Ellie woke up with dread sitting heavy in her chest.

They had announced just a week prior that the offering would take place today, and if each family couldn’t choose a member on their own, one would be randomly selected.

When they first announced the mandate she didn’t fully believe it…

yes, food had been scarce as of late… and there had been more then a few days when they had only one meal a day. Usually consisting of a slop of some thick grain porridge and some small pickled vegetables she had foraged over the fall last year.

She had walked 3 days to get to the small forest at the edge of the city to get those vegetables. It wasn’t much but you could find the occasional mushroom or leek if you looked well enough and Ellie always knew where to look.

Most people in the Dregs didn’t bother to go that far for a few measly vegetables. They were either too old to make the 3 day trip or to busy working full days at the mines.

Ellie was only 16 and she spent most of her time reading when she wasn’t at classes or helping around the house. She took a particular interest in nature from a young age… maybe it was the loss of so much of it made it precious to her. The world was mostly fully grey now but there were some small patches of trees that had survived the war. It wasn’t much at all but it meant everything to her.

Her father had been the one to encourage this strange interest of hers when she was a child. On more then one occasion he had offered up his skilled hands for labour, in trade for another book for her.

It was hardly a fair trade. No one in the dregs seemed to care much for recreational reading. No one had the time. But her father didn’t seem to care about that. He always had a wide smile on his face when he would come back at the end of the day. His hands blistered and bleeding as he handed her the worn writings.

“Edible and medicinal plants of Arkness” and “field guide to the Darkgon forests” were her personal favourites.

As she thought of her father, tears welled in her eyes.

He hadn’t been well the last few years. A mining cough had plagued him and he would offen need to sit down to catch his breath after only walking a few steps.

It was because of this factor that when the offering had been announced last week on the emergency radio, he had turned to the rest of his family and said it would be him that would go.

Her mother had cried for 2 days straight. Her brother Ben was only 3 and couldn’t fully understand the depth of his sacrifice…

But Ellie… she was angry. Her father may not have been well but he made her life better. He still sat with her every night before bed. Drinking hot tea made of herbs she collected around the city, telling her stories about what the world has been like before the war.

He was the only person in town that would ask her about what she was reading… aside from jasper of course..

And even when he would start wheezing and need to sit down, he would still look up at her and give her that wide smile after he was finally able to catch his breath again.

She knew they had no options. Her father would never risk them taking one of his kids or their mother… yet the pain still sat heavy in her chest. The pain was sharp and hot… and desperate to escape, if only able to through the water in her eyes.

She breathed in sharp through her nose, wiped her face with her stained oversized sleeve and forced herself to pull her shoulders back.

She had to stay strong for the rest of them. “Knowledge is Power my sweet” her father had always said to her. So she would try to exude that power. Be a walking remembrance of that gift he had given her. To honor his memory. Even if most of the time she felt like a complete fraud and a waste of space.

She loosed one last steadying breath and turned the corner and walked into the kitchen and began to prepare two cups of tea for her and her father.

For what would be the last time…