Lana sucked her palm, it was bleeding. The taste of blood reminded her of the rat she consumed, and she was shaking again.

“You’re alright?” A voice asked, and Lana turned to meet it. She was one of the members with foresting duty, Lana realized, a beautiful black hair teen of around 16 years, in her reaching hand was a canteen of water.

Lana shook her head as a reply, so the girl grabbed for her wounded hand and washed it with water, then wiped any remaining blood with a piece of cloth she produced from her pocket.

“Thank…you.” Lana managed to say.

“Don’t worry.” The girl said and handed her the canteen, Lana nodded in thanks and took a sip of its content.

“What’s your name?” The asked as she placed herself beside her.

“Lana…”

She raised her eyebrow “No new name yet?”

Lana nodded.

“Mine’s Light.” The girl told her as she stood back up “Nice to meet you.”

As Light walked back to her basket, Lana contemplated on the prospect of what she just said. It was a tradition of some sort for the new free caverners to pick a new name upon joining, in a way to symbolize their new life. Most had picked a meaningful word for name, while some took up the name of their lost loved one as their own, but the problem was that Lana did not know what her new name should be. She was thinking about calling herself after Soph, as a way to gain more courage by inhabiting her brave sister’s name, but that would become very confusing when Sophia actually joined the cavern. The situation got to the point where some of the crueler boys had jokingly nicknamed her ‘Lan the lame’, and Wall told her to quickly pick a name soon, or otherwise she might be known as that even after her leg fully healed.

When the lunch break passed, the time came the part of foresting duty that Lana liked to do slightly less, separating the forested good into a different pile. The members gathered around their load filled with fruit, vegetable, and herbs collected in the morning into one area and emptied the content into one big pile, then arranging them into their corresponded container.

The work was tedious, picking up a few pieces of food at a time then dropped them into its basket without causing any type of damage, but it was made worse by the member's constant chatting, however. With more than a dozen people in one place, a conversation was bound to happen, Lana knew. The speaking or even the noise in of itself wasn’t really a problem, but it was because she wished to join in and to feel like being a part of this gathering of free people, but she just simply didn’t have the self-confident nor the social skill she needed to do so, and knowing that fact pain her.

As the task went on, Lana stooped down to grab for a cluster of berries and saw Light passed by with a few apples around her arms. Lana remembered that she did not give the girl who helped her back her water canteen, so after she dropped the fruit, she ran back to where she left it and mustered her courage.

‘I can do this…’ Lana thought, clutching onto the canteen with both hands. She had always been socially awkward, not fast tongue, brave and witty like her sister, she was more similar to her stuttering brother in that regard. But her inept of speaking with strangers had become much worse after her execution, but for why, she could not say. Lana gathered her determination and stepped forward.

“SCOUTTTT!!!!” A sound boomed from atop the mountain, where a watcher had been placed. The word echoed through the rocky range as everyone raised their head, including her. And Lana could saw it; a hovercraft on the horizon was heading toward their direction.

Quickly, everybody around her bolted off to grab for any sign of their presence from basket to empty canteen to a pile of fruits and dragged them into the area under a wedging cliff, hidden from the scout’s sight. Lana, also knowing what to do, went to help them, and afterward huddled beside her fellow members, hiding from the eyes of the coming hovercraft.

Nobody spoke a word, but simply all listening for the flapping of the flying metal machine and waited for it to pass away without notice. As it flew overhead, Lana had a glimpse of it, a spinning blade spanning open like wings with giant solar guns under each. The sound didn’t stop, but faded away in the opposite direction, meaning the scouts hadn’t noticed the cavern members hiding under a Cliffside or the other in different duty. Lana gave a sigh of relief, which was joined in by the members around her. For a short moment, Lana felt like she was truly part of this family.

Afterward, they all went back to sorting their good, which took the members around an hour and a half to finish. When that was all done, the foresters all picked up the now organized baskets and carried them inside. They squeezed themselves into the hole on the mountain and delivered to the storage room, where it would be used to cook tomorrow’s meal and maybe the day after that.

With all her foresting task done, Lana returned to the well hall, which was now bursting with members and activities, a few pit fire was lit to illuminate the large room as the sun outside was setting. Lana went for the pot and returned the chiseled stone, then found a lone table near a bonfire and took her seat. She rubbed her hands over the flame, as the temperature had greatly dropped again when it became dusk. Lana tried to glance around, hoping against hope that maybe Wall didn’t go back to the city tonight, and he would be coming to sit with her. But despite her effort, she couldn’t found the man who had saved her life and give her this place to call home, so she holds her hands together, praying for his safe return.

