The Tree of Hope: Chapter One

 CHAPTER ONE

UNTITLED

Kanderr Town, 3107

Marrell has always been an anomaly.

Anomaly, centuries ago defined as something that did not fit within a set norm. These days, the meaning had somehow remained unchanged, though referring mainly to those who actually chose to look at the natural world.

Like Marrell.

Ermot had always teased her for her fondness for the old ways. "Who cares about the stars?" her friend would ask. "They're just hydrogen burning up! And the only reason the inake ever cared about trees is because they never had their own devices for creating oxygen."

Marrell could never explain herself. She simply enjoyed the way the ancients - the inake had behaved. They believed in fantastic creatures - minotaurs, hydras, lobsters, cyclopes... They worked with math and logic to figure things out even without the auronel making their major decisions. They planted trees - obsolete and extinct today, but from her textbooks Marrell found them so... beautiful.

Today Marrell and Ermot stood on the bottom floor of the Ekinta, the largest building in the nation of Ofiotia. Always the bottom floor - the upper levels were restricted from any non-auronel citizen. Most of the public never worried about the upper levels... unless they were anomalies.

"Session beginning," the automated but accurate voice of Jinto Hyyshin announced. Marrell never knew why the small town of Kanderr - noted for nothing other than the Ekinta - needed to have the leader of the auronel giving them their instruction. She'd always simply assumed all other cities in Ofiotia did the same.

The room filled with a silky mist, soft, with a scent eerily reminiscent of jasmine. It was pleasant, but the aesthetic applications were superfluous at best. The real need was for the effect.

Marrell felt the mist entering her brain, giving her brain all the individual commands it needed. Her mind absorbed the necessary data...

(WIP)