Moea let out a sigh of relief. The sun shone over her body, where the shade of the tree leaves couldn't get to. They painted her peanut colored cloak in bright spots of sunshine. There was a warm breeze in the air and few clouds occupied the sky above.

She heard a faint voice from the distance of the meadow echo her name, she sat up, yawning as she scanned the field around her. Nothing but lush green grass and the occasional tree. Also, of course, the broken down structures that littered the field with a mossy grey color. Old, broken down buildings holding memories of the past.

She heard her name again, the call growing louder and more frustrated. Moea sighed and pulled a flower from her hair. A purple flower, the shape of a trumpet. The flower started to glow in a pulsing light as soon as it was plucked from her hair. Moea admired the flower for a while before letting go of it. And instead of falling to the grassy ground, the flower floated back inside her dark brown hair, ceasing to glow.

She got up on her feet and dusted off the dirt from her cloak, then hopped down the hill she'd been lying on, towards the caretaker that had called her. The caretaker frowned and told Moea to stop running off and getting lost. Moea giggled, as they walked towards the other children, promising that it wouldn't happen again, with a smug grin on her face. The caretaker sighed, knowing she wouldn't keep her promise.

The laughter coming from her group intensified the closer they got. The children were running around the surrounding ruins. They were on an excursion after all. Moea rolled her eyes, keeping her distance from the group.

She never socialised well with her peers. She found them insufferably dull. They never asked meaningful questions and blindly followed the adults, doing whatever they were told. Although- there was one exception. Her friend Quill, a timid dark haired boy with a bright blue flower in his chest, approached her, almost stumbling over an uncovered part of the ruin's foundation. He asked her if she'd want to play a game with stones. A popular game amongst the children, telling a story about the first child who slayed a beast, which they were taught would be their jobs as children, to protect the adults.

Moea agreed, being the only other one who'd rather sit and play than run around and waste energy. They sat on the grass and broke off loose rocks from the crumbling walls.

Moea declared herself the monster and took the bigger stone, which was much to Quill's surprise as he'd never seen someone actively want to play the monster. Out of curiosity he asked her why. She said monsters were prettier than people. He shrugged, and they began to play.

As their game progressed, Moea's attention was caught by a flash of red in her peripheral vision.

A deep, crimson red that stuck out of the lush greenness that was the meadows. It was two figures- tall enough to be adults- dressed in bright red suits around the large ruins. They acted suspiciously, looking in every direction before disappearing behind another broken down wall. That's when she noticed a child being pulled by them. Moea immediately stood up, determined to investigate what the adults were up to. Quill had already noticed the figures and knew that Moea would be curious. He got up and tugged at her cloak, shaking his head and telling her to stay put. She noticed a stern look in Quill's eyes and sighed, eventually sitting down again to continue their game.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

Quill explained that the adults in red were responsible from taking away children who misbehave, and the child with them most likely had three demerit badges on their cloak. Moea's heart sunk as she looked down to find the two demerit badges she'd earned from misbehaving and running off. She swallowed a lump in her throat.

Eventually, after the sun started to go down, the caretaker called for all the children to gather around so they could head back home. Moea stood up, but instead of walking towards the caretaker, she hid behind a wall, walking the other way, towards where she saw the strangely dressed adults disappear into. She heard the chatter of her group slowly fade into the distance. She wasn't even that far away, yet the further she travelled down the ruins, the quieter it got. She swallowed a lump that had been building up in her throat, and turned around a corner, to find an archway with a door under it. The door was odly whole, and more maintained than the rest of the ruins. And Moea could hear a mechanical hum from within the door, which was attached to a smaller building. 

Somewhere in the distance, she could hear her name being screamed out. She shrugged and entered through the door, shutting it behind her.

It was dark and cold inside. She took three steps into the room, holding her hands out in case she'd hit a wall. Nothing. She couldn't see, hear or smell anything. She looked around, and tried to walk back towards the door. One, two, three steps. No door. She couldn't even remember where she came from.

Panic started to settle in, her breath would become labored and shaky, putting weight in each step.

Suddenly, the ground below her trembled, threatening to knock her off balance, she stumbled around the dark empty room feeling around for something to hold onto when her hands grazed upon an indent in the wall. She found the door. With a gasp, she grabbed the handle and pulled on it. It didn't budge. She tried again, tugging and pushing it in both directions as the panic continued to grow. Tears pearled on her eyes as he cried out, but her voice was only swallowed by the cold darkness.

Her body began to feel weightless, and she started to lift off the ground, grabbing onto the door handle as tightly as she could. She screamed out at the realization that the room was descending, and she was falling. Even before she could make sense of it, she crashed down with a violent thud as she connected with the floor, immediately cracking the hard mask on her face. She broke most of her fall with her wrists, making them hurt and throb in pain as she sat up, her right arm feeling entirely numb. The room now returned to it's eerie quiet, leaving her panting and whining in pain as she rubbed her red palms together. She was bruised in more places than one from the fall, but the adrenaline pulsing throughout her body numbed her to the pain. She stumbled to her feet, continuously rubbing her hands together to soothe the stinging pain as she pushed against the door, tearing up under her mask.

This time, the door did give in, and she pushed against it, her muscles sore from pulling herself towards the door handle. She was greeted with an even colder breeze and a path flanked by metal fences. There was a very dim illumination coming from lights above the path. It was white, and gave the new area an industrial look. Unlike the room she was just in, the new area she stepped into had an ongoing sound of mechanical humming, and metal doors opening and shutting from time to time. Despite being cold and dark, the sounds gave off a sense of business.

The sudden sound of voices startled her to move forward and hide. She ducked, walking along the path. Beyond the railing beside her, she could see doors and ventilation shafts a few feet below. She realised that this path was a bridge, but before she could make sense of that, the voices grew even closer. They seemed to be coming from the path ahead.

Moea knew it'd be over if she got caught. She already had two badges and didn't want to be taken away. She hurriedly jumped over the railing and crawled under the bridge, holding her breath to stay as quiet as possible as the voices travel along the bridge, and disappear into the dark room she came from.

She took a sigh of relief and slowly started to crawl out, when an arm suddenly hooked around her neck. It was an arm much bigger than hers, yet too small to be that of an adult. Before she could make a sound, she heard a soothing voice make it's way into her ears, and put her to sleep.