Norr stared at her reflection in the only remaining window on the ground floor of one of the skyscrapers that jaggedly marred the skyline of old Sen Fynnesca. In the thin gray light that trickled down amongst the rundown glass buildings, she really studied herself for the first time in months. It had almost been shattered, either in the storms or the riots. The spider web pattern of cracks centred on head-sized crater in the top right corner of the 10 foot high pane. At eye level, the fractures were further apart and she could study herself in the large, unbroken piece that was roughly shaped like a star.

She watched her mouth smile wryly as she thought the word "star". How far she had fallen. She wiped the smudge of dirt off her cheek. The streets around her were swept impossibly clean every day, so the dirt must be from the small cubicle she shared with her mother in one of the abandoned office buildings. She tried another wry smile, but it came out as more of a grimace. She tried again and ended up looked sheepish, coy, amused, and sarcastic at the same time. And there was a hint of her old radiance. The charisma and light that had dazzled the Highlinker society at countless parties and events glimmered faintly. Now she stood outside on the cold gray sidewalk on a dull gray morning looking into a broken window reflecting on who she had been and studying what she had become.

In the six month since the war had ended, she had worked more than she had in the previous 22 years of her life. She was tired. Drained. Exhausted. Devoid of any spirit. At least, setting her chin straight, she did not look quite as haggard as she felt. In the crisp November air, her cheeks had a flattering pink flush. No redness or dripping nose. Just an added blush to her face. Her lips were naturally a deep pink and her eyes lingered on them, as they were slightly chapped. She moistened lightly with her tongue, even though she knew it would not do any good. For the moment, however, they looked like a fresh piece of fruit. Her blue eyes ringed with dark brown lashes needed no reassuring - they were catlike, knowing, and proud. Her very best feature.

It had been fifteen months since the collapse of her father, the Foundation, and highlinker society – basically her whole worlds. It had been six months since they had cut off all her hair. As a twenty-three year old woman whose whole life had revolved around how she looked and who she knew, this event had been the most painful and demeaning part of the past year. Worse than prying up the cracked and unlevel asphalt that had lain abandoned since the Linkage had re-emerged after the chaos and the Chaos Wars.

Nor pushed the blue toque on her head back a bit to reveal a beautiful 2 inch long golden curl. She shuddered to think of the day six months ago that her head had been shaved. Her hair had always been sought after and the centre of attention. That day it had been both of those things for all the wrong reasons.

The curl settled between her eyes. It wasn’t the most flattering position, but it covered where she was in desperate need of tweezers. She’d trade them for a patch of canvas to repair her one pair of pants during the first winter. She had traded away most of the items from their Fourdale mansion in the past year. In the first few months after the collapse, Norr and her mother continued to live as they always had – in style. They no longer used goldlinks, no one did, but they had a house full of possessions and traded freely without thought of bartering. They thought the system would recover quickly and things would go back to normal.

Normal for people such as Elenora and her mother Katriana, was a life of luxury. They ate the finest food, bought the most current and expensive clothing, attended the ritziest parties, and considered themselves superior to everyone. Katriana was encouraged by her friends to volunteer at a shelter for the lower classes, like lunks and alinks, but only went once and bragged about how she had bettered society for weeks. They had lived in the most affluent area of Sen Fynniskoh, facing the bay with cobblestone streets and beautiful stone mansions and shops. When the linkage emerged after the chaos, the ancestors of the highlinkers did not feel it was necessary to clean up and dismantled what was left of the city after the chaos. They liked to keep it as a reminder of how monstrous society had been in comparison to their quaint, picturesque town.

Now they lived in a cubicle on the fifth floor of what was formerly a bank in the old part of the city. They had traded away many of their possessions by the end of the first six months of the collapse. There was an early winter and their mansion was no longer heated. They burned what furniture they had and then her mother got sick. In the middle of January Norr stood at the linkway station for two days with her mother bundled in both their jackets and two blankets waiting for a train to come to take them into the city. The Band and their Cause had taken hold in the fall, when people realize that the Foundation had abandoned the city. All of Norr’s highlinked friends had left Sen Fynniskoh for their country homes, where effects of the collapse were less noticeable – at least to an outsider. The majority of lower linked help left their estate for the city, but they did not actively rebel against their former masters. Enough of the older servants stayed so they could still enjoy the lives they were all accustomed. But in Sen Fynniskoh, the Band believed that highlinkers were not necessarily more special or useful than an alinked person – it really depends on what link the person had and its strength. A person that could link to glass just by humming a certain note, was much more useful than a person that had to focus on a ladybug or a white sock to get their link to work. However, the still were at a loss as to how to integrate lunks into their new society – where everyone was assigned a job that best suited their link. Elenora had been initiated into the Rock squad. At the time she’d felt a smug superiority toward the men and women who made up the group that had such a simple…Norr cringed at the memory..and cute name. She learned that the rock squad was in charge of tearing up the roads of the city. Life had been brutal for her. Not only because she had fallen so far and had never worked before, but because the others resented her for her previous standing. They didn’t understand that even though everyone found the work hard, it was even harder for her.

The Band wanted to finish the task the storms of the chaos had started and their ancestors had neglected – dismantle old Sen Fynnniskoh. There were linkers in charge of the crews, but only those whose best link was to glass or stone or metal. And they needed work for the lunks - the leaders did not want anyone to be idle. The removal of all the roads of Sen Fynniskohom would take years, which would hopefully give them enough time to rectify the problem of the unlinked. Everyone needed to have at least one useful link for an equal society.

