Chapter 1
Dog Days are Over
"Leave all love and your longing behind, you can't carry it with you if you want to survive"
"Wren!" a shout shattered the near silence of this little corner of the park. The scarred girl's head snapped up as she closed the thick book in her lap and reached up to shade her eyes to look at the boy that had called her. Gabriel stood before her, smiling as he pushed a hand through his sweaty blond hair. He had been out running when he saw her reading under this tree if the sweat pants and tank top he was wearing were any indication.
"Hello, Gabriel," she said, frowning a bit. She wondered just why he was bothering to talk to her. They had known each other for a month or so, practically since she had rolled into Tranquility. She had bumped into him at the library the week she showed up and found out he worked there. They had struck up a friendship from there, based on his teasing about the governmental science books and romance novels she always checked out. He said they were boring and she said that it was always a good thing to know about the government of the country you live in. In reality, while she was curious about the government structure, it was the hearts of these strange new organic creatures she wanted to know about.
"I was wondering if you wanted to go out to lunch with me. Like, today?" he asked, brown eyes glinting as he pushed his hands into the pockets of his sweat pants. He was nervous, she realized, as he started to fidget. She would have said yes to him, she really did like his company, but, "I don't have any money on me." It wasn't a lie. She had no money at all, having neither a job nor others to provide her with it.
Gabriel shrugged and his smile widened, showing off pearly whites as he said, "That's fine. I asked; I pay. If that's okay with you?" he added as an afterthought. He knew plenty of women that had reacted badly to that bit of Southern hospitality. Back in his hometown of Middleton, Tennessee, any woman would've loved the gentlemanly gesture but things were different here in Nevada. Gabe hoped he hadn't offended Wren. He did like the girl with her sarcastic sense of humor and snarky comebacks.
Wren deliberated for a moment, tilting her head to the side as she watched him and finally nodded.
"Great!" he said. "Just wait here while I go home and change. This is the end of a three mile jog and these clothes don't smell too fresh right now. My house is right down the street so fifteen minutes at most, okay?" She nodded again and he turned and jogged off down the street.
She stared after him and thought to herself, what just happened?
0o0
True to his word, Gabriel had come back fifteen minutes later, dressed in a white shirt and jeans to find Wren still under the same tree, reading as if nothing had happened. He stood in front of her and cleared his throat. She held up her index finger and said, "Give me a minute. I want to finish this chapter."
Gabriel stood still for all of thirty seconds before he started to fidget. Blue eyes flickered up and a dark eyebrow arched. "Why don't you sit, it you feel uncomfortable?" she said,
He sat as she returned her attention to the book and, not quite a minute later, he was twitching again. Wren sighed this time as she looked over at him. Smiling faintly, she said, "You really can't sit still, can you?"
"No, not really," he said, rubbing at the back of his neck and smiling nervously. "Sorry to distract you."
"No, no. I'm done, anyway. C'mon." Wren shoved her book into her beat up black messenger bag and stood, waiting for him to lead the way.
0o0
The café had turned out to be a little open air bistro across the street from the park and right beside the lot she had parked in. They were seated in one of the outside tables, waiting on their food and Gabe had taken the opportunity to play Twenty Questions. "So, what are you reading now?" he said, twirling his straw around in his soda.
"Harry Potter, today," Wren wasn't quite paying attention, her eyes wandering to the lot she had parked in.
"Harry Potter? Isn't that sort of, I don't know, childish, for you?" He loved the books but they didn't seem to fit his image of her.
That got her attention. She stared at him for a moment before saying, "Maybe, but I do like them. Plus, I didn't really have much of a childhood to read them in." Translation, she thought, I don't remember having a childhood.
The waitress brought out their food, a vegetable wrap for her and a burger for him, and Wren couldn't help but think of the first time she had eaten like this. It had come as such as a surprise when she realized how well this body could process it and turn it into useful energy. She still didn't particularly eat much but, since her primary choice of fuel was scarce on this planet without proper tools, she made do with this.
They sat in silence and ate for a moment, but it seemed that Gabriel wasn't at all comfortable with silence and he broke it by saying, "Speaking of childhoods, you've never told me about yours, even after I spent half the day telling you about mine. So come on, spill."
Wren wrinkled her nose, "Aw, my childhood was nothing, boring. It doesn't bear talking about." In truth, the memories she had managed to recover were still blurry, full of echoing voices and faces of people long dead and forgotten.
"It couldn't have been that bad. Tell me something," he said, truly curious now.
