“Right,” he said. “Now you can go.”
“Where?”
“Good question. Do you want to see your room?”
“My room?”
“A place you can go to sleep, or when you want to be alone.”
She looked at him as if he were insane. “I come from the wilds,” she said, her voice melodic even when filled with derision. “What use do I have for a room when the world is my room? I am not one of you cowards who hides behind shields of fire and walls of rock.”
“In the wild you had your cave,” he reminded her. “A room is simply a different kind of cave.”
Begrudgingly, Sarah inwardly admitted that the city itself was really only a series of caves, a human nest of a kind, like a termite mound. That didn't mean she liked it. There were too many people, taking up too much space, needing too many things.
“Here,” he said, leading her into a room which seemed no different from any of the others except for what it contained. “This is yours.”
There was a big, soft, puffy object which Sarah stared at for a long moment before realizing that it must be a bed. In the wild she had usually slept in a tree, away from predators. Her reed hammock had been perfectly comfortable. Aside from the bed, there was not much in the room. A window let in purple-tinged light, beyond which the city could be seen in all its strange glory.
“I'll let you get settled in. Call out if you need anything. If you get hungry, anything.”
He left the room, shutting the door behind him. Sarah looked around. The room was too large. Too unnatural. She didn't like it at all. She was on the verge of panic when she spotted another door. Opening it, she found a smaller room inside the room, one with a single metal branch running across the top of it. There was a large brown fur tossed over the branch. She pulled that down, along with one of the soft things from the bed, pillows, her mother had called them, and pushed them both into the little corner of the space. It was a comfortable little bed, almost as comfortable as one of her little forest nooks, except this one did not have the sun gently filtering through cracks in the rock, nor did it store the heat from the day and radiate it into the surrounding space.
Two
William went looking for Sarah not long later and found her seemingly absent. Certain that she had not escaped, he started looking for her. There were not many hiding places in the room. When he did not find her under the bed he looked in the closet, where he discovered her curled up on a fur coat, fast asleep. She looked peaceful and content, although she was curled up in a position which would have left most city dwellers working out cricks and cramps for days on end.
“Sarah.” He said her name softly. She stirred briefly, then came to full awareness. These wild ones, they did not have the luxury of slowly waking up when they were disturbed. He made sure to keep his distance, in case she lashed out reflexively.
“What?” She sat cross-legged and scowled at him.
“Time to eat. Come on,” he beckoned. “I think you'll like this.”
She had to be hungry. He could hear her stomach growling as she followed him out to the kitchen.
“There is no food here,” she said, sounding disappointed until he opened the refrigerator. There, before her astonished eyes, was all manner of food. Fruits and vegetables, packages besides, meats and eggs. There was more food there than she had ever seen in her life.
“How did you get all of this?” She wandered forward, her mouth open in amazement.
William chuckled and patted her naked bottom lightly. “There are markets where food is sold.”
She darted in, grabbed the first thing to come to hand, which happened to be an apple, and made a full speed retreat back to the closet, leaving William scratching his head. He followed after her and found her wolfing down the fruit in her self-made den.
“That's not how we eat here. We sit at a table and we converse.”
She shoved as much of the apple into her mouth as she could and shook her head.
“Come on,” he said. “You have to have been taught better than this. Tell me how you came to be in the wilds.”
He sat outside the closet whilst she chewed her mouthful, then began to talk. “When they started looking for people with the mutation, my parents took me into the wilds. I was very young.”
“Ah, but they raised you like a citizen, taught you the language of the cities, and some of the customs too, I'll warrant.”
“They tried.” Sarah shrugged. “But they got sick and they died and then I was on my own and I looked after myself.”