The food they gave us tasted awful. It was some pale mixture of wet bitter peas and stale flour. It slid cold and salty down my throat. It took some time for me to finish it.

A man with a huge horn blew and everyone hastily scooted out of their clanking metal chairs and scampered away back into the hall.

I met with Palla, one of the women from my row.

She carried her baby son Sebastian on her back, wrapped in old linen. He began to whine and cry and she jogged him higher up in his wrappings. He looked down at me from Palla's back with large blue eyes and then returned to fussing and crumpling his tiny fists.

"Like the food?" asked Palla sardonically.

"No. It tastes like decayed frog carcasses."

Palla smirked, but from the dark shades beneath her eyes I could tell she was very exhausted.

"You've tried decayed frog carcasses before, Oté?"

"Hmm, no."

I yawned and shut my eyes. It couldn't have been very late but already I was tired. Must be Mirteml collecting up my Blue powers, I thought.

A dull ache slowly came into my head. Lovely. Now I could feel it physically as well. How consistent Mirteml was in his management of pain. Always the dull and ever-present throb, be it mental or physical.

We walked somewhat leisurely back to the rooms. We didn't talk but Sebastian whined and shrieked high-pitched little baby screams the whole way.

"Good night," said Palla when we arrived at the door row. "A deeper sleep helps keep you from becoming so tired in the morning, especially with your powers trickling away." She finished with a bit of a brief bitter snarl.

"And know this, " she continued in a smaller whisper. "The pebble need not always drop."

Sebastian made some odd noises and pulled at his mother's dark locks and they both melted into the darkness.

I yawned again and creaked open my heavy door.

I climbed (with some effort) onto the bed and crammed the threadbare cotton blanket around myself as well as I could. I was still cold but my fatigue was taking over and I soon fell into a troubled and weary sleep.

~

The next morning was grey and rainy. Of course I never actually went outside into the world to see it, but my 7"x7" window in the cement wall allowed me a little light from the outside, even if the glass was stained a strange orange color and chipped all over.

I stayed in my room mostly that day, until noon time, when they made us run around the highest level of the Halls, to keep us in decent shape. Nethen, who lived next to me, had once said Mirteml had to keep us healthy or our powers would become stagnant and stale, not so juicy and fresh as he liked them.

I didn't mind the running really, it made me stop thinking so intensely for a few minutes, and no thinking meant I wasn't nearly as sorrowful.

Though the floor hurt my bare flat feet with every jogged step, I got used to it quickly and managed to mostly ignore it for the next twenty or so minutes. It became sort of like the pebble's ache in my mind; dull and ever- present, and I learned to blend it in to all my other feelings and reactions until it was just a sharp itch in my heels.

Bella and Nethen raced past me; I think they enjoyed the running time very much. They both had rare small smiles on their lips as they chased the others that had passed them.

Bella's long blonde hair flew behind her and whipped me lightly in the face as she passed me. She laughed and apologized with a wave of her hand but I didn't really mind.

Nethen ran in long, smooth strides. Her small dark eyes were squinted as she ducked her head and centered herself in the long dark hall. Her pale hands were even whiter as she balled them up tightly with each lift of her feet.

Though she lived next to me, I had not talked much to her, but she didn't talk much anyway. I was sure she observed everything that happened; I had seen her eyes shift and focus constantly, even when there was nothing apparent to look at.

Nethen hung back a while to run with me. I was surely the slowest there (due to my Nephelian height) but she politely pretended not to notice and turned her face to look at me.

"Oté," she said in a low whisper, for we weren't sure, but we all guessed conversing was not allowed at the running times. "There came a stranger from the west wing yesterday."

I rolled my eyes. "Yes. He is called Blackout, or so Trale says. He is not a pleasant person."

Nethen frowned. "Blackout? No, I know of Blackout and this was not he. Another west-winger, one of the females."

"Hmm. I wonder if she was much better than what I've seen so far of the west-wingers. Trale says there is a dispute between them and the east wing here."

She nodded. "We have long been.. well, not so strong as to be called enemies, but we do not get along well."

A servant screamed at us to run faster. Nethen quieted immediately and we both picked up our speed.

She waited till we were hid behind a great black wall before she began again.

"I do not know the original reason we became thus resentful of each other; Palla says they are envious of our being higher in the Halls than they, as the east wing is above the west, but I don't think that's really all of it."

"How stupid," I said.

She nodded and rolled her eyes. "Relations between the wings are naturally petty and immature, at least they have been since I've been here, which has been some time. The unofficial leader of the west wing people dislikes Bankiwir, and that itself makes for the others to resent Bankiwir and thus they hate us. It's all so silly."

"Bankiwir," I said trying to remember. "Is that who lives in the farthest door, the red-haired lady? I saw her a couple of times. She was writing in a notebook against a wall somewhere."

"Yes, that is Bankiwir. She leaves her chamber seldom, except sometimes to go to the eating quarters when she must. I don't know much of her. Truly she's Bella's friend."

I waited for her to speak further but she did not. She turned her head forward again and ran on ahead of me, but not without sending me a brief and kind thought of "I'll see you later, Oté."

I felt especially slow now. My thin little legs seemed as if they'd break at the shins if I ran any harder. My clenched fists were burning and sweaty. Unknowingly I had dug my nails into my skin and now many white crescent shapes peppered my palms. I scrunched my eyes shut and sighed out a finished and aggravated sigh. Restlessness soon took me over and I fell again into the darkened maze of the hallway.

It was not long until I realized I had forgotten how many circles I had gone. This was usually not the best thing to forget, as the number was an oddly strict fifty. I paused briefly, unsure of what I ought to do, when I heard a screech echo from a woman's throat below and I knew it was time to stop.

I went quickly down the dark steps and flew swiftly back to the row of the doors. It felt better staying there somehow. Safer, maybe, with all the other prisoners near me, it felt like it was the closest I could be to the least amount of cruelty in the Halls.

They were like me, in the sense that they were Blue. Though this did not mean we were all Nephelians or that we were all telepaths, it meant we were all people who hid from the very hour we were born. This bound us together, for we all felt each other's pain and we all hid for the same reason.

The smooth walls of the door row were damp and cold. I leaned against one and slid down to sit on the floor. My head was empty of thought. I was slightly sleepy, though I didn't feel it so much then. I just stared at nothing, waiting for something but nothing in particular, blinking away the dust that fell into my eyes.

I was even less ready than I would have been otherwise, when the wall on which I leaned fell away on a sudden, and my body dropped into a secret nothingness.