"Umm…" Wren scratched her nose as she thought. She wasn't sure just how much to tell this little human about her experience growing up. Eventually, she came up with something like the truth. "Well, I spent most of my teen years living with a huge group of guys, family friends, after my parents died. They were… interesting, to say the least."
"So were you the only girl?"
"Yeah, though you wouldn't know it sometimes with all the gossiping and high-pitched screams." The thought had a little smile growing on her face as Gabe tilted his head in confusion.
"Screams?"
"The twins, Bee and I were nothing but pranksters so there was no shortage of yelling and running for our lives. For that reason, I'm pretty fast on my feet."
Gabe grinned too, understanding perfectly. He had done the same to his older brother when he was younger and it had never failed to make them laugh. Wren had never struck him as a prankster, so that just begged the question, "What were they like?"
"The twins and Bee? Man, they were something else. The twins were rude, crude and more vain than I would've thought possible for males. They were smart for all that, though, and knew how to plan a prank. Bee was the sweet one, everyone's best friend. He was our resident escape artist and used the puppy dog eyes to get himself out of trouble and us into more quite a few times." She shook her head, still smiling lightly.
"You lied to me! That doesn't sound boring at all! I know you have tales; every great prankster does, so tell me. What's the worst?" he leaned forward eagerly, his food forgotten as Wren thought.
"Well…" What could she tell the man before her that didn't give away too much? "A couple of years back, the twins and I threw the birthday party for Orion, the guy who owned the house. Whoever decided it was a good idea obviously had something against him."
"Aw, that don't sound so bad," Gabe said. It wasn't really a prank, and definitely not something he would call one of his best if it were him.
Wren snorted, "Oh, believe me, it was bad in the very best of ways. See, the twins and some of Orion's best friends wanted to shake him up a bit. He's always so calm and we were all sick of it and the twins happened to know a secret; Orion had a little thing for me. So we thought what better present for the birthday boy than have his favorite person bound to him 24/7? So, early on the morning of his birthday I found him and distracted him long enough for the twins to cuff us together. Once he figured out that I wasn't going to even attempt to help him un-cuff us, he spent the rest of the day alternating between happiness that his best friend was attached to him and utter fear because it was me that was attached to him." She grinned, her teeth startlingly white against her brown skin, reliving one her better ideas and favorite days.
"That hadn't been the end of our plan, of course. Once the sun went down and the twins disconnected us, I disappeared after telling him to get ready for his party. When he showed up in the common room later on, I convinced him to let loose a little and have some fun. Of course, it had taken a lot of begging, promises and bargaining but I managed to get him to stay. Then came the drinking portion of the evening. Let's just say, by the time the sun rose again, no one was left standing."
"That is classic!" he said around his laughter. "But why would he be scared? You can't be that terrifying."
"Easy. He knows just what I can do if I put my mind to it. And what happens when I get overly bored. I once built a working catapult out of scrap metal because I had nothing better to do," she shrugged. She'd always had an overactive mind and it tended to wander. For that reason, she hung around with the twins quite often because they were never not doing something.
Gabriel nodded, "My niece is like that. She's smart as a whip and because of that, she gets bored quickly in school, since she's so far ahead of them."
Before she could reply, the waitress came by again to clean off their table hand them the check. Gabe again insisted on paying and since Wren had no money, she let him do it.
Wren began to walk towards the parking lot when Gabe called out, "Hey, Wren?" She turned and raised an eyebrow. "I was wondering... Well, the gallery I show paintings in is having a charity even and I need a plus one. I was wondering if you'd like to go. Not like a date or anything, 'cause you're awesome and all, but I don't like you like that and-"
"I don't see the harm. Why not? When is it?" she said, cutting off his babble.
"Ah… It's next Saturday. Formal dress. Can you do it?" he said, still slightly nervous. His brother had already backed out, saying he hated functions like this. Gabe didn't like them either, but he was needed at this one and he was hoping Wren could help relieve some of his boredom.
"Of course. I'll be by your house at eight and we can leave together." When he nodded she smiled and said, "See you tomorrow."
"Tomorrow?"
"At the library. I was under the impression you worked there as well on most days," she said slowly, as if she were talking to someone really stupid.
"Right, right. Tomorrow. See ya!"
Wren just smiled and waved before walking toward the parking lot. She found the car in a relatively secluded corner. She grasped the handle of the black Dodge Charger and instead of opening the door, simply vanished. The car turned on by itself and rolled out of the lot and into traffic, never noticing that Gabriel had been watching from the sidewalk the whole time.
Here it is, the first chapter. It gets more interesting, I promise. We even get to see people (okay, mechs) we know next chapter.
