Ten Years Later ... Blogfest

Today is the 10 Years Later ... blogfest, hosted by Angeline Trevena and Laura E. Brown. I think this is a very groovy idea for a 'fest indeed. If only there were more participants, I think it could be even groovier. But never fear, folks, there is still time to sign up! Click here to find the linky. And check out the details of the 'fest:

Have you ever read or written a book that's had you so intrigued, so immersed, that you're left wondering what happened to the characters after the story ends? The Ten Years Later... Blogfest gives your characters the chance to return, the chance to tell their story ten years after you stopped writing it. 

Choose one of your characters from one of your stories, and imagine them ten years after the story ends. Give them a voice a decade later. 

You can write your post in any format you like - a journal entry, a newspaper article, a piece of flash fiction, an interview, or even an obituary. 

And the character I've chosen for my post is Nausicaa, a.k.a. Natasha. Here is what Natasha has to say ten years after she helped to overthrow a brutal, corrupt government:

Sometimes it's hard to believe I'm still alive. Not just because I came so close to dying numerous times before the liberation, but because for the last ten years I really haven't known what the hell to do with myself. People have found me things to do, of course. They tell me I'm useful, definitely much more than a waste of space. But I know the truth, which is that this life can never be as meaningful as the one I led before.

In those days I was fighting against a corrupt regime. I was sneaking through shadows, slipping through cracks. I was saving lives. Nowadays, I stand on a street corner handing out fliers and giving people directions. I deliver lunch orders in the business district, and even manage one company's incoming post. Not really as useful as helping to take down a brutal, tyrannical government, is it?

Ten years ago when I first returned to this city, I walked the streets and slowly came to realise that I was supposed to feel free. Kyam's regime had fallen, the prisons had been emptied, and there was no longer any reason to be afraid. I was supposed to feel free.

I still don't. And I'm still afraid. Kyam's gone, his cronies too, but his legacy remains, a permanent blight we can't ever scrub clean. Scarier than all that, though, is that I don't feel at home in this reality. I feel like I belong back there, in the time when all my friends were alive and we were still fighting.

Naturally I don't tell anyone this, 'cause they think I'm crazy enough as it is. But it's how I feel, and I can't see it changing.

Anyway, I've got to go - the lunch orders are almost ready.