Somewhere
Two dark figures stood at the iron gate of a small stone cell. Within the tiny room was a sleeping woman with deep brown hair and a slightly aged face. Rose was exhausted. The marks of a heavy steel collar that wrapped around her neck were becoming deeper. After her kidnap, her captor chained her by the collar and forced her to walk the journey here. Rebelling wasn't an option once she found out that the collar grew smaller if one retaliates against the holder. The fear was only worsened when she was told the story of one captive who wouldn't give up and ended with a crushed neck.
Rose's kidnapper was a masked man about her age telling by the voice. He wore a black mask with white borders around the eyes. A black cloak fluttered about his person when he walked and a pair of large demonic ebony wings rested on his back. Apparently, they had flown half the trip. Once the man became tired, they were to walk the rest.
"She arrived without struggle, my lord." The masked captor spoke to the man beside him.
The other simply glared through the bars at the resting woman, "Good. Good. But where is the other?"
Silence came. The man behind the mask seemed confused at this question. All the same, he answered, "I do not understand. I only sensed one seal, and in the books, it only spoke of one woman."
"Do you feel that, Sir Connor?" The unknown one asked.
"Yes sir," He responded.
Rose rolled over on the stone floor. He kept his eyes on her, "The second seal will form soon. Go out there and find it."
The second of the two men turned away and vanished, leaving the one to watch Rose through the bars of the iron gate separating him from the woman.
So, this was the one that got away.
Back in the Park
"Todd!" Mikori spoke breathlessly.
He simply stared at her with a dislike of her presence in his eyes. His hand rested on Sylvia's shoulder in a protective manner.
Todd spoke in a cold voice, "Let's go Sylvia. There's too much trash lying around in this park."
Sylvia obliged and followed his movements as they turned away. The three girls stood there, registering that they had just been insulted.
Mikori stepped forward, "Todd. What does she have over me! I'm a woman that can give you anything you want. She's just a little kid!"
He halted, stopping Sylvia with him and turned, "Do you want you answer in a long form or short?"
She pouted, "Which ever tells me what I want to know."
Todd faced Mikori with eyes to make anyone crumble to their feet, "I guess the long version will satisfy my words better. You are a rotten, filthy maggot that tries to pull herself off as a lady when, in truth, look more like a trashy, spoiled whore. You don't even deserve to look at someone as kind and beautiful as Sylvia."
She looked absolutely flabbergasted at what she just heard. Mikori had never been insulted in such a way.
With those final words, Todd and Sylvia turned away from them, and walked off into the dark. Sylvia's mind was reeling with questions.
"Um, Todd?" she piped up, "Did you really mean all that?"
He looked down to her and smiled, "Of course I did. To be honest, I think I should thank Mikori. Thanks to her question for being compared, I saw how truly wonderful you are compared to anyone else."
That last statement made Sylvia's face burn a luminous shade of pink. Thank goodness it was dark, or else Todd would have seen it a mile away.
He continued to speak "Besides I think her ego needed to be shot down, don't you?"
She laughed, "Yeah, I think she thought a little too highly of herself until a minute ago."
They ventured their way through the park without another trace of Mikori. Sylvia liked it better that way. But there was a question rattling in her brain that hadn't caught her until she had first reached the park.
"Um, Todd," Sylvia asked timidly, "I never found out where you lived. I would very much like to know."
Todd didn't answer for a moment, thinking of the consequences of telling someone where his home was located.
He replied, "We're almost there."
Together they approached a little shop that Sylvia passed everyday on the way home from school when she had a little grocery shopping to do. It used to be an old bar, but now the town grew up without it and the little pub was left for closed. The windows were boarded up but the door was left un planked. He looked down the street both ways before entering. Todd turned the doorknob quickly and grabbed Sylvia by the hand, pulling her with him. The first thing she encountered was actually a set of six or so stairs lined by brass rails that led up to a dusty little bar that had long been forgotten. A heavy layer of gray dusk had settled on everything and there wasn't a bottle left on the shelves behind the counter. Todd released Sylvia's hand but held it up as a gesture to stay back where she was. He stepped forward and walked up the stairs to the fourth step. Sylvia wondered why he halted there. Then he stomped his right foot hard on the step. Suddenly, a humming noise made itself heard. Sylvia gasped when she saw the steps Todd was standing on were lowering like an elevator. (For anyone with a bad sense of picturing things, the stairs are moving straight downwards. Not shifting in any other direction except down) He smiled at her shocked expression.
She spoke once the steps came to a halt with a loud thud "I guess this is your front door."
He shrugged in an agreeing way and realized that there was a gap of air between Sylvia and where he was. Todd said, "Jump over here, I'll catch you."
The slightly unsure girl standing at the edge of the floor took a moment. She wasn't that much of an athlete and she certainly didn't want to fall. After a deep breath, Sylvia closed her eyes and leaped out towards Todd. A sense of security settled in once she felt a pair of strong but lean arms embrace her in a safe catch. But the security of her mind left her immediately as she thought of her current position. Todd, the man she was deeply attracted too, was holding her in his arms. Sylvia couldn't help but lose to the warmth of pink flush at her cheeks. Todd, on the other hand, was thinking of similar thoughts but was a bit more skilled in containing his emotions and facial colors.
