Chapter 1 - Only Time

     My weekends were starting well, slow and lazy as I planned it. No training, no elders and no rush. Absolutely nothing, just the way I like it. I was excused from energy draining activities such as leaving the house and taking out the trash after emphasizing to my mom on how my wounds would risk opening up again if I were to even bend my knee. My mom didn't buy it but she let me get away with it anyway, she's probably used to me getting injured by now due to my interest in taking part in unlady like activities . And every single time I get injured , there would be loads of beauty products piled on my shelf ranging from sunburn treatments ,essential oils to aloe vera freshly grown in a pot. Mom would go on nagging bout which cream I should apply and drone on and on till I have no choice but to just shoot back at her with some statement bout how I will eventually be able to get married anyway, don't worry bout it. That retort always succeeded in letting my mom be at ease bout her daughter's future not to mention granting me some peace and quiet. It's quite queer actually, a scar doesn't make me much less of a woman now does it? But of course , My culture was brought up to believing that girls should have flawless porcelain skin and good breeding, there's not much I can do to change their mindset. Thank the jade emperor,jade rabbit and all the gods up there that I inherited great skin from my dad , so far I still managed to grow back my skin back to its original state with a little scar here and a little marred there. No harm done right?

   I had my feet propped on a small chair and my favorite furball on my lap. The sun on my skin felt like I was being hugged by sunshine itself. Mom was a genius bout extending a veranda to our tree house which is by the way, our real home and not some vacation spot. Landed houses were mostly abolished after the rebellion. Landed and multi-unit houses such as apartments and condos are now replaced with residential areas made up of tree houses. The tree houses come together with a simple lift that is powered by solar energy so that the young, the elderly and the crippled--like me. Can still go home without climbing up the old fashioned way.  To get down from the tree house, you can either take the lift or just use the tree slide that swirls around the tree. Much has changed since the rebellion, tar roads replaced with cool solar panels that can be programmed to light up the road and power the lamp posts and other facilities. Transportation replaced by flying fox from tree to tree and solar powered trains for long distance travel use.  Trees grew without being contained and controlled like it had before the rebellion.

  Those were dark times, where the politicians encouraged everyone to move into these grand towers and condominiums. Urbanization, they said. The urban city was better, all the job opportunities were there and soon after, everyone left their homes for urban city. The ones who didn't had no choice but to move there as well as the government had started cutting out all the power and water supply to areas other than the urban city. People were quite content with the urban city at first, everything you could possibly need is within a tower's reach. They hardly need to go out anymore and thus was unaware of what the government was scheming. Until one day a man found it odd on how he couldn't get the doors leading outside to open and opted to go through the ventilation ducts like he had seen in the movies . The moment he got out, He was short of breath. Something was wrong, why was it so hard to breathe? And as he first took a glance of the outside world after such a long time, he gasped at the view before him. The trees were gone and the hills were stripped bare from any sign of greenery.

    It struck him hard that the people have been deceived and all those times when they looked out the window and saw the same old sceneries of hills and houses were all fake. The windows were programmed to deceive the people and have them all believe that all is well. More truths were revealed as the people rebelled against the government for destroying mother nature. The government threatened to cut the oxygen supply if they were to cause and uproar and that did scare the people a bit as their only source of oxygen was from this snow globe like structure with trees grown inside and the oxygen being connected to the towers via pipes. Nonetheless, the rebellion still carried on and the people managed to succeed by unity and of course, a few assassinations involved.

 "Thank goodness for the rebellion huh ?" I stated to the furball on my lap. Min just yawned and went back to basking in the sun.
"Heh, you'd be cooped up in a tower filled with air conditioning and no sunlight without the rebellion you ignorant cat ."
  But maybe that was why I adored him, nothing really bothers him much. Running my hands across his back, I relaxed and enjoyed the slow pace of the day or so I thought until my mom yelled and made Min jump out of my lap .
"KATE! Aunt Amy wants you to help out at some event again! She's on the phone now! "
Oh well,So much for some needed peace and quiet.