have it anymore, but getting it back after losing it is the best feeling in the whole world. The numbness and helplessness of the moment seemed to drain away in the face of this new hope. It took everything in me not to rush out and hug her, never letting go no matter what the guards may have done. But, logically, if I were to wait a simple minute or less, then I’d still get Aria and not have to go through any of the predicted beatings for it. That’s something she would have said, anyway.

So, in a new form of agonizing, I waited, trying to keep from bouncing in semi-fearful excitement and anticipation. When Aria was only about ten feet away, she picked up her pace, a strange and unexpected look in her eyes. When she got to me, she wrapped her arms around me and picked me up, carrying me as if I were three again into the shack. It kind of startled me, but it gave me the opportunity to bury my tears in her jacket.

She took me to the farthest, darkest corner of the very large building and set me down on the cement floor, using her body to shield me from both the cold and the other prisoners. Then she said something that would haunt my sleep for years.

“Krystal . . . there is no way out of here.”

My shivering stopped then. It’s a really strange feeling, being too scared to shiver. Isn’t that something you’re supposed to do when you’re afraid? Well, I guess this was just a whole new level of fear. The idea of spending the rest of my life in this hell-hole just shut me off. Then, I guess, was the very first time my survival instincts kicked in. I forced the panic that wanted to surface back as far as I possibly could, more afraid of fear than anything else. I boxed up the desperation and pressed the mute button, calming myself down mentally. This was to become a common thing.

“Oh . . . oh . . .” Was all I could stutter out. Maybe I could push the immediate panic away, but that didn’t make the gravity of the statement and the situation any less severe. “Then . . . then what do we do?”

Aria glanced over her shoulder before sitting against the wall next to me. “I don’t . . . I don’t know yet.” She looked at me, a reassuring determination in her eyes. “But we’ll figure it out.”

She took my hand and intertwined my fingers with hers, I leaned my head on her shoulder before jerking it back reflexively in realization. “Your shoulder, Aria! I’m sorry.”

To my surprise, she just shrugged. “That’s why I was gone all day. They were fixing up my shoulder so I could work. It’s actually feeling a lot better now. Here.” She reached over, put a hand on the other side of my head and pulled me closer until it was resting on her shoulder. We sat there like that for a very long time.

After maybe an hour, when I was almost asleep, she finally spoke again. “Krystal…”

“What is it?” I said, wide awake again.

“I just wanted to tell you that we WILL get out of here. No matter what it takes.”

That was slightly confusing, as she'd just said there WAS no way out. “What do you mean by that?”

She sighed, looking almost pained by the words. “Survival, okay? That’s our new top priority. No matter what the consequences, we are going to get out of here. We have lives to live. I promise, okay?”

I nodded, taking her words to heart. We had to get out of here. As soon as humanly possible. Staying alive was at the top of our list. I didn’t know why, but it was. I trusted Aria with everything in me. If she said survival was priority, than that’s what it was.

“I know what these places are like.” She continued. “They do . . . bad things to people, especially to girls. We need to stick together as much as possible okay? Promise me you won’t let anyone do anything to you. People may try to hurt you in ways you don’t even understand yet.”

“What . . . like…”

She stopped me. “No, just let me . . . let me explain, alright?”

We talked for a long time. It was probably two or three hours past midnight before we finally went to sleep. My head rested on Aria’s lap, and she stroked my hair as I tried to get the terrible images her words had conjured up out of my mind. I learned so much about the world and people in general, in just one night. She told me she hadn’t wanted me to know about how terrible the world really was until I was older, but that it was the only way I would survive. No more hiding. She’d promised to tell the truth, and she did. I don’t think I fully processed all of it for a long time after. I just trusted Aria. I knew she would do what was right, and she would take care of me. And that was all that mattered.

---

A few hours later, Aria shook me awake. It was no later than 5:30, and I knew I was going to have a rough day. I mean, who doesn’t have a hard day on two hours of sleep? But what woke me up more than her shaking me was her words.

