Just one quick note before we start. I love this story…when I first finished it I thought it was so good that I would have tried to publish it had it been a different length. And while I don’t think it’s quite that good anymore, it is still one of my favorites, so enjoy!

Mya

P.S. To those of you who don’t like short chapters, I’m sorry, but you’ll have to deal with it here. :) But at least they’re a tad more uniform than in some of my stuff.

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-Prologue-

She always thought it was weird how everyone she had ever known had referred her as Harmony when in her entire life she had never felt one moment of peace, let alone harmony.

As a child caught in the middle of a growing conflict between the known and unknown territories in the east, she had grown up scared that one day daddy would never come home from the outside. The outside was the name for the area outside the secure compound her family and many others lived in.

And maybe it was that fear of what could happen that drove her to speechlessness, for never in her life had she been able to say a thing to anyone. Most people in the compound had gotten used to it, some tried to catch her unawares and spook a word out of her, and still others teased her mercilessly about it. Only, it wasn't that she couldn't talk, she just couldn't speak in ways they understood. She knew she was sending words at them, but somehow they just never received them. It was like they were deaf to her words.

She had tried to tell someone once, but he had scoffed at her, and he had been her best friend. She never told anyone after that. And anyway, he died two weeks later.

That was five years ago though, on the day that everyone died as the enemy proteans attacked their compound. They had somehow managed to get into the area around the camp, and had taken out all the guards without being noticed by anyone.

It was later believed that they had 'invisibles' with them, which was the term her father used to refer to those who could go invisible.

She was eleven when they attacked, and therefore she knew perfectly well what was going on. The proteans got into the compound and sounded the alarm. Invisible or not, they were still solid, and several were caught in the traps near the entrance, but there were still plenty left to fight.

She woke up to alarms early that morning, and her mom, being more sound of mind than her daughter was right then, put her in the hiding compartment under the beds, seeing as she was an eleven year old girl who had never learned how to fight. (Not to mention she often found it hard to concentrate on instructions anyways with all the conversations flying through the air at any given time.)

After Harmony had secured the latch on the compartment from the inside, her mother left to fight with the rest of the people.

That was when she knew it was bad, and would have followed her mother if she hadn't been warned beforehand by the leaders that she would be of no help out there with her apparent lack of concentration.

It never occurred to her that anyone hated her until some time later, after the catastrophic had happened.

The proteans broke through the compound’s forces after what seemed like years to her. They broke through all the defenders until they took over the compound.

They were bound to find her, she knew, but she couldn't leave, there was nowhere to go. There was nothing to do but to let them find her and kill her, or take her as a slave.

She knew what came next, even if she didn’t know what would happen thereafter, as their lights drew nearer and nearer until they were in her eyes. And as the sheer terror of everything, all the fears and unknowns and deaths hanging over her, its weight seemed to press into her, causing her to faint.

Next thing she knew, she was here, in this place, where people didn't appear to have such hostile thoughts towards her as those in the compound.

Only then she discovered the truth, and everything went back to the way it had been at the compound, with everyone hating her.