Past Memoirs-1

There were twenty or thirty people who were inside the cabin. It was raining hard outside, which was kinda dumb to look at considering that the entire valley was covered with a veil. Almost everyone inside was half drenched from the sudden rain. The smell of warm soup and the slight crackle of wood from the fireplace made my eyes droopy.

It was a long day and I was tired.

The valley was always occupied by kids of the same age. No one knew where they came from. No one knew where they went. They just appeared in the valley after the age of 10 and left when they were 18 or 19.

And since we all came together at the same time, we all knew one another at some point.

And sometimes that proved to be a good thing.

Sometimes it was nothing more than a pain in the arse.

***

"I'm Kat", the girl said introducing herself to me who was huddled in a corner.

She had been staring at me since I entered the cabin. I had seen her once or twice. She hunted with the kids from the 5th cabin.

The valley was divided into 7 cabins starting from the northern region where the hill ended to the river of Terramore.

There was a forest region covering both side of the veil and I often saw her with her other cabin mates. I never really bothered to talk to her. I'm not that much of a people person.

"Eli", I muttered using my nickname. Like usual, I just wanted the conversation to be over. Besides everyone always came to me for a favour and that was to do their dirty jobs for them.

"Eli for?", she prodded sitting next to me. From the kitchen, two kids brought out a small pot full of soup. I noticed their burner hands and felt my pouch for the medicines I picked up earlier.

It was always like this. We bartered most of our goods in exchange for anything useful. This method however not as usefull as it was in the case of money but we were all going to leave this place anyway so why bother?

Kat joined me to the kitchen and helped me hand over the medicines. The tiny chefs thanked us and gave us both a bowl of soup which annoyed me.

"What are you doing?", I asked her calmly.

She smiled a weird smile after recieving soup from my hard earned goods and asked me to follow her out to the terrace.

I hesitated.

Just what did this girl want from me?

***

I ended up following her to the terrace. She was sitting at the edge of the roof dangling her legs over the drainpipe. The rain had slowed down to a slight drizzle and the tiles were still wet. Nevertheless I sat down next to her. It was not that my clothes were that clean anyway.

"I heard from Milly that you said that you weren't going to leave the valley.", she said getting directly to the point.

Milly was a girl from my cabin who talked a lot.

I spooned the soup carefully, inspecting the vegetables and small meat pieces which may or may not be baked properly.

"I believe I may have said that to her once", I admitted finally when she tried to drill onto my face with a stare.

"Will you?"

"Will I what? Stay in this valley forever? Maybe. I don't really care either way", I answered honestly. I wondered what this girl really wanted. She seemed to want something from me and I didn't know why but I had a bad feeling about what she was about to say.

"Do you know why we're here, inside this veil? How there are exactly 35 kids and why they all are of the same age?"

"Yeah..my grandmother said that it was a waste to think about nonsensical things like that because this wasn't normal in the first place."

What my Grandma said was true. This whole thing wasn't normal. And yet she said that this happened all the time, every 7-8 years whenever all the kids of the valley left, new ones were choosen. It wasn't like any other selection process where people were picked out from their homes and brought to the valley by transport or anything like that. We just arrived here, all the kids of the same age of a certain era. They just appeared like magic out of thin air. One minute, the valley was empty and quiet, and the other it was filled with panicked shrieks and shouts of teenagers who suddenly found themselves inside a translucent sphere.

Her questions made me remind of my Grandma. She had been awfully sick when I left. Hopefully the villagers must've taken care of her when she passed away. Me leaving all of a sudden must've been the harshest thing she ever had to face since my parents death.

Kat had gotten silent after my answer. We stood there in 5 minutes of peace before she broke the silence once again.

"I believe that there's a reason why we are choosen. The seventh generation of every era who comes here, in this place."

I thought about it for a moment. "You may be right. Then again, it's a mystery why we've never seen those who came back isn't it?"

"You mean the ones who left the valley through the veil when they're 17 right?", she said looking at the sky that gradually cleared, as the clouds moved towards the horizon.

"They die"

"Huh?"

"The kids who leave through the veil. I think they die."

I stared at her wide-eyed in shock as my heart skipped several beats. "That can't be"

Kat glanced at me sideways. "Haven't you ever thought about it? They never come back to where they used to live before. Nor has anyone ever heard about any survivors. If anything, the church and the novelty claim that the reason is something religion-related"

Then, with a pause she turned around suddenly, whipping her head sharply that her small blond hair scratched my cheek."You're religious?", she asked incredulously.

"I- I was brought up in a religious environment", I muttered.

Of course. After all Grandmother and the people in my old town were strict people who observed conservatism. I wasn't ever bothered by their preachings because that was the only world I knew. A world where people didn't necessarily question anything.

"That explains the robotic schedule I guess" , she mused. "Do you like pray to god every day like Jimmy Joe?"

Jimmy Joe was the kid whom everyone called the saint because he had a religious answer for well.....everything. I wasn't that religious like Jimmy Joe. But I wasn't a non believer either. I was somewhere in the middle and it was hard to explain this to someone who might've never been brought up in a non-religious household. Besides I was feeling awkward beacause of all this religious talk. Her earlier predicament about how we're all going to die didn't seem so great either.

"Why are you telling this to me?" , I asked her clenching and loosening my fists.

"Because I want you to stop this cycle of death", she said staring off into space once again.

"I want you to stay, not because you're some stranger who I just met and; I know how it must look like; after all I'm someone who means absolutely nothing to you. You might even say that I'm using you for my small experiment. But mainly..."

"...I want you to stay because I think that you'll survive."

My hands were trembling and I knew it wasn't because of the cold wind that was blowing.

"Why can't you do it?"

She smiled a genuine smile then, not a flimsy one like how she was smiling at me earlier. A pure innocent smile that was from the heart.

"Because I'm a coward. And Cowards die first"