FicWad

She awoke to the sound of her mother banging a spoon on a pot.
“Get up, get up!” her mother yelled, bringing it closer to her head. “Especially you, Jaxon! Wake up, girl! We’ve got work!”


She groaned and sat up, yawning. Blond hair clung to the side of her face, and she brushed it all away and stood from the bed. Her brothers were running around, getting their clothes on, brushing hair, washing up and shoving bread into their mouths. She stretched, back popping, then bent down and retrieved a set of work clothing. The cloth was so stained it had turned to a mottled dark grey; it was hard to see the navy blue it had once been. Jaxon slipped beneath the covers once more, and expertly changed out of her nightclothes. She shoved her nightclothes under the bed and pulled out a brush, pulling her hair back into a raggedy bun.


Done getting dressed, she accepted a piece of bread from the eldest brother and ripped it in half, shoving some into her mouth and tucking the rest in a pocket for lunch. Her mother smacked the pot again when one of the boys tried to lie down and go back to sleep. Jaxon simply rolled her eyes at this, striding over to a pot she knew had been recently taken off the stove; the water inside was still warm, and she washed her face, arms and neck off as best she could. Sitting down, she pulled on her boots and watched her mother’s behavior.


Normally Woan didn’t act like this, banging pots at her children. Jaxon thought she must be drunk, and she proved to be correct when she went over to her parent. Her mother smelled strongly of beer.


“Mama, why don’t you stay home from work today? I can take the rascals down to Saen by myself.” One of the rascals bumped into her.


Woan glared indignantly. “No. I am the mother here! You’re too young to be taking care of children by yourself!” Her tone turned sad. “I worry about you, Jackie, I really do.” Woan reached over and pulled her daughter into a tight hug, sobbing soundlessly.


“Come on Mama, let’s get you to bed,” Jaxon soothed her mother, pulling her over to the bed and settling her down. She always felt bad about making her mother cry like that, but when she was drunk she was extremely noisy and making her cry always made her very sleepy. Asleep, no one would ever know a woman had beer in her possession. Someone would tell authorities. Her mother would be killed. They’d become orphans.


Jaxon took a deep breath to rid herself of her dark thoughts, then turned around and wrangled the boys. “Come on, let’s go. Sis needs to go to work.”


The youngest looked up at her. “Why is Mama not going to work today?”


An older brother shushed him. “Shh! Sis said not to ask about when Mama stays home from work! It’s our secret, right?”


The smaller one nodded solemnly. “Right.”


Jaxon sighed. “Come on. Take hands.”


She pulled them out into the stairwell as they linked hands. Then she pulled the key out from around her neck and locked the door. Turning, she took the leader’s hand and pulled them down the stairs and out the building, into the grey sunlight. It filtered down through the smog, which was unusually thick today. Most days it was hardly noticeable. A rich couple walked along arm-in-arm, both wearing fancy gas masks. The woman mask had delicate lace along the sides, the straps adorned with plastic jewels and more lace. The man’s was all fancy leather and metal. Their clothes were dyed in the very same factory Jaxon was going to now, the very same fabrics that Jaxon couldn’t wear because her family was too poor. Jaxon detested people like that.


Huffing, she pulled the gaggle of coughing children down a few winding, pothole-filled lanes, then down an alleyway. Reaching a doorway shrouded by a curtain, she reached into a small alcove next to it and pulled a wire back, letting it go with an aggravating twang. Behind the curtain was silence for a long while, then scuffling footsteps approached and a bony hand pulled back the curtains, revealing an even bonier man.


Floppy, greasy orange hair sprawled over his prominent cheekbones. His clothes draped themselves over his bones. Saen was not exactly an angel to look at. Nor, Jaxon mused, to meet.
Jaxon detested people like Saen too. He was slightly creepy and very rude, and the girl knew the only reason her mother let the children stay with him during the day was because Saen was person who supplied Woan her alcohol. Or so Jaxon suspected. She actually had no proof, but she still disliked Saen. It was hard not to.


She kissed each of her brother’s heads, then let them slip past the man. Then she glared at him and gave him her usual cold threat: “I swear if you harm them in any way I’ll…” also as usual, Jaxon stopped to think of something menacing to say. “… Something!”


Saen gave a cackle. “Of course I won’t hurt your precious pretties!” he snapped the curtain closed and the shuffling of his footsteps receded.


