Of freedom in paradise
by geckomancer

	When a digit ticks down in the census registers, no one takes notice.  No bell rings.  No light flashes.  There isn't even a display.  The number ticks off and another living, breathing creature, full of its own hopes and dreams, wishes and wants, loves and losses, is expelled from paradise.
Paradise.  It is a lie strait from the bowels of newspeak.  Unless you're one of the living gods of the upper class, paradise is a waking nightmare.  Hell on this frost scorched earth.  Though I suppose in some sick sense, it is a paradise compared to being thrust into the outer darkness.
	Which brings me to my own fate: tail dragging along the grating that was the standard excuse for a floor, stumbling along between two burly moogle prefectures, the chains dangling from my leg irons giving off a multitude of clinks with each of my faltering steps.  I am half naked, bruised and battered, the very image of one walking their last klick.  Our destination is outer gate three.  For my crimes I am to be cast from paradise, but as much as this paradise is my hell, I still fear leaving it.
	The outside air never makes it above zero any more.  The wind chill usually puts it well down into the minus range.  Deathly cold, if you're a well-insulated mammal in an inert gas lined temp suit, but it is the end of a brutish, nasty, and short life if you happen to be a thermally challenged being (or cold blooded if you want to be a dick about it), such as my self.  Cold is the touch of death to my kind.  The temperature is low enough that an unprotected creature will freeze with the rapidity required for cold sleep and cause only minimal cell damage.  There you would be, huddled pathetically in the snow, frozen solid, stuck in a state of living death, revived only at the whim of a mammal, waking up once again, in slavery.  Some say you lose your soul to the cold, that it leaves your body the instant you freeze and when you wake up you feel nothing but its loss.  That may be true, but I say you lose your soul in paradise; the cold is simply faster.
	What is my crime?  What heinous deed did I commit to deserve such an end?  The details are trivial, but in essence I decided to stop existing out of simple habit.  I made a choice.  I chose to be free. 
Freedom has no place in paradise.  You see; if you want the moogles' life giving heat, you have to pay with your tail, your muscle, even your hide.  You have to abandon your pride and dignity, get down on your knees, and pay with your soul.  You cant even live on the streets without paying some punk gang of hard-hitting mog scum protection.  Freedom comes at a price; one you can only pay with your final breath.
I decided to give all the days I might have had left in this hell for today, for a few moments of freedom.  All I had left was my soul, better the cold take it than the moogles.  If they found my frozen meat, they could bring me back, the price of restoration was eternal indenture, hell for as long as your body could last.
The outer darkness is closer now.  Ahead, lay the gate; two sets of massive hollow core doors, insulated against the cold.  I can hear the subtle clicks and slides of the securing bolts being drawn back.  My time is running short. Once cast unto the snows I'll have no more than few minutes before I can no longer move: my joints, flesh, the skin on my feet, all frozen stiff.  From there it's a slippery slide to oblivion.
The Inner set of doors swing back.  Our journey is at its end, and mine begins.  I am thrust violently into the air lock, and the gates slam shut behind me and I begin to count under my breath; my remaining life can be measured in mere minutes now.  The inner door's bolts slam home and the outer starts its release.  I pump my arms and run in place in an attempt to gain as much heat as I can before the subzero darkness closes in.
The outer door comes open with audible rush of escaping air.  I had forgotten the pressure difference between paradise and the wastes.  I've heard that most the outcasts huddle inside the doors as long as possible.  I know mine is a one-way trip and that speed will be necessary if am to escape the fate of those before me.
I took off faster than the untrained eye can follow, expending the speed that my race once used to out run prey.  A titanic burst of swift twitch muscle action propelled me out into the eternal night.  The air burned my lungs; the ground burned my feet.  I started to panic as my instincts informed my glands of the obvious; the chilled touches of the wind were the fingers death.
I had to make it as far from paradise as possible.  Thirty seconds and I was already 600 meters out.  My legs quickly starting to fail, but the adrenal boost from my glands kept me running.
The...the cold: it saps my strength, drains my will, slows my thought.  I'm in a complete panic now.  Warmth, I must find warmth or die.  There was only one warm place I've ever known, but deep down I still know that I cannot go back.  I no longer know how far I have gone, and I have lost track of my count.  All I know is that I can no longer see the city.
When I was a hatchling, my mother told me stories of beautiful times; that it wasn't always like this.  That once we walked on sun warmed sands, free as a soaring bird (What is a bird?).  We traded with the moogles and each race left the other alone.  Then came the time when the sky darkened and our beloved sun seemed to have disappeared.  The moogles say that the long winter is part of a natural ice age, but our legends whisper that someone angered the gods and in return they turned the sky to ash.  Whatever the case, we had to find a new source of heat.  At first the moogles offer to come live in their city appeared magnanimous, but things quickly turned sinister.  Those that valued their lives had to abandon their pride.  Those too proud to be slaves succumbed to the cold.
I must have found a precipice.  Though I don't remember falling, I find my self, lying broken and bleeding on the stony ground.  I am a mass of pain.  My blood is freezing in pools around me, the cold closing in.  But I...I feel warm and the hurts have left.  In this final barely conscious moment, I know that I am dieing, yet cant help but smile.  I have escaped from paradise.