the warm world notes

notes

• write in style of babbel and handmaids tale like historic fiction for the future
• explore your obsessions
• what is the history of this new world? what was the great calamity?
• what are the guardians?
• when in history is this taking place?

characters

• Marie, 18 year old girl, victim of the confederacy, escapes and travels through the wilds to find refuge in minnesota (18 in 2210)
• Fierie, chief of staff to the president of minnesota who sees inner workings of the new american council and the new governments of america (36 in 2210)

—“hate can stay alive a long time, when it’s nurtured.”

“And behold, she cried out,
In great pain and suffering—
For we tread upon her body with our careless machinations
And we made her watch as we murdered her many gentle children
And the being that had slept for too many generations
awoke to shake her oppressors off of her back.”

—from the poems of rasha lobel

I didn’t know much history. At least not real history. Most children in the confederacy didn’t have any education, but especially girls, and especially children captured from the wilds. But Ellen had taught me to read, and I had read my stolen book of poems so many times I had practically memorized all of the lines.

It was a book of poems by rasha, who I thought was maybe the greatest poet to ever live. All of the poems were about the calamity and the guardians, who I knew about firsthand. The first memories and years of my life were in the wilds, though I had never heard them called so until I was brought here.

I was fourteen when they finally caught me. I don’t know why they wanted me so badly. Maybe they just wanted any children they could get their hands on. I don’t know. But I know it was them that had killed Ellen and Marie, and burned down our little cabin. They were the reason the guardians had come to my home, and that I had to wander through the wilds for a year and a half on my own.

Once they caught me, they started calling me “wild-girl” and it stuck. I hated that little name.

I wasn’t fourteen anymore. Yesterday had been my eighteenth birthday, and tomorrow was meant to be my wedding day. Maybe that’s why they had wanted to catch me so badly, so they could marry me off to a man twice my age, an ugly, mean man. I’d rather die.

But before anything so drastic, I figured I could at least try to escape. It had been years since I had tried to run away—since the first year they brought me here.

———

Ellen and Marie weren’t my parents. They weren’t really old enough to be.