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Description

For as long as I could remember, I’d lived in that house on the Naransaan Expanse with Mother and my brothers and sisters. There were about twenty of us all together, not counting Mother. She wasn’t really our mother, just like a guardian, kind of like how we weren’t really brothers and sisters. There was actually only one person in that house I was related to, and that was my biological brother Adrian.
The house is the only one for hundreds of miles. You see, the Naransaan Expanse is pretty much just that: a vast piece of land made of hundreds of square miles of completely uninhabited land. Almost the entire space is perfectly flat, with only a few hills, most of which are man-made to accommodate the overpasses necessary for the crisscrossing roads that connect the distant cities. The overpasses were built in place of intersections because of the number of crashes that happened at them due to the high-speed vehicles used to cross the Expanse.
Then there was my former residence. It was built in almost the exact center of the Expanse. There, a hill was hollowed out to make something that looks like a doughnut to build the house in. the only break in the ring is where the driveway leads to a road connecting to one of the cities, where our supplies came from once a week. It was an odd place to live, but the shelter of the hills has always been necessary on the Expanse.
You see, the Expanse is an extremely dangerous place to live, and it’s a wonder we were out here in the first place. The house was the source of something like an experiment to determine if orphans of many backgrounds will become more like a family than in a regular orphanage if the other orphans are the only other people to interact with. We were sent here at a very young age, and grew up together, so it’s not like we asked to live here. We’re protected by not just the raised walls, but also by the technology of a certain type of field surrounding the house that protects us from the regular convulsions of nature that occur on the Expanse. I’m referring to the almost daily storms that spawn thousands of massive tornados and nothing more. They occur randomly, and are only occasionally predictable, which is another reason for the high-speed vehicles, and the shelters built into every overpass. No one wants to remain here for long.
I was the third oldest in the house, and my brother was the ninth, and we were an odd case. We weren’t sent here, we found this place on our own when the vehicle our family was traveling in was caught in one of the storms. My parents were taken by the storm, never to be seen again, but my brother and I were stuck deep within the vehicle, and though we were tossed around, the storm could not carry us away. I was six at the time, by brother only an infant. I managed to protect him from too much jostling, but got knocked around enough that I can only recall a few vague images of what happened before the accident. This place is the only one we can remember, but we were not chosen to come to this place.
I’d always gotten the feeling that Mother didn’t like me as much as the others. She is rougher on me than the others, though she wasn’t actually mean to anyone. She just seemed to have little tolerance for my mistakes or antics, but her reprimands and punishments were always fair. It never really bothered me; it was just something I noticed. I’d always gotten the feeling that her reasons for being that way were good reasons, and that I’d find out someday.
Everyone worked in that house. We all did chores, took turns doing the worst ones, and helped each other out. There was rarely fighting, and despite the terrifying conditions of the space outside our home, we were comfortable, because we were a family. Every day was different, and we hardly got bored. Our life was constant, with few events to alter the course of our lives.
That didn’t last forever.

Description

For as long as I could remember, I’d lived in that house on the Naransaan Expanse with Mother and my brothers and sisters. There were about twenty of us all together, not counting Mother. She wasn’t really our mother, just like a guardian, kind of like how we weren’t really brothers and sisters. There was actually only one person in that house I was related to, and that was my biological brother Adrian.
The house is the only one for hundreds of miles. You see, the Naransaan Expanse is pretty much just that: a vast piece of land made of hundreds of square miles of completely uninhabited land. Almost the entire space is perfectly flat, with only a few hills, most of which are man-made to accommodate the overpasses necessary for the crisscrossing roads that connect the distant cities. The overpasses were built in place of intersections because of the number of crashes that happened at them due to the high-speed vehicles used to cross the Expanse.
Then there was my former residence. It was built in almost the exact center of the Expanse. There, a hill was hollowed out to make something that looks like a doughnut to build the house in. the only break in the ring is where the driveway leads to a road connecting to one of the cities, where our supplies came from once a week. It was an odd place to live, but the shelter of the hills has always been necessary on the Expanse.
You see, the Expanse is an extremely dangerous place to live, and it’s a wonder we were out here in the first place. The house was the source of something like an experiment to determine if orphans of many backgrounds will become more like a family than in a regular orphanage if the other orphans are the only other people to interact with. We were sent here at a very young age, and grew up together, so it’s not like we asked to live here. We’re protected by not just the raised walls, but also by the technology of a certain type of field surrounding the house that protects us from the regular convulsions of nature that occur on the Expanse. I’m referring to the almost daily storms that spawn thousands of massive tornados and nothing more. They occur randomly, and are only occasionally predictable, which is another reason for the high-speed vehicles, and the shelters built into every overpass. No one wants to remain here for long.
I was the third oldest in the house, and my brother was the ninth, and we were an odd case. We weren’t sent here, we found this place on our own when the vehicle our family was traveling in was caught in one of the storms. My parents were taken by the storm, never to be seen again, but my brother and I were stuck deep within the vehicle, and though we were tossed around, the storm could not carry us away. I was six at the time, by brother only an infant. I managed to protect him from too much jostling, but got knocked around enough that I can only recall a few vague images of what happened before the accident. This place is the only one we can remember, but we were not chosen to come to this place.
I’d always gotten the feeling that Mother didn’t like me as much as the others. She is rougher on me than the others, though she wasn’t actually mean to anyone. She just seemed to have little tolerance for my mistakes or antics, but her reprimands and punishments were always fair. It never really bothered me; it was just something I noticed. I’d always gotten the feeling that her reasons for being that way were good reasons, and that I’d find out someday.
Everyone worked in that house. We all did chores, took turns doing the worst ones, and helped each other out. There was rarely fighting, and despite the terrifying conditions of the space outside our home, we were comfortable, because we were a family. Every day was different, and we hardly got bored. Our life was constant, with few events to alter the course of our lives.
That didn’t last forever.