All Slender knew was that one minute his forest was quiet, then two people entered, one completely enraged, the other terrified. Slender knew there were a man and a female. The female was at about the end of her rope with the man. He had nothing better to do so he stalked the two. He found that actually, despite his obvious fear, it was the man that was in charge, dragging the female by her thick chocolate hair. It was a female, but not a female human, not entirely.

If there was one thing Slender knew about humans, it was that some of them didn't even know that they weren't purebred. Some of them were part Slenderfolk, particularly the females. This was a female fledgling, about nineteen years old. She was about to tear her captor to shreds. She would have if there had been more Slenderbeing in her, she had just a sliver, but it was enough to make her anti-social, enough to make her prefer the company of trees to that of humans. Enough of it in her to make her able to bear Slenderchildren.

The Slenderfolk are a higher form of human, extremely high. They were glorious creatures really, more than the faceless beings that humans perceive. Slenderfolk were great in evolution, but weak in numbers, they were created with far fewer females than males, and a new system had to be created. Humans were seeded with part Slenderfolk children, making mates for the ones without. But the children proved to be hard to find and very hard to convince of what they really were by the time they were old enough to breed. So they had to be taken as children and raised in the Slenderkind community. That was why Slenderfolk took 'human' children. So their race could survive, the children that were taken were not entirely human, but were the fledglings that had been planted throughout humankind.

The human male pushed the fledgling to the ground and slammed a gun against her temple, enraging Slender. That was a potential mate! His basic instincts told him to attack and destroy, devour the man's heart. Slender was stopped. He saw a very familiar necklace hanging to the ground from the girl's neck. Something he hadn't seen in twelve years. A talon clutching a black crystal. Was it Echo? Was it actually the female originally intended for him? Slender watched on as the human male went to the edge of the cliff. Slender shook his head. Stupid dramatic humans. Echo (he would call her that until he discovered if it really was his intended.) eyed a heavy rock next to her. If Slender had physical eyes he would have squinted at her. Echo's bright aquamarine eyes snapped up and she leapt up, running towards her captor.

Slender stepped forward as the human male turned around, at the same moment Echo shoved him over the edge of the cliff. The human male grabbed at her, managing to grab a hold of her necklace and she screamed as she was pulled over the edge with the human male.

"TALL MAN!" That instant Slender knew it was Echo. Now he ran; getting to the edge right as Echo kicked the human male off of her. Slender sent a tendril after her, hooking Echo around the waist and nearly falling over as well trying to stop her fall. Her emotion went right through her, into his tentacle and into him. Slender brought Echo back up to the cliff and set her down, his mind going a million miles an hour. He stopped and looked at her as she knelt, curled in on herself as she sat on her legs. She was breathing hard and scared. Slender softly knelt in front of her and took the pendant in his hand and studied it, looking for any difference in this necklace than the one he gave Echo. With great hidden joy he found none. Slender let the pendant fall back into place then stood slowly, opening his mouth.

"Tell me, Echo, just how many times am I going to have to save you from falling?" He asked, using the same tone of voice he as he did when she was a child. Echo looked up at him with a clever smirk on her face.

"Hopefully that was the last time, Tall Man." She replied sassily.

The two stayed on the cliff for a few minutes, watching the sun rise, chatting pleasantly. Echo then left the woods, Slender escorting her out of the forest and to the car she arrived in. He had been seething when he found that Echo was abducted, but by then he was calm, watching the red tail lights of the car fade into the distance.

She snuggled into the sleeping bag, her furniture from her home in Willow still hadn't arrived; so Echo was on the floor on top of a mass of blankets and comforters and a bunch of pillows, it reminded Slender of a nest. It was about three in the morning though the fledgling had just gotten to bed, her radio was playing classic music very quietly and her fan hummed beside it. She was drifting off to sleep when the radio went staticky, reacting to Slender's entrance into the material world. She sat up groggily, glaring at the clock, and then forcefully smacking it on top. She squealed as Slender gently coiled a tendril around Echo's wrist.

"That won't help, Echo." Slender told her quietly. Echo looked up, barely able to make out his tall form in the darkness of her room. Slender's tentacle was still around her wrist as she reacted to the scent of Slender's last kill came to her senses; he was drawing small invisible patterns with another tendril on the back of her captive hand. He used to do that in the dirt when she was a girl, perhaps trying to get her to realize something, the sooner a fledgling realized what she really was the better.

He sat against the tree, black tendrils hanging around him attentively as though they had minds of their own and watched the tendril that was pushing the dusty dirt to and fro. He was drawing circles with x's over them absently as a young Echo was drawing squiggles and smiley faces in the ground with a stick. She looked at his blank face.

"Tall Man?" She asked. His mouth appeared as he spoke.

"Yes, child?"

"Do you live here in the woods?" Echo asked him. He nodded.

"Where?" She continued.

"I can't tell you." He replied. The small girl frowned, propping her chin on her hand, pouting a little. She put down her stick and went to play in the creek. Slender didn't have eyes Echo could see, but she knew he was watching her. He knew Echo couldn't swim very well and if she needed help he wanted to know immediately if Echo was in trouble. She thankfully never strayed too deep into the water though.

Slender felt Echo watching him now; he was drawing the same symbol as he had in the dirt on her hand over and over again. It was his symbol, marking her as Slender's. To any other Slenderfolk that might come by they would know Echo was off limits.

"What are you doing?" She asked. The tendrils retreated and he knelt, coming face to face with her, her flesh was sun kissed, light freckles danced across her cheeks and jumped straight from her neck to her slender shoulders.

"Nothing." He told her. He didn't want Echo to know he was literally marking her in the Slenderfolk fashion. Not yet. Soon the hidden instincts that Echo harbored deep inside her genes would rise and send her straight to his arms. But until then Slender would carry on the friendly little relationship the two had when she was a child. Slender found himself wondering why he hadn't just taken her before her father moved her away. Echo had been of age to take. Echo' mother had died giving birth to Echo's half-brother, who later in died as well. Slender knew if he took Echo from her 'father' Slenderfolk would be responsible for taking the last the man had of his wife.

The man that raised Echo was a very good man and that was why the Slenderfolk chose that family to seed. The man was kind and the woman was strong. Echo was watched after very well. Sometimes Slender knew he was too kind to the human. Slenderfolk were superior and there was nothing wrong in taking what had been rightfully his.

Echo watched Slen. He was off in his own mind, sitting against the wall a few feet away from her, his long legs only stopping inches away from her. She switched off her radio, and rested against the mass of pillows she had behind her. Her eyes were heavy and she was weary.

"Slen?" She asked quietly. He looked to her from the carpeted ground.

"Yes, Echo?" He replied. She would never admit it, but his voice had sent chills down her spine ever since they met again a few weeks ago.

"Are you going to stay here for the night or are you going to leave?" Echo inquired. Slender was quiet for a moment.

"I may leave. I do not want to bother you while you sleep." He told her. Echo was already drifting off to sleep.

"Well, you can do what you like. I'm going to go to sleep, good night, Tall Man." She told him softly.

"Good night, Echo, sleep well." He told her just as quietly.

A/N: I couldn't find a better word other than 'fledgling.' I think it still gets the point across, but Echo won't grow into a Slenderperson, she'll just stay a hybrid.