Shake on It

“And STAY in there!”
The jail cell’s door slammed shut as the boy’s body fell to the ground with a thud, shoved into the dank room by his captors. He coughed up the dust spread into the lungs by his fall, momentarily feeling like he might choke, before sitting up to see the jailers spit between the bars, dealing him icy glares. He gladly dealt them back, rubbing a bit of dirt off of his cheek with the back of his hand. With that, they turned and walked away, their footsteps and faint voices echoing down the dimly lit corridors.
“Stupid-ass pricks…” the boy muttered, getting to his feet. He dusted his ripped, brown pants off with both hands before gripping the metal bars in front of him and attempting to poke his head through as far as it could go, which turned out to be, unsurprisingly, not very far away at all. He glowered like this, for a moment, until a voice spoke up from behind him.
“What’re you in here for, boy? Don’t you have a whole life ahead of you to live?”
He turned, squinting his eyes in the dim light to look at the speaker. They were in the corner, an old, frail woman wearing layers upon layers of cloaks and deep set wrinkles. Her arms, the boy judged, were thin enough for him to snap with ease. And he thought he was scrawny. He laughed a laugh with thinly veiled misery, leaning his weight onto his right foot.
“According to these people, the life I’ve got to live is 5 days long.”
The woman stayed silent for a moment, as if that news was too much for her to hear. As if there was nothing for her to say. He couldn’t blame her. He didn’t know what to think about his current situation, either. However, after what felt like several minutes, she patted the ground next to her with one of those skeleton hands of hers.
“Sit with me.”
The boy snorted. He wasn’t here to make friends, and it’s not like anything that happened in the next few days mattered, anyway. After all, he was going to be executed for his crimes. And yet, he found himself drawn to the woman and sat by her side begrudgingly. Up close, she appeared even more frail, as if her legs could never support her if she tried to stand up. Her silvery hair was knotted in several places, a rat’s nest, if nothing else.
“Your only crime was wanting to live, wasn’t it, boy?”
He blinked in surprise, looking at the woman, then tilting his head back to look at the ceiling. “No… I did something against the law. I had to steal from people to live, for one. But that’s not what I was caught for. I tried to get into the inner city, see? And that’s…”
“Not a crime.”
With immense speed, he looked at the woman again in shock, then amazement, then relief, his golden brown eyes welling up with the smallest amount of tears. He had never been one to cry, especially in front of people he hardly knew. And yet, here he was, days before death, almost ready to bawl his eyes out. No one had given him any kind of reassurance in years.
“I did something wrong, though… I did something that I shouldn’t have.”
“But did you do it with cruelty in your heart, or did you do it because you wanted to live? Because you wanted to experience a life that was full?” The woman gave a long sigh, staring at the wrinkled palms of her hands in front of her. “This country didn’t use to be like this… There weren’t nearly so many borders between people. I wish I knew what happened while… They were gone. But, here we are, in a jail cell, awaiting death. Though, I suppose I’d be awaiting death outside of these walls, too,” she chuckled.
He looked at her with eyebrows pushed together, wrinkling his forehead. “Lady, you’d have to be centuries old to remember stuff like that.”
She chuckled again, a dry voice from weeks spent with hardly enough water. “I suppose so…”
“What’s an old lady like you doin’ in here, anyway? Shouldn’t you be at home sewing stuff for your grandkids, or something?”
“Mmm…” she hummed, putting a hand to her chin thoughtfully. “Perhaps I’m deserving of my place in this cell, unlike you, Yunvei.”
The boy’s eyes widened in surprise and he fell back a little, back hitting the wall a bit too hard and sending waves shivering up his spine. “That’s not… how’d you know that? I never told you my name, did I?” he nearly shouted, his voice shaking ever-so-slightly. In the distance, he could hear guards stop talking, presumably to listen in on them to see if they were wreaking havoc in the cell.
The woman looked at him, the most mysterious of smiles painted on her face. “I’d like to ask what it is that you’re protecting, boy, but I suppose that question would mean nothing to someone in this day and age… You know nothing of where your own name came from, after all.”
“S-stop being cryptic!” Yunvei snapped. “How the hell do you know my name? I never told it to you, and hell, I don’t even know your name!”
She laughed again, this one louder than the others. “The truth of the matter is this: I am not of this realm, nor will I ever be. I know everything that’s been, and everything that is.”
“What… What’re you implying…?”
“I’m Fosru, Yunvei. And I believe I could be your way out of here.”