He set Sylvia gently on her feet and they both looked down to where the stair case lead. It was very dark. Not a thing was to be seen past what little light already trickled into the bar above. She jumped when Todd clapped his hands loudly together twice. The sound echoed a bit. The room was immediately illuminated. Oh the amazing mystery that is a clapper light.
Believe it or not, the room actually appealed to Sylvia. The first visible area was the living space. As small as it was, it was quite cozy-looking. Now that she looked around at it, the kitchen, living area, and bed quarters seemed to share a room. There were two doors towards the back; one Sylvia presumed was the bathroom. The living space was mostly a dark red cedar coffee table with a sleek black laptop resting there. A soft-looking black couch sat of one side of the table while a small television set sat a few feet away. A deep red rug slipped under all of this. The bed on the opposite side of the room was a queen-sized bed that rose a little higher off the cement floor than a normal bed. His dressers and wardrobe cabinet stood nearby. He even had a nicely stocked bookshelf. Back in the far corner was a collection of a microwave, a refrigerator large enough to supply one person normally, a rather old-looking stove oven, and a counter that ran along the wall a few feet. Hovering above it were the utensil cabinets and such.
The room wasn't special or impressive, but it was quaint. To Sylvia, who lived a normal above ground life, she saw this as a bit of astonishment. She thought that Todd night not have been able to supply himself with even this. He never enlightened her to having any sort of job. And Todd was too good of a person to steal.
"Todd," Sylvia wandered over to the cozy black couch, "You have a pretty nice house."
He smirked and wound his way to the kitchen, "I'm a humble man. I need not the wealth and riches of a king to be content."
His phony English accent made her laugh.
Sylvia sat down, "How do you make your money? I didn't know you had a job."
"According to the government, I'm unemployed." Todd opened his refrigerator door and retrieved two juice boxes.
He tossed her one of the snack beverages, which she surprisingly caught from the distance, "I took on a few under-the-table-money jobs to get by. I started off running errands for the guy that used to own the bar. Nothing shady, just stuff like picking up deliveries and helping build the counter or put in the new floors. Then I did a little work as a body guard at one point. Some lady claimed that her son was being targeted by bullies at school so I lent them a hand. News spend that I was pretty good and I was hired every once in a while. But I conserve what I make. As you can see, I left out some of the coupons I was clipping. That's a little embarrassing to admit."
Sylvia sipped down her juice and took note to the slips of paper advertising discounts on condensed soup.
"So," he began again, "What were you doing in the park at this hour?"
Sylvia knew that she could lie to Todd and just say that she was going for a walk too, but the better route was to simply tell the truth, "I was running away to find my mom."
A crease immediately formed in Todd's expression to note a serious thought passed through his mind.
"You were running away?" He sat his juice box down on the little table.
Sylvia nodded in response, "The police gave up looking for her."
"But this is a dangerous stunt. Do you even have any leads?" He pressed on.
A red flush came to Sylvia's face. He had caught her. She didn't have any leads.
A sharp pain suddenly struck Sylvia's leg. The slow but intense burning stung her out thigh. Her pain came through to Todd as a hiss through gritted teeth.
"Sylvia what's wrong!" he panicked as she curled up on the couch in obvious pain.
"My leg hurts. It's…burning." Her eyes clamped shut as her fingers gripped her leg fiercely.
Todd quickly rolled her over and studied the agonized area she was grasping. He, with much difficulty, pulled her hands away from the area on her outer thigh. Just below the hem of her shorts, there was an open red circle of ink dying her skin like a tattoo. Todd watched in astonishment as tiny intricate blue lines were miraculously appearing on her skin as if an invisible hand was drawing on her skin. They were overlapping the red lines to change their color. The forming lines curved into a circle with many lines and triangles adorning it like an alchemist's transmutation circle. When the lines stopped appearing, Sylvia stopped shaking. The pain must have been associated with the once-red, now-blue tattoo.
"Are you alright, Sylvia?" Todd asked, running his finger along the lines of the circle.
She wiped a few tears out of her eyes before speaking, "The pain's gone now. But it hurt so badly. It was like being cut with a knife that was on a fire. But why did it stop so suddenly? Now it feels like it wasn't even in pain a second ago."
It was four in the morning. After the incident, Todd made sure that Sylvia went to his bed to rest. By the sounds of her soft breathing, she was well asleep. It had taken a while to coax her into going to sleep. She was fighting to go out there and find her mom. But he had to explain to her. Unless they had something to work off of, the only way you can go is backwards. Todd sat cross-legged on the counter of his kitchen with a large bound book sitting before him. The thing that was keeping him awake was the phenomenon that occurred of Sylvia's leg. He had seen it before. In fact, it was the night Todd came up to Rose's window before she disappeared. He saw the same circle on Rose's shoulder. He resumed turning the pages of the large book in front of him. On each page was a new leaf of information of randomly appearing tattoos. He had found nothing of importance.
Todd looked back over to Sylvia sleeping in his bed. He smiled as his eyes fell on the teddy bear he had tucked under her arm. There were several stitches on the neck where the head had been ripped off once a long time ago. The large white eyes of the bear were practically staring at him. Todd sighed with a smile.
Watch over her, Shmee.
The Maiden of Light: Ahhh! I've been so busy lately! Softball just got started up, I need to get more driving hours in, and I'm doing community service for the National Honor Society. Plus, I'm working three stories at once! I sorry these things are taking me so long to write.
