SPECTATOR

The first part of the Blink Saga by MargaritaDaemonelix

Chapter 1

You open your eyes at sunrise.

Your chickens are canoodling in the backyard without a care in the world. Sometimes, you wonder why you keep them to begin with, until you run out of rations tickets. Then you thank Aisha and her beautiful brain.

Not that you'd ever admit it, though. Your companion is still fast asleep, sprawled over her desk. She must have tried to pull an all nighter again. You'll have to make her some black coffee if you want her to stay functional through the entire day.

You sit up and rub your eyes, pushing the covers over your legs so you can get up. You walk out of the single bedroom that you and Aisha share, as quietly as you can, so you don't wake her up yet. It's still only sunrise, and more importantly, it's Sunday, which means you can let her sleep in a little while you begin to do the chores.

The first thing you do is get the chickens to shut up, which means feeding them. You can't afford much, but letting them out to graze on the grass in your tiny yard doesn't cost anything. Letting them eat the grass was just another of Aisha's brilliant ideas, and you find that the eggs you harvest are huge and much tastier than the ones you buy at the store.

At least it spares your rations coupons.

You brush your hair out of your face, grabbing some string you find in the bathroom and wrapping it around a falling lock, tying it away from your line of vision. It takes a little longer to do up the other side, but in the end, you're pretty satisfied with the result.

Aisha always tells you that you look like a cherry, because your hair is red. It was originally cherry tomato, but that was too long to use as an insult. You always gracefully repay her in sarcasm by calling her grape. It was originally grape tomato too, but the both of you silently agreed to drop the tomatoes.

Tomatoes are precious. You can't afford the water needed, so you can't grow any yourself, and they can cost up to a hundred dollars a pound at times at the grocery store. Neither of you have had real tomatoes in years-only the synthetic goop they call tomato paste.

You open the cupboards in search of coffee. Aisha calls black coffee her godsend, and while you like your coffee with a little sugar, you can see why she needs the stuff. Unlike you, she has a full time job as a teacher to five young children. She fills them with all the things she can remember from her own days in school, and ideas that no one in the government would have let her teach.

There's still a few packages of instant coffee left, but Aisha needs something a little stronger. You reach into the highest cupboard to grab the precious bag of coffee beans. Aisha says her parents brought it from overseas, but you doubt any coffee beans could have lasted so long.

As you grind the beans by hand(electricity is just too expensive) your companion shuffles in the other room. "Mornin', Grape," you call out to her.

"Get your face out of my line of sight," she grumbles affectionately.

Ah, yes, Aisha Cerise. The two of you met five years ago on a online game that neither of you play so intensely anymore. Back in the days when she was just EM to you and you were just RS to her, she was the most annoying person in your guild. The moment you logged on, she was already there, explaining strategies and boss moves in detail to each member.

Eventually, the guild leader kicked the both of you out because you were filling up the guild chat with your arguing.

To be fair, you kind of deserved it.

You started talking to her normally over the summer as the two of you tried to make a new guild to replace the last(and it was one of the top guilds, too) and you found that she wasn't so annoying after all. That winter, you decided to video call each other, even though her laptop was ancient. It was then that you gave her the nickname Grape, because that was just the colour of her hair-the vibrant purple that has become so endearing to you.

This went on for three years-the two of you in contact with each other-until two years ago, she urgently called you with a plea for help. Out of all the things you'd expected Aisha Cerise to do, her asking you for a place to stay was not one of them. But it happened so suddenly-her mother died, leaving her alone. The authorities came from Altera to her home in Bethma, and since she didn't have ownership of the house, they were taking it.

You don't know what you were thinking at the time, but you instantly ran to take your neighbour's car(he was drunk all the time, anyways, so the car was as good as yours) and you drove the twenty-ish kilometres to Bethma to pick her up.

Your parents were beyond confused, but they didn't question it when you returned home at two in the morning with a girl from Bethma.

You turned twenty at the end of last year, meaning you could finally own property. The two of you moved into the new little first-floor apartment about five months ago, and you finally feel like there's a pattern to life again.

When Aisha finally comes out of the bathroom, wrapped in one of your mom's old bathrobes, the water in the kettle is already boiling, and the coffee grinds are sitting in a little fabric strainer you made out of an old slingshot and a torn-off sleeve.

"Have a nice nap, princess?" You tease her as she pours the boiling water over the coffee grinds. "When did you go to sleep last night?"

"You mean when did I go to sleep this morning?" She sighs as she sets her mug down. "I honestly have no clue, but if I had to guess, around four."

That's not that bad. You remember the last time she tried to pull an all-nighter over the weekend, which only ended in catastrophe. "Get some sleep tonight," you say. "I'll finish up whatever things you still have to prepare."

