Ivy’s face contorted in a sour way. Her arm, she realized, was the place of pain after the adrenaline of running wore off. A shard of glass, thicker than a shard of anything she had seen before, was stuck deep in her skin. It had jammed its little way between her skin just enough to almost cause lasting damage.

Sitting in the infirmary she sighed, she didn’t wish for this to happen of course, but maybe, it was for the best. New traps were found every day and she was sick of the old challenges anyway. Ivy knew it was time to incorporate new strategies into lessons and maybe it was time they started setting traps of their own. After all, the Deck was expanding. In fact, just last week she put Dae in charge of expanding the kitchens, had an overflow in the store room, and they picked up a number of new recruits from the streets.

Yes, the Deck was its own thing now, sprouting new buds even with the conflicts in the city above. What had once been just herself and a measly 3 others in a dusty room with rot in bags of burlap, was now everything to her.

Mycella’s tweasers woke Ivy from her consuming daydreams, “be careful, we fall if we lose you, Ivy.”

The thought choked her up, even now as she saw their stability, there was a weakness, and it was in Ivy’s own recklessness. The science of the wood-lined medicine room was the same consuming one she knew all too well. A silence of brokenness. The wordless noise of shuffling the only thing breaking through the cracks of the room.

“You’ll watch over them, right? If anything happens-“ her voice cracked, Ivy knew how very wrong things could go at any moment. Even as the stores were full and they focused on building a society where they all could thrive, she still led the raids and still took risks. She still would too, for as long as she could because Ivy liked supporting the people she loved. She was the one who saved them from their horrid lives, and she would continue to save them for as long as they lived. Deck would forever be the home she built for the world to go when they were desperately struggling for air. The real family she had built.