500+
The note of apprehension within Zalen was not lost on her as they entered the town, and even more so as they moved into the bookstore. The man tensed even more than he had after they nearly ran right into the noise trap, but still he followed her into the dark store. While he looked at the books she peered through the darkness with bright, golden eyes. She wanted to remember this place from before but she couldn’t. As hard as she tried she couldn’t make the layout seem familiar to her, or act as though she had some fond connection to this place. She only paced the floor blindly, looking at all the things she couldn’t remember.
After a moment she walked to meet Zalen as he came back over to her. “You’re right,” she muttered, her disappointment palpable. “It doesn’t feel like… like anything to me. I haven’t been in here since a few days after my birth. My parents keep me out because something bad happened here, but I thought I should feel connected to it.” She sighed and shook her head. [b]“I don’t. Let’s get out of here.”
She agreed with him, there was no strange spiritual connection to this place. It was just a dusty, old, abandoned building. Her life may have started here, but this wasn’t any sort of place for it to continue. She was gladly the first to trot toward the door and lead him out. When she stepped onto the porch her head drooped. It felt like some strange mystery was solved and now all the magic around it had burst. “It was a stupid idea.”
She sat down on the porch, peering over her shoulder at the bookstore. “Places like that… they’re only meant to trap people in. There’s nothing special about them. I think they were meant for protection and shelter but they’re not. Evil can walk right in there just as easily as anywhere else… and it did. A murderer took my brother from here. I don’t remember him, but my parents say the story is true. If my mother hadn’t lived here alone… if she had denned with the pack like we were meant to… he might have survived.”
It wasn’t as though she blamed either of her parents for her brother’s death. She couldn’t remember him and only loved the thought of his spirit now, but she did not feel a great loss over her missing brother. Her family had only felt broken because of the world she was raised in – a life on the run – but not because she missed the brother she couldn’t recall. Still, there was a lesson in it; one she knew that after everything her parents hadn’t learned. If they had they wouldn’t live like they do now… isolated in the Terrace, away from the rest of the pack.
She turned away from the building, staring out over the dark square. A few clouds had rolled in making the moonlight splotchy on the little town. With them they brought frost, and here and there a few powdery flecks danced from the sky, melting just before touching down. “They still don’t see the error in their ways.”
Image courtesy of mourner@Flickr; table by the Mentors!
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