She only yawns and nods sleepily. You figure it's about time you got going. Today's Sunday, which means you need to get groceries. Despite Aisha being able to grow many things in the tiny yard you two have, there are things that you just can't grow yourself. Like tomatoes.

God, you miss your tomatoes.

You figure you should probably get a list from Aisha, who manages the finances in your chaotic house, but she's trying to sip coffee while using the newspaper as a pillow, spilling the bitter liquid over the perfectly good paper. It'll be another twenty minutes until the caffeine kicks in, and by then, the market will already be empty.

You need to get a move on. The market's already opening.

Grabbing a cloth bag off the kitchen counter, you ruffle Aisha's already messy hair before leaving the house. You make extra sure to lock all the brackets on your door, because there's no way in hell you'd trust your half-asleep companion to watch over the house while you're out. Even though Ruben is fairly safe, thieves are still rampant in the mornings.

You'd like to return to see your house and your roommate in one piece, please.

You only need to get a few things. Eggs and chicken you already have, as well as some vegetables that you grow in your backyard. Milk is definitely high up on that list, as well as flour. Aisha's fond of rice, but the price has been growing for the past three years and doesn't look like it's about to drop anytime soon. You'll have to get something else to satisfy her.

By the time you get to the market, only a few minutes away from your home, it's already bustling with life. "Morning, Elsword," greets Adams, your parents' neighbour. "Care for a drink?"

He's already drank half his wares, but there's a good deal of fruit-based liquor that he's hasn't touched. "I'll take a bottle of the mulberry wine," you decide, since neither you nor Aisha hate it. You haven't had a good drink in nearly half a year.

The single bottle costs you a solid hundred dollars, since you can't use your rations coupons on it. Adams doesn't accept them, anyways, because private vendors can't accept rations coupons. It leaves you with just shy of seven hundred dollars, which will barely be enough to cover the cost of the groceries, and it certainly won't buy anything more than the few things you have planned to buy for the week. You get the idea that Adams hasn't sold much of his stock in a while.

The market is incredibly lively, despite the sun only having risen less than half an hour ago. You wade through a crowd pushing to buy zucchinis(only twenty dollars a pound today) and find a much less occupied stall. There's only a half-asleep man sitting at the table, hunched over a variety of household goods and fresh breads. It's always a warm table, because all of the bread comes straight out of the oven.

"Hey Dad," you tell him loudly. You may have moved out of their house, but you still make a point to visit your parents' stall every time you go to the market.

Your voice shakes him out of his zombie-like state. "Hey, morning, Elsword," he manages, smiling. "How's your girlfriend?"

"Dad, for the last time, I'm not dating Aisha," you groan.

"The two of you live together," he reminds you. "After you left the house at eleven at night and drove two hours to find her in person."

"Lowe, stop teasing the poor boy!" Chides another familiar voice. Her short salmon hair swinging, your mother steps out from the zucchini disaster and gives you a hug and a kiss on each cheek. "Elsword, how have you been?" She asks softly.

"I've been… Great, Mother, thanks," you reply. You have not been great, your arms are still killing you from shovelling manure nearly all of yesterday. You think you've permanently lost your sense of smell.

Her smile is still as angelic as ever, though you can see the stress of life bearing down on her. "Come visit with Aisha sometime," she tells you. "You haven't had any breaks since you started working on the farm, have you?"

"Mother, you know how it is," you say. "Aisha's job is extremely taxing on her. I need to get off my ass and start working longer hours."

Both your parents look concerned. They may not be your biological parents, but they went through hell to bring up you and your sister, and you want only the best for them. "Relax," you drawl. "It'll be fine. I get today off, don't I?"

Your mother sighs. "As long as you stay safe, that's all that matters," she says, giving you a kiss on the cheek. You feel her slip a still-warm package, probably filled with apple turnovers, into your bag, and you can't help but smile a little. It smells absolutely heavenly.

"Thank you, mother."

You dad gets up to ruffle your hair. "Go get'er, Elsword," he chuckles as you try to get it down again.

When a customer arrives, and both your parents are occupied, you make your leave quietly. You try not to add to their pile of troubles the best you can. Maybe you can ask Aisha to make something nice for them later today.

The first stop on your shopping trip that is actually scheduled is in fact the farm you work at. It's run by Banthus, a former mercenary who was granted a fortune when he helped take down the former mayor of Elder.

Truth be told, though, the old man was crazy. He was convinced the entire royal family in Altera were robots, and he spent nearly his entire life researching them in secret. When he handed Wally to Altera, Banthus had been on the run for nearly three years. The royal family in Altera declared him innocent and gave him a large pension to compensate him for the arm he lost fleeing.

He settled down in his hometown of Ruben, buying a large piece of land and raising sheep and cattle. And now, since his lost arm prevents him from doing things like shovelling manure and slaughtering pigs, you've become part of the small army that does these things for him.