She huffed once more, and then stomped quickly out of the alleyway and into the street. A breeze was blowing, clearing the smog and sending it out to the East, where gas masks were mandatory most of the time. West was where the rich lived, while East was the slums. The area around that was all factories, which gave way to business areas, housing, then eventually hit West again.
She coughed as she inhaled some of the grey gas, then started Northeast to the cloth-dyeing factory where she worked. Trudging along, she saw increasing numbers of other workers stumbling to the factory as well. She paused at a corner and stared down the lane to her left, watching the approaching figure of Oliph, who worked at the same station that Jaxon did. Jaxon didn’t like her all that much, but she was someone to talk to while she worked. She was a shorter girl with wide hips and dark hair that tumbled over her shoulders in large curls.


“Hello, Jaxon!” Oliph chirped cheerily.


“Hey…”


“How are you today?” Oliph asked as they started off again, towards the sprawling factory complex. These strips of concrete buildings produced almost all of the city’s products, from clothing to soap to horse-drawn carriages and cars powered by crude oil for the wealthy. These production castles also produced some of the smog that hung around. Granted, some was already there, but it was far worse on the strip of factories, and the wind in turn blew it to the East.


“I’m okay,” Jaxon replied. She was lying. She was only sort of okay.


“I’m just doing great! Yesterday my Dad brought home some food! The expensive kind! We got sugar and milk and oats and cheese and dried meat and fresh meat and even some candies! Oh! And tea! He brought home tea.” Oliph opened the bundle that was secured by a cord around her waist. “So now I get some dried beef and cheese and bread for lunch today!” she showed the food to her friend. “What have you got for lunch?”


“Bread.” Jaxon replied dryly.


They had reached the mesh fence that surrounded their complex, and the workers trudged through the gate and into a building. Some of them, including Jaxon and Oliph took off their worn out shoes and walked carefully through the rooms, wary of possible sharp objects that could pierce their skin, and into a broiling hot room. The floor was made up of a grid of different colored dyes, with thin strips of floor between them. Even though the room contained no fire, because of the rooms and rooms of silk-gathering, dye-making and cloth-drying stations, and so it was permanently scorching.
Jaxon and Oliph waded into their respective dye pools, accepted the first batch of yesterday’s white fabric and dipped them under.



When Jaxon returned from work with her siblings, they found their mother vomiting profusely into the pot she had been banging on that morning.


Jaxon rushed over to her. “Mama? Are you feeling okay?” Jaxon noticed the color of her mother’s vomit. “Mama?”


Woan coughed and then cleared her throat. “I’m fine.” Then she leaned in close to her daughter. “I need you to go to Saen,” she hissed into Jaxon’s ear, “And get me some beer.” She pressed a few reusli into her hand.


“But… Mama! You’re sick! I am not buying you beer!” Jaxon’s voice slid into an urgent hiss.


Woan’s eyes flashed dangerously. “GO.” She ordered.


Jaxon had never seen that look in her mother’s eyes before.


She darted out the door, out of the building and straight to Saen’s dwelling, where she yanked aside the curtain and dashed in uninvited. Saen’s house was a small, one-room hovel, like most dwellings, and was surprisingly clean. Saen wasn’t home.


Jaxon hadn’t actually been inside his dwelling before, and was surprised at this. Saen wasn’t exactly the kind of person to keep a place clean. She scrabbled about frantically, searching for a place where the beer may have been hidden, dropping the reusli to the floor in the process.


Under the bed, she felt a catch in the wood and scrabbled at it. A section popped open and several bottles of beer wrapped in cloth fell to the floor. Jaxon quickly collected them in her arms and stood up. She had no idea why she was doing this for her mother. Normally she could calm her down enough to forget about the alcohol, but when she saw her eyes…


Shaking this thought out of her head she sprinted back home, dashing past Saen as she went. He would be angry when he found the alcohol gone.


Jaxon finally burst through the door to her apartment. “Okay Mama,” she panted. “I brought you what you wanted.”


One of her brothers spoke up. “Mama went to sleep.”


“What?”


“Mama’s asleep, Sis. She just decided to lay down and go to sleep. She won’t wake up.”


Jaxon set the bottles down on the table and approached the bed, where Woan lay, unmoving.


“… Mama?” she shook her mother’s arm.


It was rapidly cooling.