Hide and Seek

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She scrabbled up the side of the tree, bare hands scraping against the rough bark as she searched for traction. Her shoes were worn so far through that she could feel the bark against her feet, and she gave a sigh of relief as she finally pulled herself up to a crook in the branches. She breathed softly through her mouth, shifting until she was at least somewhat comfortable.

She braced her feet against the branches and let her arms hang down, her canvas bag hanging from her wrist and blending in with the bark behind it. The first time she’d been out here, in the wilderness like this, she had been terrified of heights, but she’d been more terrified of running into any of the wandering bands of men, the lawless ones who called no city-state their home.

She snorted. Guess I’m one of them, now.

She looked out across the wilderness, a wilderness that seemed even more forlorn peppered as it was by the remnants of civilization. The process was a long one, the reclaiming of the suburbs by the wild. Of course, the plague only affected those living, so for many, many years the buildings had stood simply empty, the lawns growing more and more unkempt, the trees falling down and destroying the buildings they once guarded.

At least, that’s what was said. Papa said his grandmother used to tell stories, passed down throughout the generations, of how before the plague came food was plentiful and water came out of a tube in your house. Then again, the same grandparents told stories of fairies and goblins, so she wasn’t taking such ideas at face value.

She glanced out over at the wilderness around her. She was at the edge of an old suburb – cement could just barely been seen amongst the weeds on the ground, remnants of old roads, and the foundation of a house stood next to her tree, half filled with dirt.

Further, still, through the thin layer of trees, she could see the skyscrapers, or what was left, their top floors fallen down among the streets where people lived.

Utopia, he called it. That was the name Papa O’Leary gave it, at least, and when he ran the place, it certainly was a utopia in comparison to the wilderness. The rationing was strict, the guards even stricter, and all lawbreakers were punished harshly, but it was better than the wilderness. At least, until O’Leary decided to up and die and leave his son Ian in charge.

She suspected the man was paranoid. Maybe just jealous. But the moments he got his hands on Utopia, he decided to turn it to hell for mages like her.

Magic, so she’d heard, was a relatively new thing. With all the old technology gone, people thought to turn back to older arts. And, to their surprise, it worked.

It took a certain talent and a great deal of study to master even one discipline, and the power it afforded one… it was no surprise Ian was paranoid. Mages were called monsters, ill omens, accused of all kinds of filth, and people had no choice but to follow along with it. Ian had the guard in his pocket. Eventually, people started to believe it. And she and Papa slowly fell back to the edge of Utopia, standing on a knife’s edge between the unknown wilderness and the hell of the city.

She knew they couldn’t hide forever. Papa was getting old, too – too old to survive living outside. So she’d left.

She shifted uncomfortably, closing her eyes as she balanced on the branches. She focused, taking a deep breath, letting her thoughts slip away, all her cares fade. She reached for the words, muttering a short incantation under her breath.

To an observer, should they care to look up, she would have appeared to simply… fade. Disappear into the foliage of the tree, blend in with the bark.

She felt the spell take effect and opened her eyes, dragging her canvas bag up to her lap and pulling out what food she had. She ate only a little, careful to store the rest in spite of her hunger.

She was safe here, she was sure. Should anyone so much as approach, not only was she unseen, but they’d likely trip any of the traps she’d set up around the place. She’d used this place as her camp for long enough that she figured she’d invest in some additional defenses.

She scowled. That's right. Him and his 'good nose.' She slunk out from behind the wall, standing behind him, and crossed her arms.

She cleared her throat awkwardly. Need to find out what he knows... "...Thank you," she said softly.

She smirked, amused. "You did," she said. "That is, you set off almost every single trap I had down there. I'm impressed." And, yes, a little thankful. It made packing up easier.

At his question, she shrugged. "Pap knew his shit," she said. "And I messed around a bit, too."

She crossed her arms over her chest, her knife still in her hand. "...Why bother?" she asked him, still keeping her distance.

Laura frowned after him, uncertain. She thought he hadn't seen anything important, especially from the way he was acting now...

