Young Writers Society

Once her brain no longer felt like soup, Asha opened her eyes to see a well lit, rather brown room. However, before she scoped her surroundings further, she glanced over at Yuni. Her companion held a loosely fisted hand over her mouth as her eyes danced around the room. Though her mouth was hidden, her smile was plainly painted on her entire face. She whispered something in her own language to herself, shaking her head and looking at the floor. Following her gaze, Asha noticed that the room was very different from what she was used to seeing.

There was a small wooden step up from the level they were currently standing at, and rows of strange looking sandals, toes all pointing toward Asha. Yuni’s familiar voice brought Asha out of her thoughts. “Asha, take off your shoes,” Yuni commanded as she pulled off her own boots, placing them next to another pair of those strange sandals. Not knowing what else to do, Asha followed suit, untying the laces of her boots and placing them beside Yuni’s.

Without a word or even a friendly expression, Kazuko handed Asha a strange pair of fabric slippers. Once again, she looked to Yuni to figure out what exactly she was supposed to do. She sat next to her on the wooden step, pulling on the slippers in exactly the same way she saw Yuni do it.

From the step up, Kazuko gazed down at Asha, his eyes boring straight through her. Shuddering, she imagined his gaze actually putting a hole straight through her chest. She almost sighed aloud when he turned to Yuni to say something to her. With a small incline of her head, she stood and motioned for Asha to follow. In perfect sync, Asha stepped onto the main floor and trailed a beat behind Yuni.

“He is taking us to see the commander of this base,” Yuni whispered. Asha nodded almost imperceptibly, taking in the unfamiliar opulence of the halls. The walls were gridded with thin wooden slats with a material a shade between white and brown stretched between them. Gleaming boards ran the length of the floor, and Asha felt almost guilty for stepping on something so spotless. Perhaps that was why they changed shoes, Asha mused.

Asha was almost startled when Kazuko and Yuni stopped; there was nothing to denote a doorway or turn in the hallway. Before she could consider this much more, Kazuko reach out and slid a panel of the wall to the right. For a split second, the breath leaving her lungs halted. She glanced at Yuni to gauge her reaction. Her face was unmoving, like a stone. It seemed that all the emotion that Yuni had held during the long journey had seeped out of her. The tiny tilt of her lips was gone. Her brown eyes no longer crinkled in a perpetual smile and they had lost their shine. Asha's stomach dropped. Her hand twitched at her side as she followed Yuni and Kazuko into the secret room. It was all she could do not to take Yuni by the hand and ask her what was wrong.

The floor almost crunched beneath her feet. Through the thin fabric slippers she could feel the bumpy fibers. At a low desk, a man sat, looking up at the trio. His eyes slid over the group, and Asha found it impossible to gauge his reaction until his eyes landed on Yuni. Even then, they only widened minutely as he elegantly- although it seemed that from his own standards it could be seen as scrambling- stood upright from his kneeling position, saying something in a language that was beginning to sound familiar to Asha's ears even if she didn't understand the words.

Yuni replied in her steady voice, and Asha almost breathed a sigh of relief when she heard that her voice had not changed with her face. A hand shot out and tugged Asha down by her sleeve. Apparently, they were sitting down. Glancing at Kazuko and Yuni, Asha copied their posture the best she could. She let their unintelligible words wash over her.

Several minutes passed; Asha began to fidget. Her eyes roved the room, drinking in the smallest detail. Hands began to stroke the strange floor. Attempting to discreetly inspect the floor, she came to the conclusion that it was probably made of some sort of grass. Nothing like what she had encountered at home or in Malland. She continued idly feeling the flooring. It was somehow soothing.

“This might take a while,” Asha heard to her right. She jumped when Yuni’s warm breath touched her ear. Goosebumps rolled down her back. When had she leaned in?

After that, Asha stopped touching the floor. With nothing to fidget with, she clasped her hands together and tried not to shift around on her knees too much. Her feet were beginning to tingle. Stealing a glance at Yuni and Kazuko, she wondered how they could hold the position for so long. Neither of them looked uncomfortable.

Several more minutes passed. To pass the time, Asha started trying to see if she could recognize any of the words they were saying. She couldn’t. The minutes began to pass progressively slower. Just as Asha was certain that she would be sitting there forever, everyone stood up. At first, she hadn’t noticed, but when Yuni called her name, she shot up immediately, her face growing warm. It took some effort to keep from stamping the blood back into her feet, but she refrained.

Without another word spoken to her, they were led out of the room by Kazuko and down the hallway to another hidden room. Asha was beginning to suspect that all of the rooms were hidden like this, though she couldn’t imagine why. Perhaps it was for security purposes?

Kazuko and Yuni exchanged some words and then he left, sliding the door shut behind him. The room wasn’t dissimilar to the one they had just been in, but the furniture was different. There were two rolls of what looked like fabric. Asha recognized these as bedrolls; when she was a child, she had slept on something similar. There was a wooden chest and a table tucked away in the corner.

“So what’s going on?” Asha asked, sitting down- cross legged as she preferred. Yuni sat the way she had before the commander: knees and feet flat against the floor, back rigidly straight.

“They are going to take us to the palace. It will only take a day. Two at the most.” Yuni’s accent seemed stronger than Asha had ever heard it.

Asha nodded. It took her a full minute to decide to say something. “What’s wrong.”

Yuni fidgeted for the first time that day. “Noth-”

Asha cut her off. “Something is wrong. You’ve been distant. You look different. I know you, Yuni. I can tell that something is wrong.”

“I’m just,” Yuni paused, voice dropping to something just above a whisper, “nervous.” Asha almost didn’t want to ask. It felt like it would somehow devalue Yuni’s feelings. Fortunately, Asha didn’t need to ask. “I have not seen my family in a long time. I have let them down by running away from my engagement. It was my duty to secure an alliance, and now I am arriving home without the alliance, but we are going to my home to beg them to join a war.”

Asha couldn’t say anything. It was all her fault.What if Yuni’s family hated her? Or worse- what if they hated Yuni?

After that, there was no more talking, and Asha learned that silence could be far too loud. Yuni unrolled her bedroll. Asha unrolled hers. Both of them laid down. Asha was cold. Colder than she had ever felt before.