“Krystal! Krystal, get up! We have to work now. But I have a job for you too.”

“A . . . a job?” I muttered, sitting up and rubbing my eyes with the palms of my hands. So ladylike.

“Actually…” She put on a big, actually genuine smile. “It’s more like . . . like a game. To make the time go faster!” I could tell there was probably an ulterior motive to this “game”, but decided not to question and just play along. After all, what harm could it do?

I leapt to my feet and nearly toppled over with morning light-headedness, giggling. “Tell me about this game then.”

She grabbed my hand and pulled me to the back of the line, whispering to me. "Remember that game I taught you a year or two ago? Where we have to talk to each other without making any sound?"

I nodded, with vigor. "Lip-reading, right?"

She smiled, affirmatively. "Yep! That's the one. When we go out to the workplace, we're going to play that game. Think of it as like a secret code. We can say stuff to each other without the guards hearing anything!"

My eyes widened and I clapped excitedly, before clasping my hands behind my back, shamefaced, as the guard at the front of the line gave me a dirty look.

She kept her hand on my shoulder as we all filed out of the cabin and "marched" through the camp and out to one of the parked vans. The Fates must have taken pity on us that day, as we were able to spend every second of it together. I'd look up at her every so often and smile, telling myself in my head: 'She'll get us out of here. I know she will.' I didn’t know how long it would take, but my spirits were high, that day. At least, as high as they can be in captivity.

When we arrived at the field, the supervisor kept us all under a very close and uncomfortable eye. It made it very difficult to do anything other than what he specifically had assigned us. Granted, he had a whole field of people to be watching, but that didn’t do much to lessen the fear. ‘What if I mess up? What will they do?’ I had no proof they beat people for disobedience, but my knowledge of slave history instilled that fear in me. What was I, an eight year old Californian girl, going to know about rice harvesting? Try nothing. I could feel the tears welling up in my eyes, blurring my vision and fueling the seemingly endless circle of self-fulfilling failure.

Just when my hands were shaking so badly I could barely do anything at all, Aria put a firm hand on my shoulder, squeezing slightly to get my attention. I glanced up at her cautiously, afraid that the supervisor would notice. She knelt down so she was closer to my eye level. She mouthed something, making no noise, before turning back to her work. It took me a second to analyze it, and come to the conclusion she’d said something along the lines of “don’t worry, just copy me.” This made me wonder how she would know anything about rice farming, but I didn’t have the heart to pipe up and ask that out loud. Instead, I stared down at the scythe-like sickle she held and watched as she hacked at the leafy stalks until they were cut through. I watched this process two or three times before attempting to imitate her motions. The first time, I failed pretty badly, and Aria swept in to salvage the damaged stalk before the supervisor could notice. The second time, I was much more careful, and proud of myself when I was able to semi-succeed.

We were out in the fields most of the day. We had one ten-minute lunch break, to which what we were provided with pretty much consisted of old bread and three-weeks-old water. Not much different from the transportation ship. The hours were long and the sun might as well have dumped a bucket-load of sweat on us, how hard we worked. I made so many mistakes, but Aria was consistently there to clean up after me. I was so thankful for her, and this wasn't the first or last time.

Throughout the day, Aria's eyes were consistently on the clock. Well, there wasn't a clock within three miles of the place, likely, but I assumed she was keeping time. She'd look up at the sun and then mutter something under her breath, like. "It's noon now," or "about four," or "only an hour or so left”. Her little time checks helped me a lot, kept me distracted. But there was something strange about the work. It was so . . . calming, almost. It was easy to drown myself in the dull, endless repetition. In fact, when Aria finally rested a hand on my shoulder to get my attention, I looked up and saw the sun was almost fully set, and the others were already moving towards the mess hall. I’d apparently gotten so lost in work, I’d forgotten to pay attention to the whistle.

