Ama Kit Xmas Gift - 12_2020

too-tight jeans, which she’d had to grab in her rush to leave, hers too full of holes. On the dust in
her hair, ears, and under her fingernails. Not on Feja, alone in a dangerous riot, fooled by the
name of the Milonyr empire - which meant “shining hill-city” - whose pitfalls she was too young
to remember. Not on Feja crying the night before, ​“You don’t see what I do, you don’t get it.
Every time I walk into that room I see Mom dying - from what? A flu? You’d get sick worse,
Mom said, before, but they’d fix you.” ​Not on that, because Feja was wrong. The Milonyr
weren’t saviors, they were murderers. They were the reason their mother was dead just as much
as the new ​Freedom State​ was. She’d be alive if their father had survived the Milonyr cullings to
take care of her.
They had just entered the suburbs of the capital when the radio switched from ignorable
background music to a voice speaking too high, too fast, “This just in, after a day of mostly
peaceful anti ​Freedom Stat​e protests, a bomb has gone off just outside Capital Square. The
number of casualties is unknown. Multiple protesters appear injured or dead. Counter-protesters
have taken credit for the attack. Since early this morning…”
The voice had more to say, but Norne moved to shut the radio off. Olyr reached a hand
out, and after giving her a look, the old woman sighed and pulled away. The car sped up. They
were still in the suburbs when the first plume of smoke appeared. Moments later, the radio
announced that another bomb had gone off.
Arriving in the city, Olyr jumped out of the car before Norne had come to a full stop. She
vaulted over the police’s barrier without a goodbye and sprinted through densely packed streets.
She struggled forward. Warm bodies pushed against her, jostling her from side to side.
Blood pounded in her ears and her vision blurred to a crude finger painting. Discordant chants
shook the ground, drowning out her shouts, and she stumbled. The pavement was gritty, the city
air harsh, and the hot sea of people extended as far as she could see.
Olyr ran on. And on and on.
She fell, a foot made contact with her ribs, her temple, her stomach. It disappeared and
Olyr struggled up and kept running, coughing from her scream-sore throat. The crowd was
endless. She had no plan. So she just ran.
A bomb went off and she was down again. Smoke and screaming and debris flooded the
city block. From high up on a lamppost, someone reported into a megaphone, “Bomb, corner of
5th Ave and 8th, one man down, pink sweater. Intersection of 5th Ave and 10th, bomb,
sixteen-year-old boy dead, older man with B.M.B. hat injured. Street…” The voice hit Olyr like
a chunk of concrete to her stomach, and she froze, panic snaring her where she stood as the
world sped on around her.
Feja wasn’t here.
Feja could be anywhere.
Bombs could be anywhere.
Feja could-
She stepped forward to continue her mad rush but was stopped by dust crashing down
over the street in a blinding, choking wave. Forced to stop and cough she heard her sister’s voice