Chapter 9

"Wait." I said, splitting the silence as we took a couple of steps forward.

"What is it?"

"We should stay here. It's dark, cold and a bit smelly down there. Besides, we haven't eaten anything in a while, and we need to rest. We don't even know what could be down there."

Orin nodded in response, and he set down the torch on the cold stone floor. There was nothing to sit on, so I just curled up by the small fire. Orin went around to the edges of the cave, where small twigs and sticks have been blown into the cave, and picked some up for the fire. As soon as the dry wood started to burn, the air became slightly warmer. Orin sat down next to me and seeing me shivering, wrapped one of his huge arms around my shoulder.

I studied my arms for a moment. The golden shine was still there, and my veins were a silver color. My fingers seemed longer, and more bony than usual, and it looked as if my nails grew twice as fast. They were nearly an inch long, silver, and as sharp as a knife. My veins pulsed with a silvery glow and I surveyed the cave once more. Rain came down and it felt as if it would be an indefinite storm. The skies outside were a deep gray, vast, and swirling. Thunder roared above and littered the sky with flashes of green lightning. Even the lightning here is different and weird, which isn't a big surprise.

"How much longer do you think until we reach my mother?"

"In about a day, if this storm ceases soon." He stood up, taking his arm off from around my shoulder, and walked to the edge of the dark cave, where the waterfall rushed creating a blurry window of water. I followed him there and for a few minutes we stood in silence.

"Sophie, tell me more about you. Tell me about humanity," he said to me.

I looked up into his eyes, which were now a dark green, and looked back into the icy water. I shrugged. If there was ever a person to marvel about the wonders of humanity and of the life of a normal person, it definitely wasn't me. I mean, in the past few days my life hasn't been the average life of a teenager. My father was kidnapped by faeries, taken into a fortress, and held against his will by a psychopathic Queen; I was sent to be killed by her as well, in which the guard who was sent on the mission to do so has taken an "interest" in me, did not kill me, and was attacked by another group of faeries; I also have been told that I am also a faery because I have been in a alternate world too long, attacked by a mutant horse, and I am currently standing in a cave with a gorgeous guy. Oh yeah, my life absolutely ordinary. Well, truth is, my life was not great to begin with either. I have never known my mother, my father married a horse-faced, squirrel-crazed loser, my friends are the exact people I never wanted to grow up to be like, and I couldn't get one guy to actually remember my name.

"Well, I grew up in a small town in Illinois, always in the same small house since I could remember. My friends, well I guess you could call them friends, are the same people I grew up hating. No guy actually remembers my name, but knows me by what they rate me in looks. I have always dreamed of leaving the place I live in, but could never find a way out. And humanity, well, its not all it is said to be. It can get messy, difficult, and sometimes it you just get stuck and you will have to take it one day at a time. You always look for that one adventure, but when it is over, all you can do it look for the next. It seems that some of the things in life that we take for granted, like loving "always-there" parents, a home that is filled with happy memories, or friends that you can look up to, won't be there all the time. And when all that you know is finally gone in that one second that lasts a lifetime, you just have to learn to move on."

I hadn't noticed that I had started to cry, and the tears had painted my cheeks. Orin was staring at me again, with his pain-filled, dark green eyes, and he took me by the hand. I wiped my cheeks with one long gold finger, and noticed that my tears were a pale pink. I choked out a laugh at the sight of my colored tear, and wiped my eyes once more. Looking back at Orin, I smiled, making the dried tear streaks crack and break. He squeezed my hand and looked at me directly in my eyes. He leaned in, only about two inches away from my face. He smiled, and we never saw it coming. An iron dagger with a bone handle came to meet him as he stood in front of my face.

Through his glazed eyes, he looked at me with a look full of longing and regret. It was those last few moments when I saw his wide smile spread across his face below his eyes that captured the sun.

He fell for what seemed like forever, as the force of the iron dagger took him by surprise and pulled him down into the flooded waters. As he fell, I reached out my hands to catch him, but he did not reach back out at me. His chest was yet again turning black and crumbling off, as if his pearly white skin was chipped wallpaper. His veins surrounding the wound spread out across his body, with his blood looking like molten tar as the iron poison took its toll. His pale lips, which surrounded his toothy smile, turned a chapped grey. It all happened within that forever of a second.

The water immersed him, and swallowed him whole. He was swept away, hitting rocks and tearing his skin on the jagged riverbed. I couldn't hear myself scream. It was as if all the sound in my body was placed on an indefinite mute, yet I knew there were sounds escaping my lungs. I watched his body leave the scene of the murder and wash down out of sight. I turned around to see where the weapon came from, and three figures appeared in the dark tunnel. One of them seemed small and short like a child, another was almost as tall as Orin, maybe taller, and the last one was nearly seven feet tall and massive. I couldn't see their faces from the darkness, and my tear filled eyes did not help define them either. The giant man pulled out another dagger from his torso and aimed it at me, while the man as tall as Orin put a hand on his shoulder, making the giant relax and put away the weapon. Obviously the leader of the trio, the man nodded to the child, who sprung into action. My sobs, coming from the whole in my chest were ongoing and violent. The small child sprinted the distance to me, moving so quickly his feet never touched the ground. He jumped into the air nearly 10 feet in front of me, took something out of a pouch he carried and threw it directly in front of me. Sparks flew out from what he threw as they met the stone floor and erupted into a cloud of a dark blue smoke. My eyelids instantly became heavy, and everything became a blur. I collapsed and curled onto the floor, and tried to catch my breath, but my heart was racing. I closed my eyes and thought of Orin and his smile, and drifted off into a deep sleep.