I stood quickly, the sickle slipping from my cramped and sweaty hands into the shallow water. Aria grabbed one of said hands and pulled me along behind her as we struggled through the mud to catch up with the others. My feet nearly tripped up from under me several times, and eventually, she literally yanked me up by my arm and pulled me onto her back while she ran. She is pretty tall for her age, but not incredibly strong, and I can tell I’m weighing her down. I don’t really even know what the rush is, though. When we get to the mess hall, I figure it out.

We weren’t the last ones there, but we certainly weren’t in the first. As consequence of that, I can tell the best of the already horrible food is halfway down the throats of the first comers. Well. We weren't gonna be late again.

I climbed down from Aria's back as we headed over to the mass of people surrounding the table of food. Aria twisted her body as she tried to find a way to wedge herself into the crowd, but it was so dense she just kept being thrown back by annoyed men and women.

"We aren't going to get any food, are we?" I asked in a small voice. She stepped back with a frustrated sigh, seeming to be out of ideas. Looking closer, I saw that most of the openings were in the lower half of the crowd: the legs area. Knowing I was probably a lot smaller than Aria, I dove at the ground and began crawling between the legs and feet of the other prisoners. I felt a kick connect with my side and an involuntary, squeaky sounding cry was out if my mouth before I could stop it. 'Jerks,' I thought, though I wasn't too resentful over it. I knew they were probably just as hungry as I was.

I reached the inner edge if the crowd and with slight hesitation, popped up in the front, swept a huge portion of food onto the ground, then dived back under the table to stuff bunches in my coat pockets. Cries of anger could be heard above me, but my size gave me the advantage. I filled my pockets til nearly overflowing, then dive back into the sea of legs and feet. I came out the other side and immediately ran to hide behind Aria, wanting to pout over my stomped on fingers without being noticed for the bulging pockets by everyone else.

Aria began to back towards the wall slowly trying to keep the food concealed by her own coat. In fact. When we reached the wall, she took off her coat and have it to me, under the guise of protecting her younger sister from the mid-October air. She smiled at me in an almost mischievous way, as if to say thank you. Then she cupped my face in her hands and kissed my forehead, which spread a warm, happy feeling through me that for a second actually seemed to scare away the cold.

I went to take out some food, but Aris whispered "don't. Not yet. If we eat now, people might see and try to take it from us. Let's wait til we get back to the cabin."

My stomach growled in protest: it'd been almost 24 hours since I last ate, but I forced myself to cooperate, be silent, and wait.

Luckily for then, we were called back to our cabins quite quickly. I had to walk slightly hunched over, but the second we got there, we both rushed around to the back -- where you'd go to the bathroom -- and began to almost literally stuff our faces. After maybe 30 seconds of that, Aria slowed down, and told me to as well. "Stop for a minute," she said. "Take off the coats and put them by the wall." I did as I was told, careful to keep the food from falling out of the pockets. Then Aria gestures for me to stand in front of her. "The supervisor said we have 20 minutes 'free time' before bed. There's something we're going to do."

I was genuinely curious, though also wary of attracting the attention of others.. "What are we going to do?" I echoed back at her.

She bent down to look at me at eye level, and I knew she was about to be very serious. "People are going to hurt you. They are going to try to break you. But you don't need to be afraid. Because I'm going to teach you how to hurt them back."

Notes

NEW CHAPTER FINALLY. *GASPS FOR AIR*
SO yes. My summer starts in a few weeks, and over the course of the past couple months, I've been adding to this bit by bit as I had time. I wrote basically the last 1000 words tonight, because I made myself promise I would. I won't be back up to posting regularly yet, but I might get out another chapter before break starts. Sorry for the long wait guys! Also, I have officially decided that because of my pacing issues, from here on, this is a first draft. I'm not gonna worry about perfection like I normally do. Basically, that just means some chapters may be a little too slow and some may be a little too fast, but I'll go back and edit said pacing once the thing is complete. Right now I'm just spitting it out and praying it looks good. This might also make me go faster. Wish me luck. XD
Again, I haven't been idle. Got the entire 2nd and 3rd books planned out now. Multiple edits. Enhanced and detailed personalities for all characters. YAY!