☛Young Writer's Academy||beginning-advanced||full☚

Κακός paced around the sandy hollow, sweeping his tail along the dusty ground with an expression of frustration and anger. He had one thing on his mind. Thalia. Her alabaster fur gleamed in his eye and made him flinch. He thought of his white daughter and the emotions inside him tore and screeched. Half of him wanted to slash her neck with his sharp claws and end all this trouble, but her large, aqua irises were fixed in his mind. He saw inside them their infinite trust and love and it made him wish, for the first time he was white. He couldn't help feel affectionate for the petite daughter he never thought he would have. He was black, he had always been black. He cherished it; it suited his hard, frigid personality. But… his daughter made all this assurance and pleasure of himself, melt away in the pale sunlight. He had never meant to fall in love with Farani. It was never planned in his life. But her shining white fur and ice blue eyes had lured him in. When she had given birth to the black and white abomination that was Thalia, she had refused to take care of her. He had to beg her and plead with her until she would feed Thalia until she could be weaned. When her promise was fulfilled Farani had vanished, leaving her daughter alone with him. Κακός had tried to murder his daughter when she was born, but he knew he would never have a daughter again. Then when Thalia had said her first word, his heart melted. Her little nose twitched proudly and she danced her long, fluffy tail around and told him: “Dad.”
But still…. his claws sunk into the sand and his eyes frowned. When the sand sunk away and left him clawing nothing, he started to shred the first golden leaf of Autumn in his claws. He jumped as a small paw patted his side. He looked around into the kitten face of Thalia. “Yes, my daughter?” He asked her, trying to hide his love.
“Love Dadda...” She meowed and wrapped her paws around him, in a feline hung.
His eyes widened and his eyes gave way to the fondness and love he felt for Thalia. As she played with his tail he sat still in thought. I cannot leave her. I will always protect you my beautiful, loving daughter.

Imagine a world where people aren't the top dogs. Go ahead. Close your eyes and imagine it; hard to even fathom right? The only thing keeping us there is our intelligence though. So what would happen if that was all taken away? Well, if that happened, you’d be in my shoes. I’m Skin42840538, but you can call me Liz. That’s what I call myself anyway.

So, back to this world. It all happened so suddenly, World War six seven and eight, only months after each other. Everyone was being deployed. It was like the new way to pay taxes. The leaders of the world had gone insane, the battles were ruthless and at the end of World War eight only a five billion people still lived. Oh this is when it gets better right? Wrong. That’s what we thought.

Only days after the three World Wars ended a massive plague hit; and it hit hard. It made it impossible to breath I heard, suffocated you like a snake and drained the life out of you. You could tell when people where suffering. They’d grab their ribs, gasp for air, then suddenly just fall down. The cause kept alluding scientist, and the cure was even harder to find.

After this only a billion people lived. The Plague only halted after it had burnt itself out. There was almost no one left to kill.

The humans had been battered and beaten down. Everyone was afraid and no one trusted anyone. This is when the animals saw their chance. While the humans had been suffering through war and illness for the last seven years the animals had been getting smarter and smarter. They had already been smart, but in this time they took the opportunity to make themselves’ knowledge rival humans. The animals knew how to speak different human languages, work machines, they understood society and emotions. They were finally equal. Now they just had to dumb down the humans, because they still knew a tad more.

The animals did it with drugs. They had the birds spread it through air to be the widest spreading, and it was. The drug only effected humans and made us very submissive and kind of zombie like. The animals were now in control.

They divided up the continents to different animals, as well as the sea and air. Battles still happened over power, some animals wanted to rule the entire world. They used the people, or as they thus forward called them, skins, as slaves. Bought and sold you were a good slave if you did what you were told and in a diligent manner. They called us skins because it connects to why 200 years later their young still treated humans like dirt. We had no fur. We weren't animals, we were unholy things that crawled out from hell and are meant to be punished. What about hair? You might say. Well. In the drug that they dropped to dumb us down, a side effect was losing all of your hair. Head hair, leg hair, even nose hair. All gone. This made survival even harder for us because, well we kind of need hair.

So 200 year after the animals took control I was born. When humans are born it is in a breeding area where animals breed humans to look or be a certain way and sell them. I was meant for housekeeping, so I was pretty average looking. Thin, a small bit of muscle. Some skins were breed for things like field work though, and they were big and strong and powerful. I was bought by a wealthy old blind mole who owned a successful shipping business and kept busy with house chores. That was until. Until I found the secret no one wanted a skin to find. I had found a forgotten library in the mansion my owner called home. This was my way to enlightenment. This was my way, to freedom.