Lucky Sevens Sunday Snippet - Unequal pg 77 minus 1

Here we are again for another Lucky Sevens Sunday Snippet.  Today we're going back to Unequal and spending some time with Rue while she thinks about her past.

As always, with the LSSS, I went to a 7 page to pick a snippet, but today I cheated a little.  Page 77 is part of an important point in Rue's life, but without a lot of explanation, there wasn't much I could snip from there.  So I went back one page...

At this point, Rue's escaped from the DOE (the Department of Equalization) and is being led someplace safe by a man named Crispin.

The last time she wandered alone in the outdoors had to have been the night before she was released from education and given her first assignment in the working world.  Even though it was her last night with her mother, she felt the need to get away.  To walk amongst the trees and the vacant lots seemed a proper end to her childish adventures.  She strolled to the bank of the thin waterway and threw pebbles into the sluggish trickle.  She caressed the trunks of trees she was too old to climb.

Then she’d been alone.  Curfew was several hours past.  In the danger of possibly getting caught, she found a kind of freedom she knew she wouldn’t taste any time soon.  The very next day, DOE workers would arrive to transport her belongings to a new set of quarters.  She would awaken in her own bed and fall asleep in a strange place. 

She shivered and Crispin tucked her closer along his side, playing the perfect mate.  For a moment, Rue let herself revel in the feeling.  If she could spend years pretending to be a doctor, a few moments of pretending she belonged to someone who belonged to her couldn’t hurt.

When she was walking in the darkness and solitude, she dreamed of being assigned such a mate.  She created a whole fantasy future for herself—one where the DOE assigned her to be a doctor, and she experience love at first sight with the man who was appointed as her spouse.  She never imagined being stuck into a hovel on the other side of town.  She never conceived of being told the best way she could serve her fellow man was as a janitor.  Even in her nightmares, she didn’t envision finding an appointed mate waiting for her at the start of her new life.

The next day she went to work and never went back to either the man or the dwelling.  As far as she was concerned, he could have the apartment and her earnings.  All she wanted was to be left alone—even if it meant living in a basement and scrounging for food.

Hope you enjoyed it.  If you play along, please let me know so I can post a link to your page.  I can't wait to see what you're working on.  =o)

Additional players:

Janice from Figuring it Out: Murder in Camera