Voice: Chapter 1, Everything and Nothing

     Chapter 1: Everything and Nothing

Julian wanted to say something. Anything. His mouth simply could not make the proper noises. He wanted to scream; but that, too, was impossible. He doubted anyone would hear or care, anyway.
As he watched his only chance of rescue drive further and further away, tears stung at the corners of his eyes. He reached his arms out of the grate in the wall in a desperate attempt which was doomed to failure straight from the beginning.
"Stop!" he mouthed, though no sound escaped his lips. "Wait! Please!" Until now, he had never had any desire to speak. He had his own language, and until now he had not seen any reason for his language to fail him.
Drawing circles and patterns in the air, however, would not save him from this life of slavery. It would not save him from having to stay here hours upon hours, constantly working.
With every second that rolled by, the car with his future secured inside of it rolled on, slowly disappearing from his sight over the hill.
His sister was in that car.
His only family.
Julian supposed he should be happy that at least Mina got to get out of this hellhole. All the same, he curled into a tight little ball and cried.
Deira found him, hours later, still curled into a ball; though his eyes were long since run dry. "Julian," she murmured, placing a hand on his shoulder. "What's wrong?"
Without uncurling the rest of his body, Julian used his hands to draw patterns in the air, occasionally locking certain fingers together in very precise motions.
"I'm sure that wasn't your only chance… Maybe they'll come back," Deira supplied. There were twigs in her long, wild, pepper-black hair, and the specks of mud on her skirt suggested she had just been in the woods; picking berries or gathering nuts.
Julian was supposed to be chopping firewood at the moment, but, at the moment, he didn't care. All he wanted to do was never move from this spot.
Deira placed her free hand on one of his in an effort to comfort her friend. Her dark-chocolate skin looked made Julian's look pale and sickly. Deira had been here since she was five years old. She had been taken from her home land when she was just a baby, and ever since her mother had died she had been miserably alone.
She was just fourteen; where Julian, thin, strong, lovely Julian, was fifteen. Her eyes were hazel, with flecks of sparkling green scattered within them, as though someone had sprinkled bits of fairy dust onto her irises.
Julian's hair was a dark brown, made even more so by the dirt and ash constantly mixing themselves within it. His eyes were an opaque blue, much like the sapphires which often hung from Ketzia's ears.
Ketzia.
The name sent a shiver of hatred tingling up Deira's spine. The woman's voice stung her skin like a whip. No; worse than a whip. Deira would know. She had experienced both.
"They won't come back," Julian's long, nimble, practiced fingers barely moved; his equivalent of a whisper. "They hate me."
"No, Julian!" Deira exclaimed, horrified. "Your sister loves you."
Julian glared at her. "That doesn't mean they will come back. They don't need me; I'm just a voiceless boy. I am nothing." He made a fist after saying nothing to emphasize his statement.
"Julian!" Deira had tears in her eyes. He was not nothing. He was everything; everything. Without him, she would be completely alone. She would have no one. She could not let him keep thinking he was nothing; he was her everything. Couldn't he see that?
No.
He couldn't.
He never would.
Because she was silent in those matters; just as he was silent always.