She suddenly cringed. Shit. She'd forgotten all about the leader fellow. She turned, sprinting off back towards her hideout without another word to Raziel. He wasn't a problem. That other bastard...

She raced back to her camp, knife at the ready, darting around what little traps were left and skidding to a stop in front of the leader. Immediately, she knew there had been no rush. His neck was twisted back so far she couldn't even see his face.

That was polite of him. She slowly placed her knife in her bag, approaching the corpse and kneeling down in front of it to search it. And he didn't take everything this time. The man still had his pack on him, with enough food in it to last her several days if she was careful with it. She leaned forward to his knife belt, fumbling with the straps until she had the thing off of him.

She stood again, strapping the belt around her own waist and sheathing the man's knife at her side. The weight of the knife felt comfortable, reassuring, and she stepped back, adjusting the strap on her bag and casting about her hideout. There weren't many traps left for her to deactivate, and it wasn't long before she could start collecting her supplies for the traps. She raised her eyebrows at one rope trap, activated and sawed in half. So that was how Raziel got out. That's what she had figured.

She salvaged as much rope as she could, stuffing it into her bag as she appraised the area. A small smirk flitted across her face. Maybe she should leave something behind, in case anyone thought to come back and look for her here...

Hm. As much as she wished to, she had no time. She turned to leave, looking around her almost sadly, before darting off among the ruins.

Laura kept a quick pace for herself, circling around west and away from the city. She glanced back at the city ruefully as it faded in the distance and stopped herself in her tracks.

Her father was still in there - hopefully. She had to assume she was alive, as no one had tried to track her down yet. He was getting old, tired. While his mind was like a steel trap, he body wasn't nearly what it used to be, and he had no chance of surviving in the wild. He needed the weekly distributed rations

There it was again, that familiar sinking, the guilt setting in as she looked back to the city. Never mind they had agreed - well, agreed wasn't exactly the right term for it; for the looks and comments he threw her way, for the way he encouraged her excursions, and for the one night that she finally got the hint and got the hell out, careful to leave when he wasn't watching and stay far out of touch. Never mind that they both knew it was for the best, there was still something inside her that clung to him, that refused to leave him entirely alone at the edge of that city.

Which was stupid, of course. She turned away angrily, forcing herself further into the woods, until the city was out of sight entirely.

----------

It would have been impossible to tell when the wilderness ended and 'Utopia' began, had there not been a small group of well armed men standing at the border, blocking the road in. The wilderness seemed to meld into the city - just beyond the border was more ruin, though it was clear these were more lived in; the collapsed wrecks of homes sported additions from their new occupants, wood laid across the tops of walls to create roofs, blankets spread out on the dirt.

As one went in, the city looked less like a refugee camp and more like true civilization - what was previously New York City proper now was a series of relatively uniform shelters, or as uniform as one could get when building from wreckage. People milled about on one sort of business or another, haggling with neighbors over items and the like.

The caravan, however, had yet to see this - rather, as the group approached, the armed men along the border came to meet them, stopping them in their tracks. There were six of them, but these were no brigands - their clothes were in good shape, though they had no uniform to distinguish them as the city's police force. Their weapons weren't uniform either - one man had only a long club, another a woodcutting axe, while one man carried no weapons, only an old, wind-up pocket watch that he looked down at in his boredom.

The man with the watch looked up and put his watch away, striding forward. "How many are ya?" he said, shoving his hands down in his pockets.

The man with the watch glanced over at Raziel, appraising him in a glance. The man was shorter than Raz, but lean, all hard muscle and bone, and he carried himself with a confidence that marked him as a natural leader.

He nodded, then looked to the leader of the caravan. "We've gotta search yer carts for illegal supplies before ya enter. Magic texts and the like." His men came forward as he waved his hand. "You'll be allowed ta keep your weapons until ya register at the square. After that, only peacekeepers can be armed."

"Aye," the man said, smiling as Raziel spoke. "Figured you have a problem with that. We don't need no lunatic with a knife starting a street fight. I figure you ain't one of those, but rules are as they are."

He shrugged. "I s'pose something could be arranged, but you might not like it. You'll get 'em back when you leave, otherwise."

