She hummed a note from her throat, softly singing the tune drawn from the back of her mind. she skipped with the rhythm of youth which belong only to the very young of eight and twelve. Her hair fluttered around her in veil of dusky-yellow; not quite blonde, to pale to be considered brown or black; her wide eyes shone of happy days. The hem of her spring dress flapped about her thin-girlish legs.

"Three children sliding on the ice, Upon a summers day,"She sang repeating her song. It was one in which he had not hear in a long time. He guesses she must have had an older teacher or parents. Someone old enough to remember such a song. She was five with her tiny amount of height and shapeless body at the most so it must have been one or the other in some way or form.

"It so fell out, they fell in, the rest they ran away."from beyond the street he could smell the flowers on her skin as wind brushed past his nose, the cotton of her dress; clean, crisp, white; and the faint trace of pencil shavings from her backpack of tickled pink. He wanted her to hurry along, run down the street, and disappear into a house where he could not see her. But the little thing did not do so -not at all. She walked, yes, but not down the street of Betham like he wished her to, no, she turned the corner between a parting in the trees. flattened brown leaves and speckled sprigs of grass crawling up from the cracks. She hiked herself up and he simply watched her as she did. Twigs snapped under her feet, some brittle as bone while other tough as nails. He sighed, it really was a shame. Somewhere in a distant part of his mind a part disagreed. He wasn't particularly lonely. Had he wanted to he could have left her alone if he so chose too. But he simple wanted not too. No reasoning behind it. It had been a long time since anything had kept him company. She was just there; right place, maybe she would consider it the wrong time though, had she know he was there or maybe not. Now all he had to do was play the right part.

"Now, had these children been at home, or sliding on dry ground,"He ran across the street, quick as a fugitive (which he was somewhere in the world), following swiftly behind in the evening shade, a hood over his head, and the skin of his face sheltered her crept behind her silent like the night. He felt like one of those creepers who chased after little kids, slinking around the way he was.

"Ten thousand pounds to one penny, They had not all been drowned."

"Hey kid you shouldn't be up here." He says evenly, She jumped, spun on her heel and faced him. her twin plaits of blonde bouncing as she did so. She appear startled her young face flushed with a kind of colored embarrassment. Why she was embarrassed he didn't know.

"-I-I'-m sorry-y, I didn't know." she mumbled sheepishly, her head ducked low, her eyes diverted away a even more color rising to her lilly-white cheeks.

"It's fine," he says in return, he need to get this along quicker,

"What are you doing put here, the woods isn't a place for kids, this trail leads to the mountains anyways." He presses her, move to quickly and one would startle a kid. It was after all the woods, shadowy dark woods, she was young and with a stranger, she probably shouldn't have stopped at all to even speak to him. What where they teaching kids these days? Distantly he wondered him he asked her to jump in the back of a van would she do it? Not likely...or so he hoped. A child, especially a girl-child, should know better- he thought so at least.

"Ummm-W-well I-"

"You where?"

"I was just going to my house..." she whispered shyly, she was a little older than he had guessed, from across the lane she looked a measly five, up close like this she was older; a small range between nine and thirteen. Still a child none the less he had to remind himself- not that he was old to begin with either. Bird chirps grew soft with a breeze carrying the sound of sweet cantrella laughter from the school grounds not that far from them, a few children still awaiting the arrival of parents or staying after school for some reason or another. The girl shifted from foot to foot:

"You live up here?" he asked her, for a fraction of his brain didn't believe that in the least, nobody lived up near White Cross hill. He did; he owned the place after all; all the land between Betham Road and the very foot of the White Mountain herself. She started to stutter again.

"No, I live on San Pedro Street, I take the short cut through here." her small voice was soft than a feather on his ears, it had evened but he could still her the shyness within, and under tremble. She was afraid of him some way or another as she should have been.

"Lots of bad things have happened to kids in there woods you know." He told her sternly, the little girl looked up at him in surprise and bewilderment, as if she had not heard of such a thing before hand.

"Like what?"

"Like what?" he repeated the question himself, was this child truly so sheltered? No wonder she cut through the woods and even stopped to chat with an absolute stranger. Her parents would later grieve over leaving out bits of information like that.

"Did you not know? When I was younger a boy came up in these woods, he was an immigrant and didn't know all the bad things that happened here. He got dared by older boys to go up the house at the foot of White Mountain and steal something from there. Along the way he vanished," -He'd snapped his fingers together to emphases the story's character's disappearance- " and nobody ever heard from again," She looked a little startled from his small tale, it was half-bull-shit too, none the less it gave off the effect he wanted.

"Is that really true?" she asked with a wonder, leaning closer, he thought for a second she was cute with her wide green eyes confused between curiosity and fear. She was scared of him he was sure. But even he could see she was intrigued as well. She had yet to run. Yet to scream or even remotely try in any way. In all honestly he wondered what was wrong with this kid. Young she may be,he pointed out again, but foolish she should not be. His parents would have beat him with a stick had he enter woods, which he did and deeply regretted.

"Yes, it is, you shouldn't be here." he repeated this again, he knew it wouldn't matter in the long run, she wouldn't be leaving any time soon anyways or not even returning to this place again.

"Oh," was all she said before looking at him straight in the eye -something that surprised him. "Will you walk me though the woods then?" she suggested innocently. It was perfect. Not to be obvious he turned his head sideways as if to glance along the road in a mock dissension they way he had seen his father act when attempting to make a decision he wasn't sure about.

"All right, but, no more coming into the woods like this okay?"

