Chapter Two. Remembered

Kai had woken up that night by some weird sound. It seemed to continue forever. He groaned and smashed his pillow over his ears. It didn't stop, so he slowly got up onto his elbow. He gazed around the room with blurry eyes, and saw that Cole was gone! He sat up and looked again, and then he got up and walked over Cole's bed. It was definitely, positively empty. He walked over to the bathroom door and opened it a crack. "Unless Cole is asleep in here," he thought "he sure didn't bother to turn on the lights." He gazed looked over to the other beds, Cole was the only one missing. He walked over toward the door leading outside, but paused. There was a new painting hanging on the wall and for some reason he thought that it looked familiar. It was a girl surrounded by animals. She was sitting on the back of a bear with her hand on the head of a wolf, and there were dear grazing, and birds wheeling in the background. Then Kai slowly started to remember her. Back before he was a ninja he was the son of a sword maker, and he used to play with a smiling girl. She was always laughing and goofing off, but then there had been a fire. A big one, turning land, trees, and that girls house to smoking, putrid smelling rubble. Everyone thought that all of her family was dead, but there were people and animals missing from that family. The people were never found, or seen again. But this day when the strange girl, Alex, had shown up, he had felt that he knew her from somewhere, from some other time. He took a closer look at the painting and saw that smiling face, and was overcome by some strange feeling. But he could not tear his eyes away from the picture. He stared and felt like he was being sucked back into time. He could hear the girl crying and could feel the burning heat of that freak of nature fire. Kai could hear her soft voice saying "I can't come back, ever." She never did come back. But at the funerals of her family a wolf sat behind the graves and howled. Then it dawned on Kai that this was the same howl! The wolf was back, and he had a feeling that it would stay for a long time.