Author Games Compilation [Cycle 2]

Task 4 ▵ The Fall of Troy [EEK]

Once, a while ago, Eloise had set a trap for a rabbit and, upon finding the trap a success, found that she didn't have the heart to kill it.

Instead, she stood there, little hands clenched as she stared down at the metal claws clamped onto the hind leg of a bloodied patch of grey fur. It wriggled and writhed, desperate, forcing out little noises she didn't even know rabbits could make. It kicked up snow, powdered white mixed with slushed red. A high-pitched squeal of a scream. It made involuntary tears well up behind her eyes. It was suffering.

Her lip quivered. "It's just an animal," she said, a pout sitting at the base of her throat. "It hasn't done anything wrong. It just wants to survive. Daddy, we don't need to kill it."

Her father stood beside her, and one of his knobby hands settled upon her shoulder as he huffed. That hand, and that huff, it made her stomach drop because she knew there was no negotiating when he used that hand and did that huff. "It wants to survive, yes. But so do we. That's-" He paused, testing the words before he brought them to his mouth. "That's why anyone does the things they do, to survive. It's just the circle of life, Ellie. Kill or be killed. Sometimes something has to die so that something else can live. It's not wrong, it's just how it is. Especially now."

She turned her head away, and his grip on her shoulder tightened, reassuring. "Stay here," he said, "I need to get a knife. I know I said I'd teach you, but you don't have to do it this time. Just watch." The pressure on her shoulder left, and his footsteps crunched through the snow, getting fainter and fainter until she heard their back door creak open and clatter to a close. There was laughter, too, raucous laughter - they were housing Peacekeepers, then, and she narrowed her eyes at the reminder of having to give up her room.

While she waited, she plopped down in the snow, criss-cross applesauce, to watch the rabbit. It'd stopped screaming at that point and instead lay weak against the snow, frail little broken body heaving with heavy, pained lungfuls of breath. Its eye rested in the wide, dark pool of its own blood. It broke her heart a little bit, she thought, to see it like that, and a twinge of shared hurt touched her chest. And, being so young, she got this idea in her head that maybe, if she pried the trap open with her hands, the rabbit would regain all of its energy and take off into the woods, good as new and free.

She actually started forward on her knees, arms outstretched, to do just that, but just as her hands neared the metal spikes, a grunt and a loud hush emanated from the forest ahead of her. She froze, hands hovering above the dying rabbit, with her gaze roaming the treeline. Maybe someone's in trouble, she'd thought. It lifted her to her feet and ultimately, sent her trudging through the snow deep into the woods.

There were deep footprints in the snow, two pairs, and one of them was just a line, like someone dragging their foot behind them. They disappeared behind a rock, and with the light-footedness of the child that she was, she rounded it.

She came face to face with another girl, one much older than her, probably by ten years. There was a boy with her - no, behind her; she kept her body in front of his to shield him from Ellie - who had a baby face contorted in pain. They both breathed sharply through their teeth, wide-eyed and red-cheeked and snot frozen above their lips. Their clothes were raggedy, and they each held a pack upon their shoulders. These were runners. And the only people that ran were rebels.

"Please don't tell anyone we're here," the girl rushed out, voice shaky. "We haven't done anything wrong, we just can't do this. My brother, he and I, we'll be killed. We need to get away."

It was a predicament that left her torn between two worlds: mercy for the rabbits, and an upholding of justice to honor her family. Her father had no mercy for the rabbit, and all justice. It should've been an easy decision, and yet, she hesitated.