Chapter 4

The sound of festivities rings through the valley. The Heartfilia estate village is filled with laughing citizens and performers, street sellers and children.

'Come on Luce or we'll miss everything!'

A young boy, thirteen years old, is bouncing around in excitement. A tall girl with a hood casting her face in shadow is behind him.

'Lets find Eva first,' she says. She takes him by the hand and drags him through the streets. They come to a food stall where a portly woman us smiling.

'Hey Mrs F, have you seen Eva?' the boy asks, pushing his shaggy brown hair off his face. The woman nods. and points behind them. There, a green-haired girl is waving and running towards them.

'There's so much stuff!' She exclaims. They all run off, laughing. Carefree, fun-loving and young.

If only they knew their time was limited to a few hours more...

I stared at him for a long while. Without even thinking I stuck my fingers in my mouth and whistled, long and hard. After a few moments we heard footsteps and Eva appeared. She nodded at me, then looked at Toby, before clutching the bars of his cage in her hand. They bent under the force of the shadows and he scrambled out.

'We gotta go if we don't wanna get caught,' he said.

We ran to the opening and stared up.

'Hold on tight,' Eva hissed, and the shadows collected around us and we soared up.

'After the trial, they drove me there and chucked me in. Locked the cage and disappeared without a word!' Toby was explaining. He was starting to look like he used to, hair cut, face clean and fresh clothes. His hair was dark and swished to the side, and his face had a different shape, more mature and manly. His eyes remained comfortingly the same though. I fiddled with the hem of my skirt and tried not to look too happy to see him.

'That's awful,' Eva sighed.

We were hiding out in the back of some storage warehouse in a town thirty miles from the prison. It was cold, musty and smelled of alcohol, but we daren't complain. Goth wouldn't be pleased if we did.

'What's important now,' Goth said testily, 'is that you're all safe. No jailbreaks, no running away from home, no AWOL. Safe.'

We nodded and fell quiet.

We'd found Goth Star outside a pub on Fegent street, playing drunk, but really listening out for info he could sell. When he'd seen us his eyes had nearly popped out of his head.

'W-what are you doing here? You're supposed to be in Conro,' he'd pointed at Eva, 'you're supposed to be in prison,' he'd pointed at Toby, 'and you're supposed to be dead,' he'd pointed at me.

'Sorry to disappoint you,' we'd said, and dragged him out.

'Well whatever, we've got a lot of work to do. Go to sleep,' Goth Star said grumpily, lying down and stuffing his jacket over his face. We ignored him, but soon after we did lie back and fall asleep.

I wondered whether Natsu would be merciful enough to accept me back.