How can Hope remain when it is sucked away?

Slowly twisted. Squeezed and drained away as Fuel.

Liv arrives in The Only City joyful to have a future to be alive in. Her past now behind her. In this new world, there is no need to consider past or history, for in The Only City it is Only the City that matters.

She is processed into a brutal holding area as the first step to integration, but finds there are no more Civil Allocations available.  It is decided she will be called Migrant. This means she will have No Status here.  No way, therefore, to have a living… or to live.

But she still has hope.  It dances at the corners of her mouth.  It exposes her weaknesses and belies the secrets from her past.  It surges forward, fresh for devouring.

In The Only City, hope is treasured and Liv is discovered as a rare commodity.

This valuable hope she has can be used as a Fuel for the people…

 (Author’s note: I’m hoping this introduction sounds interesting, as it might be the blurb of a book I’m writing called …)

Deedwell

CHAPTER ONE:

My new name will be Liv. It works in both languages. Liv to live.

Now, finally, in this time, I am arriving.  And as we head to the shore in the boat, I know I’m waiting there ahead of me.

And I will grow this time as I learn to walk and speak and clothe myself in the new ways.  All my own things burned now anyway.  By now.  So that is past.  And this is the opportunity.  Everything will be fresh this new time.

I can already see where I’m going with this.  When I’m in this new place I will be born again into the new person I will become.  It will be a better place and I will be a better person.  Impregnable this time.  Reflective even.

And this time I will check the tone and become the harmony. Carefully sort the meaning of me into appropriate contexts.  Silently sing to myself everything that has happened so far and ensure that anything I sound out loud is tuneful with this, my new environment.

I can already see it in the feel of it. Through this hazily forged theory, my practical future is sure to emerge.

Even now, as I prepare to step off the boat I can feel the change in me.  The made-up possibilities simmering.  I may still become a kind of character others can’t ignore.

“Name?”

I turn my head and smile to the woman with the clipboard.  This warmth will be part of my new self.

“It’s Liv.”

But she does not look at me.  Perhaps she is protecting my modesty.  Or perhaps her intent is simply living through this grey duty.

“Lib?” She has not heard my new name correctly.

“Liv.  L –  I –  V for Viktoriya”. (No, I won’t use that name here). “I mean V for Vision”.

I smile again, but this time simply at myself, and step off the boat onto the splashing shore.  As I do, I twist my ankle slightly trying to correct the wobble of the two directions – fire boat on water and new foot on land, past and future.

Twist seems an appropriate and somehow familiar description of this new part of my story. I smile at the corny connection to my grandmother’s obsession with Dickens. It makes me feel for a moment like I’m back at home.

“Last name?”

“Twist.  T- W- I- S- T”.

My body.  The time.  My character.  All of them working together moving forward in a narrative of me. I must now explore what will be and what I might become in this new place.

I stand now.  I become aware that I am swaying in time with the shove of the others, as if the swell of the ocean is still pulling us with it.  Where is my centre?  Simply to be bordering alive and present here is good.

A shoreline wait.  To register the new grit of The Only City on my bare soles.  To know I have arrived in my future and can step forward once more.

But it’s crowded now and the cold and the dark and the elbows are beginning to press in.  I begin to feel exposed.  I scan ahead through the gaps in the shoulders to take in the vast wall, and there, between the heads, a small guarded gate.  This is no longer the time for vision.

Practical matters first.  Like how I can find something, anything to wear…

 

 (Author’s note:  Would you read on?  …Let me know and I’ll blog on…)

here’s a bit about Liv’s past