The sun hits my face burning up my eyelids so I roll around to get away from the sun but I just end on the floor.
"What are you doing Niztal?" My younger sister Natasha asks annoyed, she's the pretty one in the family, long black silky hair, perfectly smooth tanned skin, reddish heart shaped fuller lips, perfect straight teeth, perfectly contoured face, cheeks with just the right amount of blush, the perfect height, perfectly sculpted body, emerald green eyes with long black eyelashes and it doesn't show in any way that she doesn't get enough sleep.
All the women in our family have a name that starts with an N and all the men in the Rising Sun kingdom have to have an X in their name.
"Fleeing from the gigantic fire ball" I groan as I sit up just to be hit with the sun straight in my eyes.
"Well keep it down" she turns to her side trying to go back to sleep.
I get to my feet and am wide awake now so I dress in my only clothes, squid inked top and white...gray brownish skirt looking pants and leather boots, but I leave the knitted jacket in the drawers.
I climb down the rope to get to the main house.
Me and my sister have the emergency room as our bedroom because my mom and grandpa don't have the strength to climb every evening after hard days but if the alarm goes off we all have to climb no matter if we have broken arms we have to or They will get us.
Who are They? They are the dark creatures or Qurerolkans that are sent to hunt us, to hunt the Golds and bring us to The Kingdom Of Crimson or The Kingdom Of Ivy.
We are so near extinction that our village has to move every time someone realizes that we don't have Crimson or Ivy flooding our bodies but Rising Sun.
What do I mean? There used to be five kingdoms, the Crimson where everyone has red blood, the Ivy where everyone has green blood, the Cloud where everyone had white iridescent blood, the Forest where everyone had Black blood, and then the Rising Sun where everyone had Gold blood.
The Crimson got greedy and wanted more power so they bombed a village in the Kingdom Of Cloud but blamed the Forest Queen so the Cloud sent every Forester into exile from the Cloud Kingdom which confused Revir the Forest queen but then the Ivy and Crimson mercilessly executed every last Forester making Vorkel the king of Cloud angry and demanded an explanation but Arox the Crimson king saw an opportunity to use Vorkels blood to make his palace more decorative so he killed him and Quet the king of Ivy followed but then got greedy and the two kingdoms went to war for Cloud blood while Yelsirix the king of the Rising Sun was taking in as many Cloud folks as he could hold in his palace and made a direct order to split up and run if ether the Crimson or the Ivy army's showed up, and they did so my mom Njyera ran with me, my sister Natasha, my brother and Natasha's twin Lexir, my older brother Ealoxk and my grandpa Trekax while my dad Kafsyx stayed in the city Lerckdor to fight against the Crimson army. Now the Foresters and the Cloud folk are completely extinct but my mom tells us about the Magic some lucky Cloud folk possessed, excellent for battle but only if they don't feel any fear or feel that violence is the only option then their magic can break all the bones in your body, twist your mind to a suicidal state, melt the iron armor to the enemies skin, burn you from the inside out, turn you into sand and the most powerful ones can make the ground rise up making a whole city in seconds with only a single twist of their wrist and those Cloud Witches and Wizards built every city, town and village in the five kingdoms.
Though all of this requires years and years of practice and experience.
I was just one years old, Natasha and Lexir still a month from being born and Ealoxk six years old.
Now I'm 16 years old, Nat and Lex 15 and Ealoxk 21.
We've been in this Gold trading town for about two years now and we are always expecting the alarm to go off.
"Good morning Niztal" Ealoxk says with two buckets of water.
"Good morning"
"Mom will need to talk to you so don't go anywhere today"
"Sure, but I have to finish something first" I go out before Ealoxk can protest.
I walk down the busy streets of Urquigetax or Uqui as we who live here call it.
Everyone is careful about how they act afraid of being discovered and usually if one is discovered all of us try to keep that person safe unless the person doesn't want help from us then we run and hide.
"Niztal!" Lolyth calls and I follow the sound to my friends Lolyth, Tolx and Oyeta, friends from the school here where we are taught history, math, writing, reading, how to identify Crimson and Ivy folk and how to deal with Crimson and Ivy customers without being discovered but there are also the people from the mountains and those people you have to be very careful about how you talk to them because they are descendants from exiled criminals and murderers.
