Angelina's

Miles apart from each other the mother yelled for her son, but the son, shown in a TV screen about 5 inches small, was already painted with the rebels' mark, whichever form that mark had. The mother knew that he would soon be sent to the rebels' leader and son of a pig, Peter Filthy.

Nightmares.

Peter got the son's head with his own. Inspected it - and threw it away. The boy was useless to his duties, he was a little bit small and his power not so good. Peter raised a signal with his hand, and the boy was shoot by 2 guns, one from each side of his head. The mother screamed. The TV was turned off abruptly, as the little camera hidden into Peter Filthy's office needed to rest from 10 to 10 minutes. Even after the TV blackened everybody in the room could still see Peter's smile of hatred disgust towards the innocent child.

Nightmares.

It was not the president, but Peter, who had declared war against Oxygen since the beginning. Ronaldo liked to be made present by burying fat fingers into Oliver's govern and problems. Peter though had not been noticed staring at us from the darkness, and if we stopped to think it all came back to Peter... he was the one who had torn families apart, who had ruined all those lives. Including mine.

Nightmares.

Nightmares started coming after Oliver went back to his room, a little after midnight. I could hear his moves when leaving the bed, soft and slow so he wouldn't wake me. But I did, it was impossible not to. That was the sound that would always wake me, it didn't matter if I was hibernating or taking a nap. I never understood why, he would never tell me.

But it was okay, because after the nightmares came real life, and as he had said the night before, I was going to help deal with the war. And odd as it seemed, I couldn't be more excited. Maybe because I would help people, or because I was finally going to get closer to his daily life, or because I would escape from my own reality.

•••

"Angel. Come here. This is Al, he is an administrator and works at the food station. You will be spending the morning downstairs with him. Don't worry, Al will bring you back before you feel hungry for lunch."

"Yes, sir." I said, and looked briefly to the man standing next to Oliver. He was not very tall but was taller than me of course. He must be in his forties, and didn't look bad at all. Just the mustache... yes, he could totally cut that out.

"We are going to work well together, Miss Firenze." Al said while we descended the floors. I was dying inside because the thought of downstairs reminded me the sick bay and all sicknesses I could get by going there. ALL sicknesses, including emotional ones. Which was probably what I would get by entering in the sick bay or anything related to medical care and physicians.

No thinking, Angelina!

We bypassed a lot of halls and corridors, places that I had no idea where they had came from, and rooms with closed windows smelling of tabaco or iron. I wondered how many Arians liked to smoke. I didn't like smokers. My experience with cigarettes and alcohol was not the most charming of my life.

"We arrived at the pantry's security gate; and there is another one forward. See this lock? Special for authorized people."

I know, idiot. "Sorry!" - I exclaimed at once, but realized I hadn't called him idiot out loud by the confused look on his face. I said never mind with a yellow smile - and we agreed to enter for that day's important duty.

At the other side of the gate, inspecting little bags of flour and organizing the few bottles of milk was a small lady wearing grandma styled dress full of flowers and wooden shoes.

"Mrs Yon!"

"Chloe!"

"I am Angelina..." I laughed while hugging her tight but not tight enough to damage her small bones. She was so cute... so hard working. I remembered the exact scene of me telling Oliver to put Mrs Yon at the same floor as mom and Sr.

The administrator Al greeted Mrs Yon politely but with no much enthusiasm and was soon giving her instructions and tapping on his phone while I inspected the place. We were at a room with thick walls, probably, because everything he said went back to us and nothing could be heard from outside. On every wall, and also the ones that that cut the room in many stripes of corridors, were dozens of shelves from the ground to the ceiling. On those shelves were what looked to be the food we ate everyday, and what was supposed to feed the whole building. However many of those shelves had not a single can, sack or bottle. Many of those shelves had nothing except leftover of grains.

Take a grain, Angelina, and distribute it in 4. That's what some families have to do to sustain their kids, Sebastian said once, many years ago. He was oversizing the situation, of course, but that was his way of making me understand his world and the poverty it involved.

I heard a commotion, and turned to see what my colleagues were up to. Mrs Yon didn't smile or called me some other name because she was concentrated on waving her small hands. Unexpectedly and magically, crystal structures from different shapes and sizes came flying to her arms. I had knew Mrs Yon and her power from many years before. She was bringing the structures by teleportation, from somewhere else inside the building.

The crystal things kept coming and the more they came the more those figures distinguished from each other - and the more they became familiar. I gasped in silence. Mrs Yon handed one by one to Al, and he placed them carefully onto a table.

"We have never done this before, Miss Firenze. Yet this plan will succeed... I have faith on our Snowfields. I guess you have too."

Faith is a strong word; I don't think I have faith on him. Not exactly. Being a light in the end of a tunnel doesn't mean you must be treated as God. Oliver's ideas couldn't be taken as solutions just because he was who he was.

Sometimes I didn't understand people's view.

"Oh, Joey, you are such a sweetheart. Place this one carefully, please. Ouch! It is cold..."

I knew what they were up doing. Those were not structures made of crystal, but of ice. And were not random structures... but perfect repliques of food. Later that day I would discover they had came from Oliver's office, five floors above. Food. Big watermelons and small lemons and packages of crackers and flour and chocolate crips and animals. There were statues of chicken and pigs and red lobsters, their whole bodies and eyes smoking coldness.

Why hadn't them told me earlier?! That was why my "help" was so needed. In fact my help was a necessity, not even a choice. "...This is brilliant."

"Yes he is." Mrs Yon said smoothly. "Go on, Samantha, we have plenty of mouths to feed today and lots of shelves to fill."

•••

I hit my foot on the floor. "Why hadn't you told me earlier?"

"Didn't you like the surprise?" Oliver winked. "I had invited two artists to help me out with the ice statues. I am glad that it worked."

"Worked? Of course it would work! I lost count of how many times we have done this, but privately. We discussed it years ago, Oliver: no mixing our powers. Yes, sometimes I ask you to, and you make an ice cube for me, I transform it into chocolate, we eat. And that's it."

"Why are you so mad, butterfly?" Oliver frowned this time. He was really confused. "I don't get why you think mixing powers is not a good idea. The shelves downstairs are now full of food, the families living in this building need it as well as you and me. I have always respected your opinion, but really, tell me what you do not like about it."

How was I supposed to express myself? How would I explain that I didn't like to be used? Or even the feeling of being used, I don't like that. At the beginning everybody would tell me I was putting myself into danger by staying with Oliver because he would just use me to get what he wanted: drinks, perfumes, boots, belts and knifes. Indeed - he used me for all of those things and many more, but as time passed I began realizing how empty his life would be without me. And this, I think, is the reason I love him.

"Would you do me a favor?" He asked.

"What."

His hand reached the back pocket of his jeans, and he was soon showing me a little rounded white ball. It had some white crisps outside which made it look fluffy. I gasped - there was my coconut candy! One of the rarest things I couldn't make using my powers with Oliver's. It was so fluffy no crisps of ice could imitate.

The way he was smiling at me, as if we were sharing a joke, made me uneasy.

"I will just give you this if you promise not to interrogate what we do together and promise you will always help me with my wonderful plans."

"I can't promise that, your plans are bullshit." I said.

He raised an eyebrow, and by doing so raising the candy away from my sight.

"Okay!" I laughed, "I promise whatever you want!"

He whispered deal while lowering his head to meet my mouth, and in a while we are watching the latest StarWars, eating coconuts as if they were popcorn. The stars and universe never seemed so close, and so easy to touch.