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“What is this?” I ask, pointing down to something moving across the ground. I’ve never been outside of the desert, not that I can remember, and there are many things that I don’t know about land that is covered with grass.

“That’s an insect,” Nathaniel says, laughing at my lack of knowledge, laughing as he educates me.

“I do not like it,” I say, resisting the urge to flick it away.

Posted By Caroline Josephine On 05.15.2012 @ 1:45 am

We had no disregard for the coming events. Instead we faced them head on, not even bothering to blink. Nathaniel held out his hand, expecting my fingers to wrap around his, but I held back. Now was not the time for that. So he gripped his sword with both hands and I prepared myself to sing.

Posted By Caroline Josephine On 05.13.2012 @ 7:18 pm

I’m always lending him a shoulder these days. It never used to be this way though. In the past my shoulder was sharp, and never there for him unless it was to jam it into his chin, or against his chest. Nathaniel and I used to never get along. Or he tried very hard to make it so. But when I needed him, he was there. And now I’m the one who needs to be strong for him in a new way.

Posted By Caroline Josephine On 05.13.2012 @ 1:26 am

We carried little with us, knowing that it would only slow us down. Nathaniel had his sword, I had the clothes on my back and a second outfit to change into. Each of us carried a bag of food. We hoped it would last. We knew that it wouldn’t. And this pushed us forward faster. We pushed ourselves harder. At times we even pulled each other along by hand.

Posted By Caroline Josephine On 05.12.2012 @ 6:17 am

I sit there tasting the bitterness of blood in my mouth. Blood covers my hands, it’s in my hair, and I scream. I try to scream the taste out. I try to scream but I’m choking on the screams and air can’t get in and then stars dance before my eyes. I stay like this until I feel Nathaniel’s hands on mine. Only then can I focus on something else.

Posted By Caroline Josephine On 05.08.2012 @ 4:51 am

He was always instrumental to the cause. They made him that way. They made him important to me, sharpening my feelings to the point where I could do nothing but harm those around me. They used him to get inside of my head, inside of my heart. And then they threw him away when they didn’t think I needed him anymore. He was only a tool. But to me he was much more valuable when he hated me than loved me.

Posted By Caroline Josephine On 05.07.2012 @ 2:16 am

“I nominate Juliet,” she said and I cut a glare across the room at her that was enough to slice everyone in half.

“No,” I said, but then Nathaniel stood up, putting his hand on my shoulder. He looked at me through the lock of hair that had fallen down over his left eye and I saw that he had a plan.

“I nominate you,” he said, pointing at her. And in that moment everything changed.

Posted By Caroline Josephine On 05.05.2012 @ 6:39 pm

Nathaniel is leaning against his upright sword, the tip buried deep in the sand, and I’m running towards him, shouting at the top of my lungs, trying to get him to stand, trying to get to him before they get to him first. All I can do is shout and run. I wish I could fly. I wish that I could save him. But I know I’m not fast enough. And all I can do is hope that he can stand up and fight because I don’t think I can save him this time.

Posted By Caroline Josephine On 05.04.2012 @ 11:05 pm

I have the best hearing out of the three of us. My gift of singing has also given me this great ability. So I can hear him when he comes to my room, late in the night. Nathaniel never sleeps, so it’s the perfect time for him to visit me. Or so he thinks. But what he doesn’t know is that I can hear him coming, and I always wake up. And I sit there, wishing that he would just come into my room. But he never does.

The sound of his footsteps as they retreat hurt my ears the most.

Posted By Caroline Josephine On 05.03.2012 @ 6:43 pm

If we get separated I don’t know what I’ll do. I don’t want to be alone with the weight our fate on my shoulders. I want to be holding his hand, or have him clinging to my sleeve when we have to save the world. I don’t want to be alone anymore. Nathaniel and I should never be separated again.

Posted By Caroline Josephine On 05.02.2012 @ 12:45 am

I felt hallowed out after our fight. Gutted completely. I had never felt such an emptiness, which was saying a lot considering the family I had lost, some even at my own hand.

And as I lay curled in my bed, curled into myself, listening as screams ripped from my throat into my pillow, I only imagine that Nathaniel has been ripped from me, leaving nothing but a hallow space. He used to fill that portion of me, but now he’s gone, and I am left clutching my sides, wondering if I will ever be whole again.

He warned me. And I didn’t listen.

Posted By Caroline Josephine On 05.01.2012 @ 4:12 am

Having an alibi is pointless when I’m always stuck having to come up with lies to cover up the truth about what Walker has been doing. I am always the one who does the right thing, but ever since we returned to the city he’s been acting strange. Going out at strange times, getting lost in his thoughts. And when the things we do get questioned I can never come up with the right words.

Posted By Caroline Josephine On 04.30.2012 @ 1:03 am

I looked through the sliver of the door, it was open just a crack, and I had to hold my breath. He was in there with her. And I felt a strange feeling in my chest. It was the first time I’d ever felt something like that before. And in that moment I knew. When I saw he was standing there with her, his hands behind his back, his shirt off, I knew that I was in love with him. And I wanted to break into the room and knock her over and tell her to go away. But then he held up his hands and I saw he shake his head and in that moment, through that sliver of door I saw hope.

Posted By Caroline Josephine On 04.28.2012 @ 8:52 pm

There’s a poster on the wall. It’s cracked down the middle and faded. It’s from the past, from before my time. I try to make out the picture, try to see which group it’s from, but all I can see is a ghostly face. It’s lips are pulled back, laughing at us all. I wonder if the ghosts knew. I wonder if whoever made this was trying to be funny. All I know is that this poster is all that’s left of a time that is best forgotten.

