This is my first submission, my first time trying to write anything erotic actually. Not a very erotic chapter but more to come if it's liked. Constructive criticism is encouraged. :)
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Everything began on a very beautiful day, a day fitting of the colloquialism, "the calm before the storm". For once Malia wasn't the first to get up. Her mother and father had let her sleep and she was woken to the gentle breeze drifting across her sun-warmed skin. The three windows of their small shack were all open and the only noises that could be heard were those of the birds outside. Malia wondered how her parents had managed to get her seven-year-old twin brothers out of the small home without waking her. However they'd accomplished the feat, she was happy that they had. She stretched out in the full size bed that she shared with her brothers and younger sister. She could lounge in the bed and enjoy the space for once.
She inhaled the fresh spring air and listened to the singing birds. It was moments like this that she forgot about the war, about her old suburban home, about the past completely. She could breathe and be strictly in the moment. She exhaled and opened her eyes. Moments couldn't last forever. Malia got up and grabbed one of the generic gray jumpsuits she, and everyone else in the unit, wore everyday. She grabbed her toothbrush, toothpaste, hairbrush, and shoes as well and headed to the communal bathrooms. Malia remembered when she had complained at having to share a bathroom with her sister. Now she shared a bathroom with over three hundred other women.
It was late in the morning and the bathrooms would be empty. Malia reveled in the privacy she wasn't often allotted. Usually everyone on the unit woke with the sun and the bathrooms were everyone's first stop. Often Malia would envy the men, their bathroom was always quicker to empty. Many of the women's vanity had not died with their luxuries. Hot water and electricity were valued commodities and were only supplied to the bathrooms for a couple of hours each morning. Unfortunately Malia had missed out on the warm water hours and took a quick, cold shower in the large dark room. She finished getting ready for the day and went to find her parents.
Malia's mother, Kristen, worked with a small group of women sewing clothing and blankets. Often at this time of year they would bring their work outside and sit and talk while they worked. She found the women right outside the unit's makeshift hospital where her father, Jack, worked. She walked over to where her mother sat sewing a new jumpsuit.
"Ah, she lives."
"Hi mom. Thanks for letting me sleep. What's the occasion?" Malia picked up a suit with a hole in the shoulder and sat next to her mother.
"Ah you work too hard, you're a teenager. You need your sleep." She passed Malia a needle and thread.
Malia took the needle and began to repair the suit. "I'm twenty."
"Same difference."
Malia smiled. "How'd you get the spawns out quietly?" she asked, referring to her brothers.
"Oh your father has quite the supply of sedatives. We shot the little suckers in the arm and out like a light." Her mother replied stony faced without looking up from her work.
Malia laughed, " You know, if I didn't know you better, I would think you were serious." She had finished the small hole and placed the suit in the basket of completed work.
"Oh my sweet, you know I'm never serious. It would be oh so very boring."
"Heaven forbid. Dad busy?" Malia asked motioning towards the hospital behind her.
"Never too busy for you princess" came her father's voice. She turned around, slightly startled. He leaned against the doorframe and smiled. " I was just about to ask you for help."
"Isn't Olivia in there?" Malia's eighteen-year-old sister had always shown an aptitude to follow in their father's footsteps. Where Malia was squeamish and clumsy, Olivia was steady-handed and unfazed by nearly anything. Malia didn't like the hospital and Olivia essentially lived there.
"Of course she is. I need your help. Don't worry there's barely any blood involved." Her dad laughed at the disgusted face Malia made. "You know I'm kidding, I just need you to climb up into the attic and look for some books."
Twenty minutes later Malia climbed out of the tightly packed attic with some dusty books. She went to go find her sister. Olivia was bandaging a man's arm in a separate room when Malia found her.
"Hey, need any, uh, help?"
Olivia laughed without looking up at her sister. "No you can sit this one out, I've got it." She finished and told the man her father would be in shortly. The girls left the room and walked into the hallway. "Sorry I couldn't help with the books. You know, small spaces and everything." Olivia looked ashamed of showing weakness. She had been debilitatingly claustrophobic for as long as Malia could remember. She had to sleep on the edge of the bed and get up early every morning to avoid the crowded showers or she would have panic attacks.
"Don't worry about it. It's not a problem." Malia smiled to reassure her.
Olivia smiled back briefly. "I'm starving, want to go get lunch?"
"Yeah, I have to go ask dad what I'm supposed to do today. I have a lot of time to make up for from all that beauty sleep."