“There you are!” A voice that was not Wall called her, Lana turned to meet it and found Doc standing over her, a frown on his face.

“Good evening…Doc,” Lana said the name he picked for himself, a man of old age, his grey hair had fallen off and spotted was starting to form, but despite that he still looked strong and healthy, often had a warming smile to light up his patient’s day. He was not smiling now though, a hint of distress could be seen on his face.

“You forgot to come by the ward to get your wound and leg check today.” He reminded her, though his expression had shifted to a strange sorrow.

Lana gasped, she did forget “S…sorry.”

Doc waved her apology away and gave a few knocks on her bad leg “It is healing better than I expected, a week or so and it should be back to normal. Not to mention, your face was a little bit less pale than yesterday, so you are definitely getting healthier.”

“Thank you.” Lana managed to say, after so long of pending up the emotion “For healing me.”

“It’s nothing,” Doc said and padded her on the head, though his usual smile did not return. He produced a bottle of pills from the medical bag he carried around with “Here some more medicines. After you finished this bottle, you don’t have to eat any anymore. Now if you excuse me…I had to prepare myself for something.”

After a few minutes passed from Doc’s leaving, there was a shout from one side of the hall, saying that dinner was ready. All the cavern’s members stood up from their tables and went for the lifted stage, where the cooks had placed their large kettles and were handing out dinner in wooden bowls.

Lana went to join the line that had formed; her mind actively anxious as two older people were squeezing from the front and the back. In the free cavern, there was no one near her in the matter of age, the youngest adult was the people around Light age of sixteen and some late fifteen, the oldest child was a seven years old boy named New, who had been born in the free cavern and had never entered the city once in his life.

The line progressed on person by person till it reached Lana’s turn. As she was given the bowl, she took a quick look at the content of the large kettles but was given a glare by Toad the main cook so she backed down. Regardless of that, the wrinkly woman poured a stew boiled with carrots, lectures, brown tiny mushrooms and a few silver of salted meat, the smell coming from it did not make her mouth watered, but it seemed to be tasty regardless. She was also given some more biscuits left from lunch by another member on cook duty. Lana gave both of them an awkward nodded in appreciation, and Toad waved her away so someone else could be served to.

Lana returned to her original seat, and dug a spoon into her heated watery stew, trying to pay attention to the fact that she was sitting alone. She blew a small puff into the soup to cool it down and stuck it into her mouth, but then realized that the content was still too hot and gently spit it back into the spoon. After a few more times of blowing, she took it back in, and though not the greatest thing in the world, it beat most everything she had ever eat when she was still in the city.

After a few more spoon of the soup, she grabbed for a biscuit and stuck it into her mouth, its taste as tart as last time, but the taste of her meal made it slightly better. Lana made a temporary stopped on her meal and raised her head to take a big look at the things around her.

Judging from the numbers of people, three fourth of the members were in the hall, and even that, barely half of the room was filled, which shown that this was dug for a much bigger crowd of people. Unlike Lana, they sat in a group, sometimes in three, some in four, some in twenty. The biggest table was a big gathering of members around the age of 16-17, most of them female, but there were some males mixed in there too. There were familys eating together, friends eating together, even strangers eating together, and the atmosphere was filled with warmth and familiarity.

Lana dug the spoon into the stew and turned it around as a way to ease her mind ‘This could be my home from now on…’ Thought her ‘The task is sometimes hard, but achievable, the food was decent, and even when we don’t have any, at least we starve together. I could make this my life…’

She was digging into the rest of her bowl when she noticed that the stage was removed with pot and bowl, and Doc was climbing up on the raised platform, his expression grimmer than ever.

“Oh no…” Even with her eleven years old mind, Lana knew that this was not a good sign.

“Everyone, I did not wish to disturb your dinner, but I have some terrible news.” Doc started to say, though his voice was low, it managed to carry through the room. Behind him was the steward Thirteen, a man of forty who assigned the tasks for the members each day, his face was also grim just like Doc.

Lana turned her head around, anxious about what to come; everyone had stopped eating and shifted their attention toward the raised platform. The older men of the cavern often received respect from the younger members due to their age and wisdom that came from said age.

“It pains me to say this…but our leader, the old Castrill, has sadly passed away.”

There were only a few people who did gasp, Lana not included. Their 70 years old leader had been bed ridden for a better part of the year, as Wall once told her, and she had also overheard other members speaking that sooner or later, he would succumb to his illness. Lana simply felt a small hollow in her heart, reserve for knowing that a fellow human being had ceased to live.

