3 Hours

Chapter 3

"So, how was everyone's day?" Eudora, my little sister, asks, trying to start a conversation.

"Fine," Lucia replies pleasantly. "Nothing too exciting, but then again, consider where we are."

Eudora giggles.

"What about you, Aurora?"

"I went to therapy, and that's about it. Chores, you know. The usual." I go back to my soup.

"What about you, Dora?" Lucia asks, not oblivious to the fact that the youngest member of our family is squirming in her seat and looking like she's seconds away from bursting into a story.

"I'm just so bored!" She says in a rush, bouncing a little in her seat as she starts to talk. She's always been the most animated of us. I'm too introverted to be animated, and Lucia is too intelligent to be surprised about anything. Age probably factors in too, given that Dora's only twelve to my sixteen and Lucia's nineteen.

"I wish there were some other kids around here, and we could have friends, and maybe a dog..." She stops immediately when the door bangs open. Father strides into the room, his presence immediately felt. He isn't angry, a least not apparently so, but he radiates an air of disgust.

"Hello, Father," Lucia says, smiling a honey-sweet smile that she reserves for him and the slimiest of the suitors. "How was your day?"

He takes his seat, ignores her, and tastes his soup.

"Why is it..." He muses quietly, "That people aren't happy with what they've been given? I give them jobs, I give them lives, I give them purpose. I keep them fed, clothed, and sheltered, for the most part. They shouldn't want anything. But yet we still have revolutionaries being arrested every day, and more just signing their death warrant. It's madness. I'm so glad I have you girls, and that you're safe here. You don't even have to worry about the outside. You have it made."

We're silent, wondering what comes next. Father's been so stressed lately, trying to run a country that doesn't want to be controlled.

"When you finish dinner, why don't you take some independent study time in your rooms?"

“Of course, Father. What are we to study?" I ask hesitantly, ignoring the look Lucia throws at me.

"Whatever you'd like, the library's always open." He waves his hand as if swatting away my question. "I'm going to eat in my study. I've got so much work to do.