"Morning, kid!" He bellows as you walk into the farm. His voice is kind, but it's still terrifying. "Ain't it your day off?"

"Yes, sir," you tell him, rolling your eyes. "I'm here for groceries."

When Banthus laughs, you can feel the ground shake a little. "Kid, it's not even seven in the morning yet, and you're already up for groceries?" He chuckles. "That Cerise girl must have you wrapped around her little finger like caramel candy."

He pulls a large sachet off his belt, one you know he keeps lots of candies in to satisfy the children that come to visit the farm. "Take some," he offers.

You shake your head. "Nah. Sugar this early in the morning, old man?" You tell him, grinning. "Aisha would have my head."

Banthus roars with laughter, and you swear he's going to blow your skinny frame away. "Well, you know the drill," he says, walking away to entertain some customers.

The girl at the counter is Banthus' eight year old daughter, Ally. "Morning, Mr. Sieghart!" She chirps. You wonder how she has so much energy at such a time.

"Morning, Ally," you reply, ruffling her hair. She pushes an auburn lock out of her face as you try to remember the groceries that you need. "I'll need two jugs of milk, a ten-pound sack of flour, a jug of oil, and…" You pause for a moment, thinking of what would absolutely piss Aisha off. "A pound of pork."

For an eight-year old, Ally is very bright. Even though she can hardly grip the calculator in her tiny hands, she does the math quickly. "That'll be seven-fifty, Mr. Sieghart," she says, her eyebrows furrowed. "Unless you've got tickets."

You didn't expect the cost to be so high, but you pull the ticket book out of your wallet anyways. "One for the milk, one for the flour, one for the oil and one for the pork," you dictate as you rip four tickets out of the little booklet.

Ally giggles and scoops them up. "Then that'll be five fifty, Mr. Sieghart!"

You seriously envy this kid's enthusiasm. You take the cash out of your wallet, counting the bills silently before placing them in Ally's outstretched palm. "Five hundred and fifty dollars."

She slips the wad of paper into a box, taking out fifty dollars and stuffing it into a small pocket at her side. "Your dad giving you a bit of the profits?" You joke.

Ally nods. "He says I can keep fifty dollars from every sale!" She exclaims. "I need to save it up for uni… University."

"University." The thought of this innocent little girl going off to study in Elder, maybe Sander, scares you a little. "Someday, Ally, you'll go places. Lots of places."

She beams as you give her a pat on the head. "Here is your order!" She chirps, gesturing at the stack of items the weekend workers brought in. You silently calculate your purchases before putting everything but the flour in your backpack, and sling it on your shoulders. The giant sack of flour you heave up, over your head, and place on top your nearly full backpack.

"Have a nice one, Ally," you tell her before making your way out of the farm. There's still a place you need to go to pick up groceries and supplies-a little stall in the market, belonging to the farm next to Banthus'. While they don't have any affiliations, there's a silent agreement that this farm grows crops while Banthus raises livestock. They never get into fights. It's actually sort of quiet when you visit the woman who runs the stall.

"Hello, Elsword, what can I get you?" She asks. Lily is a thin woman, but that doesn't stop her from lifting a sack of potatoes over her head. "I've got a lot of potatoes today."

"Yeah, I figured," you tell her, scanning the pile of sacks right behind her table. "Do you have a five-pound sack?"

She hauls up one from underneath the table and drops it in front of you, on the table. You wince as the impact shakes the table, but it holds steady. "How much for the sack?" You ask.

"A hundred," Lily replies, holding out her hand. "Fifty with a ticket."

You shift the sack of flour to one shoulder to take your wallet out. With a little help from Lily, you rip a rations ticket out of the booklet and hand it over to her, along with a fifty dollar bill. It leaves you with only two twenties, which worries you. The next time you're paid is Wednesday, but the bills arrive tomorrow. Thank goodness Aisha gets a much higher pay than you do.

Lily helps set the thick paper sack on top of your flour. You've gotten used to hauling around heavy things, so fifteen pounds on your shoulders doesn't bother you as much anymore, but the satchel holding everything else is starting to hurt a little. You thank Lily and decline her offer to lunch before heading back home.

Ruben is comparatively less populated than some of the other cities in Elrios. Elder is a huge social and economical hub and has nearly five times as many people as Ruben. Velder, often referred to as Elrios' trashbin, has about ten times as many. The smog-covered industrial Lanox doesn't have quite as many people as Velder, but there are still a lot.

Some of Elrios' cities have much less people, though. Sander has a very small native population and a very large tourist population in comparison. Altera has barely a third of the people that Ruben has, of whom are mostly those serving the commander and his family.

The relative lack of people living in Ruben means your neighbourhood is quiet in the mornings. As you trudge down the cracked path, the only sounds you can hear are peoples' alarms waking them up and chickens squawking. After all, Aisha's not the only smart person in this part of Ruben. Nearly everyone keeps at least one chicken around to make the most out of their money.