“For many months, I had tried to save our wise leader, but I afraid my skill nor our medical equipment are simply not enough.” Doc said, his voice had a small crack to it like he was partly blaming himself “The best thing we can all do now is to pray for him and cherished his memory.”

Lana couldn’t do the second one, so she raised her hands into a prayer, her rusty coin between her palms to give courage. But as she started praying, she realized that she had nothing no said about the old man, good or bad, she barely knew him, after all. Lana felt ashamed of herself.

The rest of the dinner went on in silence, at least as silent as she had seen the members being, the group of teens was still chatting though, strangely. The stew’s taste had gone bitter in her mouth, so after Lana ate her bitter pills; she picked up the wooden bowl and handed back to Toad, then went for the elevator and descended back down to her stone room.

As Lana continued her nightly routine of scraping the rust away from her coin, she tried to light up her mood by musing why she would insist on picking a room that could fit two people deep into the cavern, when there were much smaller one which was higher and easier to take care off. As she tugged away from the coin, she gazed on a slab of stone that could be used for a second bed. Lana went to sleep on the stone bed with a longing look on her face.

The next morning went on like the last one; she got up from her nightmare, ate a pill, walks through the tunnel, went up with the lift, with a few members helping this time, and then entered the well hall. The yesterday’s leftover was still left intact, unlike the day before, so Lana scooped up some of the reheated stew into a wooden bowl and slurped it down to give her recovering body some nutrients before she went to pick up her task.

‘Take care of equipment’ the stone read with a tiny letter squeezed in to fit all of the words. Lana gave out a slight sigh; it’s going to be a boring day.

Lana entered into a different tunnel, then circling up a staircase that carved into the mountain; her bad leg was near a simple bother. Lana had remembered Wall once told her that this cavern was once a mine, but now abandoned after all of the gold and jewels mined away and the only thing left was rock and stone, so leader Castrill formed a secret colony here as a hidden haven for the oppressed people.

At the end of the steps and out of breath, Lana arrived at the armory, where taking care of everything in it was her task for the day.

Lana lowered her head to entered the room, on one side was twelve solar guns lying messily on one side, eight of them looked bland-new, a few suits of padded armors fit for a guard, a collection of daggers and a few more things like axes and clubs that the members crafted for themselves. Hiding on the corner was a neat stack and stack of something, covered by a sheet of dark fabric Lana told not to touch or even peeked under.

Lana got to work by checking the solar guns and discovered that it had run out of any charges, so she scooped two up at a time, for they were very heavy. She carried them down the steps and went out onto the cliffside, halfway up the mountain. The light of the sun shone at her face as she left into the outside world where she stood on a natural stone platform large enough to fit a few people. There she laid down the guns onto the ground and in the open, making sure its solar panel rose up the correct way, and then returned to the armory to do the same with the other ten.

After she finished the many trips, she returned to the armory and arranged up the weapons into orderly rows, cleaning some if need be and polished them up into better quality. Afterward, she went for the guard armors. Lana had once seen a guard shot by his own laser gun by a thief who stole it from him and had always wondered how much their armor could actually protect them. She had a sudden urge to try pressing a dagger into the padded surface but decided against it as she might accidentally damage the equipment.

After Lana finished taking care of half of the equipment, she decided to check on the solar guns. To her surprise, it was already fully charged by the two or three hours that had she had left it. Lana grabbed up one of them and polished it with oiled cloth, running the fabric through its trigger, making sure not to fire it accidentally, then ran it through its muzzle, grip, and reloader, trying her best to make it to look as genuine as possible so it might pass off as a real one on Wall and other like him’s foraging.

As she went on to the rest of the gun, Lana glanced down from the cliff, where rather beautiful views of the cavern and its members going on their task. From atop the mountain, she spied members going on the task she did yesterday, she saw some with an axe chopping a different part of the wood so it could be put to use, like as fuel for fire, or even some weapons and defense, there was also a lone fisher trying to catch a trout in the stream with a sharpened stick and a handwoven net, she didn’t seem to be having any luck though. Lana turned around to look for more.

Deep into the cavern, she knew a lot more members were working on their own separate tasks to keep the colony alive, there were cooks working on food, members who harvest and grew wheat and barley inside the cave as to not attract any scout, men with pickaxe who cut stone into slab and expand the cavern, and steward who kept the activity active every single day.

