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Emma

I felt like I was being watched Then again, I’d been having this feeling for the last week, this prickling sensation on the back ofsurrounded by the others intirelessly to try to salvage e could of the crops, and although this year would cause us to ration e’d grown and harvested, I was still thankful for e had

I straightened, wiped the perspiration from my broith the back of ainst As it was, I was on handpicking duty today,across my chest I had a small utility belt that held my shears and a knife I looked down at the hand that held the tools when I worked, callusesup

I lifted a hand to block out the scorching glow frori my body, and was thankful I’d saved upcha and sore muscles from the hard labor too

The prickling sensation calanced around the fields Everyone was busy working to gather e could before the first Scorch of the season—that time every year where the twin suns were so brutal for hu we called the Pit Because the teet instant second- and third-degree burns just from a moment's exposure

And it was the Scorch that rendered the crops and fields burnt and dead in just a day’s tiather e could before ent down below and stayed there until the Scorch passed

I glanced over at the ed e I’d never known anything but this world, same as my mother, my mother’s mother, and so on For centuries upon centuries, humans had lived in the world of Alev, a dry and hot world that was inhospitable to my kind as much as hell was

We’d adapted to survive here, but we all knew this wasn’t our real hoinated How could it be, when our bodies weren't irl, I’d listened to the elders speak about hoe came to be in this bleak realm, how our ancestors came from another place, still in this world… just soet to

I iined this world could have been one and the same to that biblical place, one where fire and heat, truth and despair reigned true I felt like that about Alev le was so hard Only because I was constantly tired and hated continuously worrying about when e would finally make their threats to me a reality

I stared at those mountains, so beautiful in their ownwithin theht of those hu watched intensified