"Comrades," Ivanna declared as she marched into the cottage's clearing while dragging Madeleine along behind her. "I have found her. She was hiding and trying to sneak away, the bad little girl."
Ivanna turned and smiled a childish grin Madeleine's way. Madeleine shivered, for a horrible moment there she had sworn she had seen an angry purple shadow, like an aura, rising menacingly behind Ivanna. She was probably mistaken about this too, but, she thought she had seen an old man dressed in strange frost tattered clothes in that shadow behind her too. 'That just must have been my own silly imagination; that's it; my mind is just trying to play tricks on me. People don't have auras, or creepy guys that look like zombies coming out of their shadows.'
The group of teens turned around at the sound of Ivanna's voice.
"You found her? Are you serious? You actually found her-her? You're positive about this?" It was a middle sized girl in a reserved brown sweater and a pink semi-short skirt who had spoken. Her dirty blonde hair was done up in twin pigtails and she had small bobby pins holding her long bangs back. She spoke in a British accent that complemented her dressing style.
"Da, of course it is her. I did make sure to check, Alice. I'm not stupid." Ivanna smiled at Alice and tugged Madeleine forward in front of her holding onto Madeleine's shoulders in case she tried to bolt for the trees once again.
The girl certainly seemed like she would, her expression was akin to that of a deer when it knows that it is caught—trapped in the headlights of a speeding car close to hitting it, hurting it, and killing it. The girl probably thought they were going to hurt her in some way then. Madeleine's eyes couldn't possibly get any wider than they already were. The group of teens crowded closer. Madeleine was trembling visibly now.
'Is she going to wet herself?' Ivanna even thought to ask herself. She was genuinely concerned; the girl in her arms looked ready to go into a panic attack, or start hyperventilating, at any minute now.
The delicate shoulders in her hands were trying to curl in on themselves; a defense mechanism, she was trying to hide herself in plain sight. 'How must this feel to her? She has been living on her own for the past thirteen years, ever since her mother and father died when she was four, according to Monica and Julchen's grandfather; that Old Man Fritz. He was their informant on any information concerning the old members of his old gang of friends. He was the last one left alive. All of the other members had been hunted down and assassinated; all traces of them had disappeared without a trace; they had nothing besides Fritz to tell them about his late friends. It was kind of stupid that they were trying to set up the old club again when almost everyone in the last one had died. But, they needed to. They were all already in danger. They had to group together now or they would all be killed without ever having experienced friendship. Something none of them knew much about, but still craved. All of them had been left out by everyone else, just because of their strange eyes. They couldn't control the colour of their eyes. They were born like that. Bright, strange colours in a world where everyone else only had brown eyes.
This brings us to the present loud American trying to butt her way into Ivanna's conscious thought.
"Hi there little girlie, my names Amelia Jones. You are so going to join us and we are all going to be such good friends and totally save everyone like heroes, alright dudette?" Amelia winked to Madeleine; sticking her hand out in a thumbs up sign.
'Yep, this girl she had found would definitely die of fright if the American was allowed to keep talking any longer than she had been able to talk already. She would just freak Madeleine out with her loud voice and hero obsession.'