But Lana didn’t felt like she was a part of them…

At the corner of her eyes, she saw a group of members not on task, with shovels in hands. They were digging a hole into the hard grey soil around the cliffside, next to them laid something wrapped in cloth, with a man she assumed was the steward Thirteen kneeling next to it, saying something to the wrap that she could not seem to make of.

A sudden realization hit her; they were burying the old Castrill. As Lana observed the steward lowered the wrapped body of the deceased leader into the newly-dug hole, he whispered something to it, grabbed the shovel from the surrounding members and buried the dead man himself.

Lana had little memory of the old cavern leader, she once received the task of taking care of the man, washing his body, bringing him food and cleaning his room. When he was not asleep, the old Castrill had spoken to her the entire time, though most of it delusionally. He asked for his brother and his young nephew, saying that he was sorry but also glad he left them, and he would always be called her ‘Adola’ then spoke something about how she needed to be a good wife to someone he did not speak of. When Lana finally mustered up her courage to ask the steward about these peoples whom the bed-ridden man spoke of, Thirteen shook his head in response, saying he had no ideas either.

The ceremony she gazed passed, and everyone left the area like nothing ever happened. No sad orchestra, no weeping, no parade, no nothing. Lana returned to the task at her hand.

After she finished polishing the last of the guns, she contemplated how hard it was going to be to march them all back to the armory. That was when a strange and unusual curiosity hit her, she looked at the trigger of the solar gun in her hand, then the barrel. She was always wished to know how this thing works…

‘Am I really doing this?’ Lana thought as she adjusted the weapon that she had seen many people killed by, letting one of her left hand on the trigger while the other on its side, her elbow clutching on its end. The gun was obviously designed to behold by someone with a bigger size, but she still managed to hold it all the same. Lana let her fingers brushed the trigger, the scar on her shoulder throbbed wildly from the memory of pain.

The solar gun fired suddenly, the recoil pushed Lana off her seat, making her fall flat onto the ground and spinning the gun in a different direction.

Lana spat some of the dust in her mouth as she tried to get up when there was a hand reached out to help her got back up.

“You really need to work on your…well, everything on using a gun, really.” The voice said.

Lana raised her head, and for a moment, her heart lightened “Wall! You came back safe…”

He raised one of his eyebrows “Why wouldn’t I be? I have been doing this for 8 years now, Lana. It will take something bigger than stealing to kill me.”

Wall pulled her off the floor and took a seat beside her. He was still wearing the cloth he wore yesterday, the same locket dangling from around his neck.

“So, how’re you been?” Wall asked.

Lana shuffled in her seat “Fine, I guess…”

“’ Fine’ is the answer of a person that has nothing to say, Lana.” He told her “But I guess that is the best I can get from you.”

Lana nodded, but Wall shook his head “I know this is hard for you, but you need to open up, and fast, I can’t babysit you forever.”

When he didn’t get her response, he sighed and changed the subject “I heard that the leader Castrill passed away last night.”

“It’s true...” Lana told him, and realized that Wall was likely distressed that he had gone away that very night. She shifted her seat toward Wall, and found him gazing into his opened locket, the way he often did when he was in deep thought. Lana once had an urge to ask Wall what was in it, as he seemed to care about what inside very much. But shortly afterward she realized that she would be intruding into his life if she did so, and backed down.

After a moment, he closed his locket “There’s gonna be an election tonight.”

“Ee-lect-sion?” Lana asked, the word was strange to her.

“A picking of new leader.” Wall explained “But we will all vote on any members, and the one who got the most votes win. It was in the old Castrill’s will.”

Lana nodded, this election seemed odd, but it just might work. Lana remembered Sophia saying that letting people voiced their opinion was what was lacking in the city, this might be what she was looking for. The thought of her sister made her felt longing again.

“Who…do you think will win?” Lana managed to ask.

Wall grimaced “My guess is the old steward, though the Robin girl had been gaining in popularity, but she was only here for a year and not to mention way too young.”

“You should be the new leader.” Lana found herself said. Not only did Wall have saved her life, but he even went out of his way to befriend and take care of her as well. Though his brutal honesty had really shaken her from time to time, he was the only friend Lana had here.

Wall seemed to find that amusing and gave out a chuckle “I’m but a thief, Lana, stealing away into the night, looting resources for the cavern. I am not fit to be a leader.”

He stood from his seat, and before taking his leave, said “Vote for Thirteen, he’s here for more than half his life, and had been managing the cavern for Castrill even since he became bed-ridden. He is the one who will keep the colony the way it is.”