Grey clouds covered the sky. Rain pattered the asphalt. Despite the nasty weather people attended to their daily work. Mike Gordon pushed himself surly through the crowd. King's Cross was as busy as ever: families hurried to the trains, taking care to hold their children together. Big groups of tourists hurried outside to get in the red Sightseeing-Buses and bankers in expensive suites forced their way through the colourful crowd …
It was the typical chaos and Mike was not interested anymore. He already worked sixteen years as a security guard in King's Cross and after all, he now was the vicarious security chief. Mike knew exactly how to handle with the stressed mothers and the arrogant bankers. He knew them all.
However, today it was different. Today it was the 1st September. Every year on exactly this day they arrived. Mike's gaze wandered through the crowd. There were three of them. They obviously had tried to align themselves to the normal people. The women was wearing a blue dress and an elegant coat, her husband – Mike guessed they were married – a grey shirt and beige trousers. Their son had the same drab hair as them and was wearing black jeans, a blue T-Shirt and a baseball cap. He was telling his parents something and they looked at him proudly. At first sight they seemed to be just a normal family. But at second sight you see they had instead of bags and pockets just one big, battered bag made of brown leather on their baggage car. A black owl in a cage sat on top of it. And that was anything but normal.
When you connived at this, especially their behaviour attracted attention: their motions were self-confident, their posture was straight. They seemed to be so sure with themselves. As if they knew their place in the world despite their patently anomalousness. Maybe it was exactly this anomalousness that let them be so self-confident.
Also, Mike had noticed that they all know each other. Like they all share a big secret. A so mighty secret no normal person could preserve it. In the last sixteen years Mike had the wish - no, the drive – to know this secret. His eyes never left the family for a second.
The cracking of his Walkie-Talkie forced him to break his eyes away from them. The voice of his chief ordered him to the station entrance where some teenagers shattered bottles and molested passers-by. 'Why the hell couldn't you charge a normal watchman with that?!' Mike thought. But he could answer it himself. 'Because he is afraid that I get his job!' Mike wanted to take a last look at the family, but they had completely disappeared ...
When Mike reached the scene, the teenagers had already disappeared. But not without leaving a sea of broken glasses behind them. Angrily Mike wiped the sweat with a handkerchief from his forehead. "Always this young people, deem that they had to protest against everything." Mike grumbled. He ordered the cleaning crew and wanted to go in again when he noticed a halting taxi. This was not something abnormal, but he recognized the taxi driver who was stumbling around the car and opened the door with a clumsy bow for his passenger. It was Rupert Stanley. Mike knew him because they visit the same pub and sometimes shared an evening beer. Rupert was the most unfriendly, uncultivated and money-mad person he had ever met. 'Who the hell is so important that Rupert wanted to seem polite?'
Long legs in black ankle boots appeared and a dainty hand held fast onto the car door searching for hold. Then she alighted full. A young girl, about 15 years old, but already quite feminine. She was slim but trained. Her skin was still lightly bronzed, even though the sun had not been shining since weeks.
Mike couldn't help himself and kept staring at her. He had never seen someone as beautiful as her. The girl had the face of an angel. But her most astonishing feature were her eyes, framed by dense lashes. They had the colour of pure gold– a colour Mike had never seen before and will never see again. Her hair completed the picture: wild corkscrew curls came down above her shoulders, just subdued with a slender hair circlet. Their dark ebony tone seemed nearly black.
This girl radiated supremacy and power with every pore of her body. Mike knew immediately she belonged to them.
Meanwhile Rupert got an elegant, big bag out of the car boot and placed it on one baggage car. The girl with the golden eyes payed him and walked off fast to the station's entrance hall. Rupert followed her with clumsy steps. All people gazed after her, unbelieving and admiring, but also envious. Mike hurried quickly to follow them, but he had to stop because of a big group of tourists. When he passed the entrance, she had already disappeared with her luggage. Only Rupert was standing there, grinning like an idiot, with a lot of tip in his hand. Mike decided to enquire and walked towards him. "Hey Rupert, who was that?" "Hm? Oh, Mike! It's you!" he answered. "Nope, didn't see her ever before. She just said she wanted to KC. I tried to start a conversation but … ." He shrugged his shoulders and shook his head. Disappointed, Mike let his gaze wander through the crowd, but she had disappeared.