"Are you ready to graduate?" Tolx asks, he's a tall muscular boy with longish straight dark brown hair that parts almost in the middle, black eyes, tan skin, rose lips, scarred knuckles from fighting thieves that try to steal from him, muscular facial features, and scars on his arms and chest.
Now it's the start of Augmez so it's hot as the summer sun shines which means all the boys and men in the village just ditch their shirts and we girls tie our hair up in a knot or cut it because we can't ditch a piece of clothing without being extremely criticized for our body or we'll get disgusting glares from shoppers from Crimson, Ivy and from the Mountains.
"No, I'm still afraid of the Crimson and Ivy, I'm terrified in fact" Oyeta says but we all are just some of us don't show fear, she's a short girl with light brown hair, brown eyes with lighter but long eyelashes, tanned skin, scarred wrists and a long scar that goes down the right side of her face, rosy filled lips, a little bit rounder face, skinny but has a bit of curves, strong arms, a scar on her shoulder where her father poured boiling water on her before the Crimson army found them and she just so managed to escape but they got her father which she isn't so sad about.
"Everyone is afraid of them" Lolyth says, she's taller than most girls and has dark brown short curly hair, tanned skin, blue eyes with thick long eyelashes, pink heart shaped lips with a scar on her bottom lip where she walked into a wall and split her lip when she was a year old, muscular facial features, skinny with more curves than Nat, muscular and has a scar on her stomach where a bowman shot her.
"Everyone except Niz, she has even talked to a Crimson hunter from the south that was considering on buying something from her" Oyeta says and that is true but I was dying of fear inside while he was taking an eternity to buy one little homemade pin, I always felt like he was drawing out his dagger every time he moved.
"You just have to know how to hide your fear even though you're freaking out inside" I say and I am the only one without a single scar because my mom made sure I'd never hurt myself and she did the same with my siblings.
"But I have to get something for Ealoxks birthday tomorrow if you want to join?" I have five copper Rings and one copper iron mix Ring.
"Sure, why not" Tolx says and he usually agrees with me and Oyeta because Lolyth is his sister and they're not really the best of friends but they can bare each other most of the time.
We go from a store to store but I don't find anything that Ealoxk would want and is copper cheep.
"Maybe Foxinir has something?" Oyeta suggests, Foxinir is an old man that has a small shop at the end of the village with the weirdest stuff he makes from sand, stone, wood, metal scraps and just something he finds outside on his walks.
"Miss Navieta What can I do for you?" Foxinir asks when he notices me.
When the Gods bind two people the man has to take the last name of the woman he's being bind to and the woman is usually the one who goes to counsel when it's held while the men teach the children how to hunt but my grandpa can't really teach us how to hunt so Ealoxk goes with his friends father hunting.
"Something for my brothers birthday and isn't too expensive" I say and put the Rings on the table, he examines the Rings and disappears for about five minutes before he comes back with a lion with wings and a scorpions tail made from all kinds of stuff and a small necklace with a little bottle that has some sort of really fine sand that has an iridescent shimmer to it.
"You can have this for those Rings and three single hairs from your head" he says and he always has such a weird way of being paid, but the necklace is nothing my brother would like.
"But why the necklace?" I ask taking three single strands of hair from my head and handing him, it's probably for a project he's working on, he's weird yes but he means well and is a very good person.
"You'll see" he giggles taking the Rings and my hair.
"It's not for my brother is it?" I ask to be one hundred percent sure.
"No, it's for you and you better not loose it because it took me a very long time to get that dust" he says before disappearing inside his working wagon again.
We leave and I put on the necklace.
"Niztal! Thank god you're okay" my mom says hugging me, she never hugs me.
"What?" I ask suspiciously as I hide the lion in my weird ass pocket on my skirt pants.
She looks at me and notices the necklace almost immediately and says dead serious "Niztal we need to talk"
"Am I in trouble?" I ask Ealoxk who stands behind my mom but as soon as I look at him he avoids me looking everywhere except at me.
'Weirdo' I think
"This is serious don't joke about this" she says scaring me a bit.