Just Your Hope

"It's just your hope..."

She could still hear the husky woman's voice echoing inside her head that night. Still hear the pounding of her heart as she scratched her signature. Still feel the burning as a key piece of her was taken away.

Of course hope means something different to everyone. For some people hope might mean the accelerating feeling of winning, for others it can feel like calm excitement, and for some it can simply feel like nothing.

Nothing because you've never felt it before. Nothing because you've never had a reason to. But once something is taken away from you… you finally realise the weight of what you're missing.

And that is how Veya felt as she stared up at the shacks ceiling. for what was hope to a person who had never known it? Maybe that's why it was so easy. Maybe because when your world is so broken and turned, hope has never existed.

She was a princess. Well, to some. To herself for instance. She built herself worlds in her mind. Castles and cities where she ruled. New worlds she created in her mind to ease the pain of what she was going through in real life. The one thing she yearned for was a new life. A life where she had a father, and a mother who wasn't in jail for unjust reasons. One where she had siblings to run and play with. One where she could be free and lead the life she wanted. But as far as she knew that dream was as good as gone.

All she could do was live the life that was given to her. Even if she spent each of her days waiting for something to change, she would just have to accept it. This was her world. It was so hard to stay afloat, but she had to. She had to stay alive for the people she had known that couldn't have what she had. But that didn't make her wish her circumstances could change one day.

And then, there was an answer.

She was hunched down, hiding behind a barrel watching a tussle on the street. She had been scavenging for food from the tavern dump when the fight broke out. This was normal so it was no surprise, but it still scared her. She had hid behind the first thing she saw, an old beer barrel. And the next thing she knew she was falling.

Down, down down, but she was too frozen to scream. Then she felt herself slow and she stubbornly tore her eyes open to see flickers of images.

Bright golden corn fields, crystal waterfalls, families walking and talking together. But mostly it was the colour that caught her the most.

What were they? what was the jumping, spirally, rolling colours that dodged and twitched around in images? Veya did not know. But she knew one thing, her head hurt. Actually it didn't just hurt, it throbbed, the images were too much. They disoriented her, twisting reality and shaping it into something Veya knew she could never grasp.

And then she landed. Pain seared up her back and she gave a cry of agony. The last thing she remembered was the figure of a person bending over her and telling her she could have what she had just seen for a simple price.

The hope that would have taken her to this shining world anyway. The hope she would have never had to give up if she had listened to herself.

And then it was done.

She felt a swirling rush in her stomach after she had sealed the deal. The world was turning, spinning in a blur of emotion and then she landed on something soft and prickly. Grass! What was this stuff?

She rolled around and giggled. But something wasn't right. She was laughing but she felt no joy. She was rolling around but her limbs felt gangly and wrong. She sat up and looked around. The sun blinded her eyes and she quickly closed them counting her breaths.

Where was she? Panic rose in her chest and she got up onto her feet. There was a little cabin resting between two fields. She ran down towards it looking for someone to help her. She spotted two people walking down a worn path.

Veya ran towards them prepared to say something when her foot slipped and she held out her hand, she expected to crash into the young girl in front of her, but instead her hand slipped right through the girl and she landed hard on the ground.

The figures continued on with no recollection of what had just happened.

No. No no no no no no. This wasn't happening. How was this happening? And then the young figure in front of Veya dropped her hat and turned around to grab it off the ground.

But the figure wasn't just a stranger. It was her. It was Veya. But this Veya had clean clothes, a dimpled smile, and her mother walking beside her.

And then it all clicked into place. She had traded her hope for the perfect images inside the tunnel. Because to her hope was nothing right? Hope was just something people said, something rare. So why not give the bit she had for a new world?

But this was her world. If she hadn't given up her hope she could be the Veya walking on the path. She could have dreamed up a new future for herself and fought to pursue it. But instead she had given up her hope to find the perfect home she could have had anyway.

Emotion swelled inside her, tears spilled down her face and she wiped them away gasping for breath. She reached for the little match box beside her makeshift bed in an old farm shack to light her lantern. She stopped and looked around. She was awakened from her own tears.

But the nightmare had taught her something, She was going to fight for the future she deserved. The future she wanted.

The next day she went about as usual collecting the supplies she needed from around the worn city. Scraps of food, fire wood, and other things she could find.

But when she came around a corner into an alley way she saw something move in the shadows. She ducked out of there and down the street as fast as she could. But she could have sworn she saw the hunched figure of a woman, whispering the words:

"Use this second chance well..."