It's one fifty-two A.M. I tiptoe ever so quietly to the window on the far side of my room, and peer out. Most people would call this strange, but for the past few years, I've become fixated on gazing out my window, and observing the stars. I swear, I could spend hours mindlessly staring up at those bright little specks of light, scattered across the dark blanket of night. I've used it as a distraction from those little complicated things in life that I try to avoid focusing on. Sometimes, if I'm lucky I'll spot a shooting star. Those are always the most beautiful. I guess that sounds pretty ironic, since here in Raeyan, people are not valued for beauty. Beauty is considered a weakness. Those who are very beautiful are considered plain and stupid. Being intelligent and capable is preferred. Being useful ups your advantage here, since we live in such a busy little gathering, and someone useful is always needed. Beauty has long been forgotten. So now even the stars don't seem to matter as much. I close my shutters and head to bed. Stargazing has taken it's toll on me tonight, and today's earlier activities have made me feel extremely worn out. I'm right about to climb into bed, cozy up under the old, warm cotton quilt, and nestle my head against my pillow, when hunger hits me like a blow to the stomach. I clench my teeth as my stomach growls violently. This is what stargazing is supposed to distract me from, everyday problems and the occasional uncomfortable pangs of starvation. I sit on my bed,crossing my arms, and weighing the odds of me getting caught, and whether or not sneaking food from the kitchen would be worth it. But I'm practically starving. My stomach feels like its being devoured from the inside, and the pain is beginning to become extremely unbearable. If I take something, my mother will find out. My mother and I are very poor, meaning that food does not come very often. And when it does, she either eats it herself, or sells it to the market for a little extra cash,enough to keep us, meaning only herself, alive. My mother is a very selfish woman; this is what keeps us at an equal distance away from each other. We simply permit each other, because we are family She allows me to live with her, simply because I am her daughter. Either way though, I have to live here anyways. In Raeyan, it is law that children must stay with their birth parents until they are twenty. Orphans live on the streets. No one wants a child that is not there's. In our gathering, it is considered desirable to have a child that has similar features as you. Many orphans are very young children, and are not yet old enough to fend for themselves. In dark corners, and deep into markets, the crumpled corpses of dead orphans spread wide-across the area. Often times they were beggars, which of course is pointless, because here, begging is highly illegal. Most orphans caught begging, are shot mercilessly by actual Raeyans, since our gathering is a one-unit, meaning, it is run by the people in the gathering, as a whole, rather than a single, specialized ruling party. There are many other gatherings that are ruled by a party, like our closest enemies a few miles away, the Alderan. They are ruled by Hadean, a vile and hellish man. He ruthlessly tortures his own people. In the Alderan gathering, people who wander outside the gathering boundaries, or even simply disturb him, are sent to torture chambers. Tortures can last for as long as a week, to a month. No one knows what is used for these tortures, but it's probably something horribly lethal, that kills the victim slowly over a long period of time. No crimes in Alderan result in a shooting. Hadean believes that sudden death is too quick and easy. We don't use torture here, mainly because torture is an organized,