Sisters of the Shadows

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27th day of December in the year 2139

Hi, Clint. Been too long.

Okay, okay–too long is a bit of an understatement when it’s literally been like four years since my last entry. It’s been even longer since you’ve seen me, so I guess that kind of makes us even, doesn’t it?

A lot has happened in that time: for starters, Monty moved out to focus more on his position in the court. He was promoted to prince this past Tuesday, and he appointed his cousin Tony as his royal advisor. Mona says that he broke precedent by doing this, just like Frankie had broken precedent by choosing him over Connor as his second-in-command.

I’ve learned over the years that that was why they aren’t friends anymore, but I don’t think the Alagona boys are purposely trying to conspire against the Montgomeries. There seems to be a political war among the factions, and the others get caught in the middle. The Palladinos have always been loyal to the Alagonas, leaving the Halls in neutral purgatory. However, the latter clan has been leaning toward the Montgomeries in recent years. Alexa is a distant cousin to the Halls, so her bond with Chris makes her alliance clear. Gordon–that’s Natalie’s younger brother–recently completed the bond with Cassie, forging another link between the two families.

Oh, right–Mona says that spirits have this weird thing called a “soul mate bond.” The way she described it made it sound similar to marriage, which is a colonial custom where two people who love each other exchange vows and enter some life-long agreement to remain in a relationship. I’m not really sure I understand it, but I have to admit that it sounds romantic.

Ever since Monty moved out, I’ve been attending the human school in the Savannah colony. Since it was my first time in that kind of environment, they placed me a couple of grades under my age requirement and assigned me a bunch of remedial classes to help me catch up. It took a year for me to learn enough to be dismissed from the “catch up classes,” and another year before I was finally allowed to join my designated grade. I’ve met lots of humans around my age, and I even have a few friends.

I think it all started with Gavin Moore. We met when I was still enrolled in a lower grade, and he invited me to sit with his friends during lunch hour. Before that day, I had basically kept to myself; I only ever hung out with Mona and her angel friends, so interacting with other humans sounded so plain. Gavin and his friends were far from plain–they’re all so funny and quirky. I had never met anyone who could make me laugh like that… Not since Monty and his friends.

So, Gavin and the gang are sort of becoming my new family. Don’t get me wrong, I love Mona so much. She’s like the sister I always wanted–but she’s also kind of taken on this motherly role after I met Gavin, and it’s pretty annoying. I get that she feels responsible for me–I mean, her brother found me alone in a park, brought me home, and then moved out two months later, so he quite literally dumped me on her. But she doesn’t need to worry about me. I have something these other kids don’t; I was trained to fight by our parents, to kill without mercy or prejudice. Even if any of them wanted to hurt me, they wouldn’t be able to lay a finger on me–and they wouldn’t want to anyway, because they’re all good people. I’ve known them all for almost three years now, and I trust that they won’t hurt me.

I’m currently halfway through my final year of school–I’ll be finished this summer, which means I’m going to need to figure out how I’ll be contributing to the colony. Mona wants me to join her in laundry distribution, and I guess it’s easy work… But it’s so boring. I don’t want to wash and fold clothes for the entire colony, I want to help defend this place from bandits. I can protect the colonists from people like our family.

Mona says there’s no point in putting myself out there when Monty can send angel scouts to protect us, but we can’t always rely on the court. The council is more concerned with maintaining order within the colony than it is defending its walls–knowledge that, if you recall, the bandit gangs all possess. They know that they can get away with ambushing the groups of two and three that leave the boundaries of the court; it’s been happening for years now, and the council knows this. Apparently they kept that under wraps because Mona had no idea until I told her. She said she’d pass it on to Monty, but that was months ago so who knows how that went

“I think it went great–” a long-forgotten voice whispered into Lizzie’s ear, startling her.

A gasp that was virtually inaudible slipped passed her lips, and her expression hardened as she reflexively thrust the pen in her grip tip-first over her shoulder.

Photo by Josh Appel on Unsplash

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