"Unless," he added, "ya wanna join the force. We could use men like ya, I'm sure."

The man only raised his eyebrows at the sword on his back. It looked like a piece of trash. "I can arrange it," he said, shrugging. "But you fuck up, and it'll be your head. Clear?"

The man gave a short laugh. "I'll hold ya to that," he said. One of his boys came back from checking the carts to tell him everything was clear.

"Aight," he said. "Greg, yer with me. Rest of ya stay at the border." He turned around and strode off into the city, not even bothering to make sure his orders were carried out. "Follow along, boys and girls," he called back, waving the caravan along behind him as the man he pointed out moved to guard the rear of the caravan.

There was no definite border between the interior and the exterior. The ramshackle huts overlooking overgrown farms slowly disappeared as they walked, to be replaced by clean, tight order.

"We've been workin on cleaning up the outside," the man with the watch said over his shoulder, not caring if anyone heard. "But the place is so damn big it's hard to keep shit in order."

The buildings they passed gradually became more sophisticated, as they approached the interior - ramshackle huts replaced by legitimate houses built from the rubble, the ruin cleared away to leave room for buildings, gardens, roads.

Now there were people in the streets - most of them walking further in towards the center of the city. A pair of men were tinkering with a old, rusted out motor, making measurements while calling out to another team of men working new metal as a few onlookers stared on.

The number of armed men, as well, multiplied by nearly a dozen - they were everywhere, a constant presence that was largely ignored.

The caravan found itself nearly merging with a crowd of people walking down the same street, and the man cursed under his breath, whipping out his pocket watch and glancing up at the sky. "Keep a hold on yer kids!" he called back to the caravan.

They walked for what felt like forever, and as they walked more and more people started crowding the streets, shoving up against the members of the caravan, threatening to cut some members off from the others, all of them headed in the same direction.

The man leading them forced a way through the crowd, struggling to keep the caravan together as they passed through the street - the same streets that felt so wide before, and so narrow now.

The first sign that they finally reached something was in the movement of the crowd - no longer was the crowd moving with them, but at an angle to them, moving off to the left in clumps. They had emerged into a massive open space, and here, perhaps out of sentiment, the ruins were not cleared - rather, the remains of tall buildings surrounded the square, repaired and re-purposed for the people's use. The crowd gathered at the far right of the square, and out of the crowd came the forms of people, carrying bags of food - the weeks rations, being distributed to the families.

Their leader seemed to visibly relax as the crowd around them thinned, picking up the pace towards a tall ruin near the center of the square. He turned to look back at the caravan.

"Aight!" he said, shouting over the noise. "Inside there ye'll register yer name so we can keep track of ya. If you're just passing through, that's where ye'll be staying, and there ain't nothing else ya need to do. If ya wanna be a resident, though, ya get to go through the whole damn process after that. The boys inside can tell ya about that. Have fun!" He gave a wide, cheeky grin, stepping to the side to allow them inside the old building.

"Ah!" he said, snapping his fingers and suddenly remembering. "You, boy - " he pointed at Raziel " - stay close ta me. I'll make sure ya keep that sword."

As the rest of the caravan moved inside, the man leaned back against the side of the building and crossed his legs at the ankles. "Greg, back to the border with ya," he said, with a nod, and his partner nodded, turning and starting to jog back across the square.

He raised his eyebrows at Raziel. "We'll wait 'til they're done," he said. "Easier ta get what ya want when they're tired." He grinned again, crossing his arms. "Name's Ethan, by the way," he said, holding out his hand.

He shrugged. "You'd be surprised," he said. "Lotsa peacekeepers and harsh laws. And no one wants ta be on O'Leary's bad side."

He grimaced, glancing to the side. "At least, it's peaceful in the center. Not enough men and not enough good men to watch the edges."

Ethan bit his lip pensively, lost in thought for a moment. He suddenly laughed. "I got it," he said. "Before O'Leary came in, his Pap led the place. People called him Papa O'Leary, he was like this big, lovable daddy, right? Well, O'Leary's just as much of a father, 'cept no one would dare ta call him something as familiar as 'Papa.'"