Since both your hands are occupied, you knee the door gently a few times to alert Aisha. You kicked the door once and spent a week's earnings trying to repair it. In the end, you had to buy a new door. To remind you to not kick the door, Aisha painted a giant red star on the white door, right where you'd usually kick.

It hurts your kneecap when you accidentally jab it into the brick wall, but soon you can hear the lock clicking. Your roommate swings open the door, looking a little more composed than when you last saw her. "What'd you get?" She asks. You feel a little insulted that you didn't even get a proper hello, but you swallow it down to move indoors and set your groceries on the floor.

"A sack of potatoes. Flour. Oil, milk." You pause for a moment to try and remember what else you bought. "Pork. Oh, and mulberry wine from Adams."

Aisha sniffles a little, pulling the bottle out of your bag and uncorking it to take a whiff. "It's not the best I've had, but it's okay," she comments. "How much do you still have?"

You wince again, thinking of the bills. You doubt you'll be able to scrape together nearly two hundred dollars by tomorrow. Maybe you can convince Banthus to give you partial pay early. "Forty bucks."

Her expression turns a little sour. "Well, there go my plans of buying myself a new shirt," she mutters. She gets paid on Friday evenings, because that's when the week at school ends, and she gets paid significantly more than you. She doesn't have much more to say, and helps you move the groceries into the house.

It's barely seven thirty, and the world in Ruben is already bustling with life. Sometimes you can't help but wonder where the serene little town you grew up in went.

Your hands have been rubbed raw by dinnertime.

Both you and Aisha spent the day cleaning every inch of your apartment, because she's a neat freak and you trudging home, covered in dried mud and animal feces drives her nuts. Sundays are your cleaning days, when you and Aisha scrub the dust and the dirt out of every inch of your little apartment, when you wash the bathrooms once a month, and the showers twice a year.

At this point, you don't feel so much pain when you've practically shaved off a layer of your skin, only a slight tingling across your palms. Aisha doesn't do as well with the stinging, and uses a balm she made out of canola oil to massage her sore fingers.

As you gingerly cube potatoes, Aisha pan fries a little piece of the pork that you bought. As soon as you've sliced them all, she slides them off the cutting board into a pot of boiling water. You absentmindedly stir them as she adds spices some spices, some flour and some water to her pan. It thickens into a rich gravy.

"Peas," she tell you. You rush to the backyard to snag a few peapods from your pea plant, ripping them open as you step back into the apartment and dropping them in the gravy. Before you met her, you've never had gravy in this way before, but Aisha insists that her mother always made gravy with peas when she could.

Soon, the potatoes are soft, and you drain the water into a large bowl before dumping the potatoes into another. Aisha hands you a spoon as she looks for a smaller bowl to pour the gravy into, and you use it to mash the potatoes.

As the two of you have your simple dinner sitting on the floor, Aisha turns on the TV. You can't afford to get any extra channels, but you have access to the national news station and a single channel that plays reruns of really old movies from way before either of you were born. She keeps telling you that eating while watching TV isn't healthy, but she does it herself anyways.

The news is boring as always. The Commander of Altera, Adam Nasod, is having another speech. It must be his third this week. Behind him, his younger sister, Lady Evangeline Nasod, and her white-clad bodyguard, are standing close together, whispering. You wonder if they approve of his plans for Elrios at all.

You're about to shovel another spoonful of potatoes into your mouth when the TV begins to flicker rapidly. The screen turns black for a moment, then the blue star of the Sander Imperial Library lights up the screen before a picture of a beaming young woman appears.

You can literally hear Aisha's jaw drop. The woman in the picture can't be over thirty, but has pin-straight white hair. Her blue eyes are sparkling with mischief, and you get the idea that at the time when the photo was taken, she was about to leap at the photographer.

She's also got a chest the size of the moon, which explains why Aisha is staring at her flabbergasted.

"That… That's the head librarian at the Imperial Sander Archives…" She whispers in shock. "What happened to her?"

A robotic male voice, clearly autotuned, is voicing a script for this halftime show. "I apologize to the people of Elrios, but this is a message from the head of the Imperial Sander Archives. Or rather, a message from someone representing the head of the Imperial Sander Archives."

"Because this is the current condition of the head librarian at the Archives."

Then the picture changes, and for a moment, your heart stops.

A/N: Happy Nanowrimo! This is the first part of my large project, Blink, a four part Elsword fanfiction series in progress. I hope y'all enjoy.

Also, I'm sorry about the sudden change in my writing. I somehow lost the ability to write in past tense and third person, but gained the ability to write in second person/present tense... Don't know how that happened.

Classes for the characters in Blink can be found on my profile page. Should be fairly self explanatory in this chapter, though...

Anyhoo, have a nice day y'all!

-MargaritaDaemonelix