Entry One

I wake up to the sound of scratching at my door.

Shaking briefly to throw off the woven coverlet that holds me down against the wooden frame of the bed, I step groggily across the room to answer the call, doing my best to avoid treading on any of the items that lay on the floor around me. Making a mental note to clear away the assorted items I see through sleep-dulled eyes, I push the door open a crack and look around, scanning the narrow hallway off of which my bedroom is built, and am about to turn around when the shout bursts from behind me, frightening me and causing my heart to give a great thump as I stumble forward.

"Kailen!" I cry indignantly as the shout crumbles into giggles of mirth. My younger brother emerges from behind me, his eyes nearly shut and their surfaces moist with tears of amusement. "That wasn't funny," I say, trying to assume a mature and adult voice to deal with Kailen, who is anything but.

"Still," he says, his voice carrying a whiny tone that he has used since he was quite young. I have always found it irritating when he uses it, but I remain calm and look patronizingly at him, my eyes gazing into his wide, dark ones.

"Why did you wake me up, anyway?" I ask.

"Well, first of all," He stifles a laugh and continues with his sentence when he's quiet again. "You're a sleepyhead..." I sigh, rolling my eyes at his childishness, as he takes up speaking again. "And tomorrow's your fifteenth. You're going to be old!" He bounces up and down on his feet as I take a step back so as not to be jumped on.

"Fifteen's not old," I tell him, though I hide a laugh in the words.

"Yes it is," he protests, clearly enjoying the argument with a suppressed smile and bright eyes. "You're going to be a grown-up tomorrow, and you know it." I let myself smile easily at him, and he grins complacently back. The next day - the sixth of December - will be my birthday, as well as the day of the initiation ceremony for those in their fifteenth year. Ever since I have been a child I have dreamed of the day my ceremony would be performed, and felt special because my birthday fell on that day as well. I still find it interesting that the two days meet. The day my life began, and the day my life will begin.

"So what's it like, being old?" asks Kailen, his high-pitched voice ready to burst into peals of laughter at any given moment.

"Hungry," I give him a smile of comradeship and set off down the lighted hallway with him at my heels, looking back every so often to ensure that he is following me and not wandering off like he has taken to doing lately. We reach a flight of stairs, and though I step forward evenly to reach the door at the top that leads into a larger passageway, Kailen bounces enthusiastically up them in a way that suggests there are springs under his feet. When we reach the door, I push it open, and when we reach the end of the second hallway, I smile as the scent of the familiar meal reaches me.

The stew boils invitingly over the embers in the room's corner, the pieces of meat catching my eye as I sit down at the low table. It's not often that we have meat for our meals, though stew is quite common in our colony, and the meal appears delicious. Kailen's about to sneak a taste of it when my mother snatches the carved wooden spoon from him, placing it on the makeshift counter as he walks dejectedly back to the table, dropping himself in the seat beside me and tucking his legs under him as he leans forward, resting on the table as he waits for the meal to begin.

"What time is it?" I ask, the thought rising to the top of my mind, and she stops stirring the stew for a moment to answer.

"Late morning," she says gently, resuming the circular movement of the stirring spoon in the pot. Kailen nods energetically, turning to face me.

"Rian's a sleepyhead," he declares. "I had to go wake him up." In spite of myself, I laugh, and my mother gives a small chuckle as well before she tests the stew's consistency.

"Well, it's good that you went to wake him up," says my mother briskly, changing the direction in which she stirs the meal to spread the rich flavour throughout it. Kailen sits up straight before he speaks.

"He can't be late for his Initiation tomorrow. I never sleep in on my birthday." He glances around the dusty room, a bragging smirk dominating his expression. I smile at him in spite of it.

"I won't sleep in," I assure him. I'm far too excited for the day for such a thing to happen.

"So are you excited for your day tomorrow?" I look up from the table, the wooden surface of which I had been studying intently, my eyes gazing at the swirling patterns in the wood, and nod. Unlike the spoon she uses to keep the stew's ingredients from sinking to the bottom of the pot and the bowls she'll spoon it into when it's ready, the table's made from a type of wood that is uncommon in our colonies. Overworld wood.

Most of the wooden products we have are carved from trees we grow underground, but due to the lack of natural light we are provided with we're required to turn to different methods to grow the trees, and the wood is thin and pale, instead of anything close to the warm colour of the table I sit in front of. Every so often, one of the adults manages to pick up a few pieces of scrap wood, discarded by the ones that live above us, and bring it back to the underground colonies where it is refined, carved, and made some family's prized possession. This table is easily the most valuable object mine owns.

"I wonder what the ceremony's like," I murmur absently, more to myself than to my family, though my brother laughs and replies to the thought.

"You've been there every year, silly," he giggles. "Ever since you were little. I remember going with you when I was little. Remember the year we sat at the very front of the room?" I nod, turning to face him.

"I didn't mean going to the ceremony. I mean being there on the platform. I've seen the years before me go up in front of everyone, but I don't know what it feels like to be them." Satisfied with my explanation, I lean over and press the side of my face against the cool surface of the wood, placidly enjoying the smooth feeling. His face takes on an expression of acceptance as the half-filled bowls of stew are placed on the table, and we reach forward to take our first mouthfuls of the food. I haven't eaten since the previous night and the food tastes even better than it usually does as I swallow it greedily, almost more so than Kailen, who eats ravenously each morning as a regular event. When I finish the majority of the bowl, I push the bowl back toward the centre of the low table, but Kailen picks it up and tips the remainder into his open mouth. I turn away, grimacing, though I suppress a giggle when no one else is looking.

"It's time to go to school, Rian," chastises my mother as I lean placidly back from the wooden edge, still savouring the last traces of flavour in my mouth. I wait a couple of seconds before I rise and leave the room.

"Love you," I call affectionately back to the room behind me, and I assume she nods while I open the door and exit the dwelling into the hallway. This colony is made up of hallways.

My whole world is made up of hallways.