Not only did the Band disagree with the structure of highlinker society, but they felt that society had moved too far away from the Canons of Fynn, the first of which was that humans and links should have balance. The first linker was certainly honoured enough throughout the entire Sen Fynniskohom, not just in Fynn. But it was too obvious. The highlinkers had put on such a show to assure the rest of society that they were devout follows of Fynn – they had even taken to calling the people who donate the most money to the Brothers of Fynn infynnites. This crassness, which some even considered heretical, as well as their use of and segregation by the links had caused a revolution. In this new world, the Canons of Fynn would be central. And not forgotten.

After Norr had haughtily cast her eyes over the dozen members of her crew, who would be responsible for the western quadrant of the city, Tommy, Max, Jim, and Paula shaved her head and re-christened her Norr. Not even Nora. It had taken two people to hold her body, one to hold her head, while the fourth shaved as she kicked, squirmed and screamed. She was now treated as an unlinked person, which, she would only admit in her weakest moments, she really was. Her great-great-grandfather had been linked to steel, concrete, bone, and gold, through one of the rarer inlets of scent. His ability allowed him to inhale one of these materials and sense the location of other instances of the element had made him very wealthy and had bolstered the family to the top of the emerging social order after Chaos Wars. Not all highlinkers had links that made them wealthy, but even the poorer ones held the posture of a king.

It was Max who had given her the toque after her haircut. Norr was grateful and not just because she was embarrassed not to have hair. They leaders of the squad had done more than just cut her hair short, they had taken a razor and shaved her head. The first thing she noticed was how cold her head was – she could feel what direction the wind was blowing. It was coming from the north. Also the south, west, and east. And it was cold.

It was for Max that she adjusted the curl. She had not seen him again for the rest of the winter, but he had rejoined the squad three weeks ago. Norr had changed a lot in the past few months she was actually attracted to a man that was alink – not that the number of links you had mattered anymore – unless you were a lunk. He had used his stone link in the mines north of the city before the Collapse. He was moderately ranked within the Band – Norr figured it wouldn’t hurt to be close to someone important. He was also tall, dark, and strong – things that were important to Elenora. It was more than that though, he was nice to her, which was especially valuable in her new world that had very little privilege. He spoke with her and asked her how she was doing. He’d even whispered something in her ear during Tommy’s morning briefing. She didn’t even know what he’d said, but it was the most touching interaction she’d had in over a year. Most members of the crew barely even looked at her. The other highlinks or trinks who had been secret lunks were too embarrassed about their societal fall to talk to anyone. They came to work each day, kept their head down and quickly dispersed when the day was over. The low links who either had a link to stone or had useless links in this developing society were a rowdy bunch. They’d laugh and joke together. They’d sing work songs to help the time pass. They mostly ignored the highlinks and trinks, but a few of them would sneer at them and insult them, and a few would look at them in sympathy.

During her first weeks as a Rock squad member, Norr had gone to the Broken Fiddle, the bar that many members of Rock squad frequented that had been opened in what used to be a 3-story posh hotel in the new area of Sen Fynniskoh. She replayed the scene that followed in her head like something from a movie – she could hardly believe it happened. She pulled open the door and entered a room that had been decorated to look like an old English pub. The bar was a dark mahogany with bottles of alcohol she hadn’t seen in months. There was a fiddler in the corner with a perfectly functioning fiddle singing out music she hadn’t heard in months. She stared hungrily at the roaring fire set in the stone fireplace. She was surrounded by conversations and laughter – this was her element. She took a step forward into the room and the fiddler was the first to notice her, eyes wide. He hit a wrong note and the racing song fell apart. A hush fell over the entire room in an instant. Every eye in the room stared at her like she had watched the fire. No one moved. The only sound was the crackling of the fire. Norr was certain she stood frozen to the ground for at least five minutes. The last time so many people had look at her was when she had walked into the Marmedal Charity Ball the previous spring with her long golden curls flowing down her back. She was wearing a light pink strapless satin dress and was on the arm of her father, Tiberius Marmedal. Her best friends Isabella, Gloriana, and Elizabetta had come rushing forward to coo over her dress.

Standing in the Broken Fiddle was different. It was if each stare had been thoughtfully and specially designed to tell her that she was not welcome.

So she raised her chin slightly like her mother taught her to look haughty. She smiled ever so slightly to look smug. Bowed her head with the proper mix of sarcasm and deference. And then she left. If her parents had taught her anything it was how to play the social game. But as the door was closing she heard a hundred people break into cheers and laughter at her departure. She waited outside the pub for a few minutes. Waiting for someone to realize what a terrible mistake they had made and come out and apologize for their rudeness. To welcome her as she accustomed. No one came and she got cold, so she went home, or whatever their cubicle should be called.

Now that the others had seen Max talking to her, they made cautious approaches toward her. One girl, Flo, complimented her short leather jacket. Norr had smiled inwardly with satisfaction – it was the only clothing from her previous life she had saved. Kev had showed her how to bind her hands with canvas to protect them from the rough work they did. After months of falling behind because of ripping her hands open on the road or working clumsily with mittens on, she could finally keep up. Even the leader Tommy had gruffly asked her how she was the other day. However brief these interactions were, it was nice to speak to someone again other than her mother.

She brushed out the curl with her fingers until it for a small golden halo on her forehead and repeated this action with a few other curls. It looks like she had bangs and all her other hair was tucked up in her hat. She ran her tongue along her still beautifully white teeth and smiled her best smile. She was now ready to go see Max.

Next Chapter: Loss - 2191