"Okay!" she latched her little arms around one of his and pointed to somewhere over the nearby by incline of earth, a place where the trees where thinned and little grass grew from the dust-soil. "Oh mister!"

"What?"

"Well I was wondering...What's your name?" she looked at him with those eyes of hers, young circular eyes, that resembled his own in a estranged way. He looked to the sky above them; beyond the breaks in the leaves where blue hovered high above their heads and swirled with white-cotton clouds that spoke so clearly of spring. iHis name.../i

"My name is Vash." He then said to look down again, "What is yours?"

"Lilly." she responded; quick as a humming bird in her response; he almost felt bad for her. She didn't know much being so young. She that would change eventually he was sure but all the same it just tickled him the wrong way. A harsh thing it was like the scrapping of long nails over a chalk board. Then again not everything could be roses and daisies.

"All right Lilly let's take you home."

xXx

"Whoa, Arthur, did you hear!"

Slamming his fist into his classmate's desk Arthur almost jumped into the celling. The speaker waved a roll of paper wrinkling in his fist in front of his nose like a man tempting a dog with a bone. Wet print smeared from the rain pouring by the buckets outside. The boy himself dripped from rain and was covered in mud up to his knees, his tennis shoes completely browned with earth and motor-oil. For a second Arthur wonder where the fire was but knowing his friend he was going to find out whether he like it or not. Without much more than a grumbled Arthur set his book down side way with his page splayed across his desk gingerly. Crossing his arms over his chest he huffed.

"What is it now Alfred?"

Alfred groaned, His blonde brows raised, shaking the paper coil in Arthur's face again. "This!" he pointed his his free hand, splattering droplets of rain onto Arthur's face and sweater. His brows puckered; a crease that had been forming since his first meeting of Alfred growing ever deeper into his face.

"Yes, Alfred, that is called a paper."

Alfred just rolled his eyes at the comment: "No look at what it says!" Alfred smacked down the paper, unfurling over Arthur's book and throughly dampening the novel to the spine, It was a newspaper - a local one titled 'The Heta-Herald' He had seen his dad reading it a lot these days, never reading it for himself. Plastered over the front page a big doe-eyed, black and white splotched cow; chewing cud for the camera.

"Local Dairy Farm Gets Business Boom? Are you serious Alfred?" He reached out to take the newspaper, in attempt to humor Alfred despite his disinterest in dairy-cows. Alfred instead ripped the paper from his desk bringing it close to his bespectacled face, he mumble something, flipped three pages and threw it down again. This time pointing directly as a picture of small mousy girl with a pretty bow tied to the side of her blonde head. She was in the missing person's column labeled as a runaway from what Arthur could tell at this angled -backwards.

"Lilly ran away." he says bluntly, moving hid finger up one picture, to a boy this time: brown-haired and grinning, his fingers held up in a peace-sign Arthur thought as foolish. "So did this guy one town over!" Alfred exclaimed, Arthur only shook his head. He had met Lilly before. She was sweet and a very shy, it was hard to think about her running away to anywhere -she just didn't have it in her; so he thought. The other guy he didn't know -that one kinda looked like a stoner...

"Wow, I didn't think Lilly had it in her...: he trailed off meaningfully, in the hope Alfred would drop the topic altogether. Didn't seem right to talk about somebody like that, if she didn't run away she was missing. Missing meant kidnapped or killed or kidnapped then killed or killed then Kidnapped? He didn't know, He didn't want to know. Alfred, however, wasn't about to let it slip by -not on Arthur's life anyways.

"She doesn't!" he says, "Gilbert said his brother saw Lilly go into the woods with some dude!"

Now, that was stupid: Thought Arthur, Lilly was a good kid she wouldn't go into the woods with a stranger unless she knew them. Their was also the fact that Alfred got this information from that freaky, freshmen Gilbert, who got his information from his younger brother in sixth grade! But if it came right down to it he would trust Gilbert's little brother over Gilbert himself. Ludwig was a inflexible, stiff-backed little guy, wouldn't lie to anybody about anything. While Gilbert was...well...Gilbert. No words could describe him and be good.

"You are aware you got this from Gilbert, right?"

"Yeah, but still, we should crack this mystery-!"

"What are you five?" Arthur snapped, sliding his book from his desk, dog-earring the corner of the page and slipping it into his backpack of minty green, zipping it up tight. He stood up then. Alfred looking at him with round blue puppy-eyes. "Alfred that worked when we where six not thirteen!"

"Fine but then you have to help me clean out my mom's storage closet instead." Alfred declared, Arthur opened his mouth to protest, but Alfred stood firm, some of the noon-sun catching fire to his golden-brown hair, something he always had a bit of envy in. You see Alfred was always what the girls called a 'ten' (capital 'T'if he borrowed the words of Cheyenne; a girl in their homeroom class) and he was a 'two' (lower case 't'; borrowed from the mouths of those snarky bitches Alexa and Andrea - Gym Class) he didn't really like girls much but that remained a good-sized thorn in his side anyways. He still didn't want to clean anything in Alfred's house no matter what his number was!

"Like hell I will! Do it yourself, she's your mother!"

"Come on Artie, Or else I'll tell everybody you need loony-meds!" Alfred teased.

"Fine...and that's a lie!"Alfred swung his arm over Arthur's neck and stuck put his tongue childishly.

"Who everybody gonna believe? You? Nah and don't look at me like that you know they won't, now after school wait for me."

Arthur glowered darkly. "Fine."

xXx

Hi~! hehe I put this down thinking i wouldn't touch it again but it was teasing me, so, I had to come back...Just under a new name and a little more thought out than before.

Your thoughts would be much appreciated.