Posted By Caroline Josephine On 04.26.2012 @ 9:45 pm

You fight like a gladiator, he always said. The kicks and punches that I dealt him were stronger than anything a gladiator could have given him though. I know that I’m special, that my strength is nothing he can compete with.

And I hate it. I hate that I’m the strong one. That I have to be the one who always has to show him how to fight.

For once I’d like to just sit back and watch Nathaniel fight the battles. Not me. But it’s always me.

Posted By Caroline Josephine On 04.26.2012 @ 3:17 am

My hands are chapped by the wind, and my lips are chapped by the sand blowing against my face. No matter how hard we’d tried to cover up, we hadn’t expected this. Nathaniel and Walker were supposed to be the experts, they were the ones who had crossed the desert before, but even they couldn’t have expected this. Things had gone from bad to worse in the time we had spent underground together. And now the storm was bigger blowing hard, chapping everything.

Posted By Caroline Josephine On 04.24.2012 @ 9:13 pm

I cannot scorn him, no matter how hard I try. He only did what he had to do, for his sister. It was no worse than what I did to my mother. It actually connects us, we both had to do something terrible. We both have blood on our hands. He was told it was for honor. I was told it was to test my strength. No matter what lies we were fed, it’s left us both broken and scornful.

Posted By Caroline Josephine On 04.23.2012 @ 11:51 pm

We sat down at the table and she ribbed me in the side with her elbow. There was a twinkle in her eye and she glanced over at Nathaniel, then back at me and said in that sickeningly sweet voice of hers, “Juliet, could you pass the entree?” I looked at her, my eyes flashing, and I knew that she was trying to make me feel stupid. She knew that I didn’t know what an entree was.

Before I could say anything Nathaniel passed a dish of a steaming something over me and dropped it onto the table in front of her.

“Here ya go,” he said, never even turning his head to look at her.

Posted By Caroline Josephine On 04.23.2012 @ 3:03 am

I don’t make a sound as I leave his room. I don’t know why I went there, and I can’t remember when I fell asleep, but now that he’s here, next to me I know that I don’t want to know what he thought when he found me there, in his bed. I shouldn’t have gone there. But I wanted to see him. There’s something about Nathaniel, something that has started to make sense. I want to talk to him now, to make him open up now that I’ve broken that small fissure that he was keeping closed for so long. But that was too much. I don’t know what came over me. But I cannot make a sound because the echo’s of what he might say may crack my own fissures into gaping holes that I’m not ready for him to see.

Posted By Caroline Josephine On 04.21.2012 @ 8:14 pm

I tried to make my movements slight. Move slightly to the front, to the back. I always move too quickly, and Nathaniel always comments that ‘the compound is still in me’. So I’m trying to take smaller steps, to make slower lunges when I feel danger coming. I know that my movements are usually faster than they should be, but I was taught to always anticipate danger. To move like a dancer, to have the grace that doesn’t come with the luxury of thinking about my moves. Quick action over slight action.

Posted By Caroline Josephine On 04.20.2012 @ 5:21 am

“What are these?” I asked, looking down at the shiny black objects in my hand. Nathaniel had just passed them to me, and they looked like Walker’s glasses, only the lenses were dark.

“Sunglasses. The desert is going to be hot and bright. And you’re going to get sand in your eyes while we’re heading across it. So wear there,” he said, gripping my hands which were gripping the sunglasses.

Posted By Caroline Josephine On 04.19.2012 @ 4:05 am

Her earrings were fascinating to me. Every time she moved they swayed with her body, bouncing off her neck. I’d never seen such pure brilliance and the idea of them boggled my mind. Why would someone do that? I kept reaching up, touching my own virgin lopes, wondering what it would feel like.

I wondered if Nathaniel had loved her earrings as much as he had loved her. And what he would think if I were to puncture my own ears for the sake of vanity.

Posted By Caroline Josephine On 04.17.2012 @ 4:55 am

I sat at the desk and thought about what to put down on the paper in front of me. It had been such a long time since I had seen paper I didn’t want to mar it with anything produced by my own hand. I was used to scrolling through data screens and using my fingertips to put down my thoughts. But this paper, it was sacred. White, crisp. I was too good for it. This paper did not deserve me ruining it and I did not deserve it’s pureness.

Posted By Caroline Josephine On 04.16.2012 @ 4:27 am

“Entice me to do what I know not”, Nate said, “Because I wont follow you on this foolish mission”.

I rolled my eyes at him. Nathaniel was such a child, and he did not know when to stop. He only thought about how to act stranger, and how to get under my skin.

But as much as he did, I only enticed him to do it more. I don’t know when it happened, probably around the time I started to speak using contractions.

Posted By Caroline Josephine On 04.15.2012 @ 4:04 am

The memories rattle in my mind and the blood drips down the insides of my brain. I cannot think about anything but that day, that time of night and the way that my hands felt around her arms, as I pulled and ripped and broke apart the things that I knew the only things that I had known in my life, and the only things that kept me going. I felt her bones rattle against mine.

Posted By Caroline Josephine On 04.14.2012 @ 5:50 am

I need to nourish the soul so it doesn’t die but it will die if it doesn’t get words so there must be nourishment somewhere. Where to find it is the key and to look for it is the plan, but finding can be difficult. Hunting is the only way so we must hit the streets and not stop, walk until the sun goes down and slap our feet against the pavement in search of nourishment for our souls. For our minds. For our hearts. It’s out there, we must find it.

Posted By Caroline Josephine On 04.13.2012 @ 12:54 am