~Rain~

Chapter Three

Chapter three

Miles awoke later that morning with a pain in his head, and no idea which way was up. After a couple of seconds of panicked thought, he remembered where he was. He had been asleep high up the tree, but now he seemed to be lying on the ground, staring up into the sky.

Quickly he got to his feet, checking the abandoned park around him for signs of the Nelia. The girl, Alice, was leaning daintily against the trunk of the tree, her legs swinging in her black tights. Miles couldn’t see the boy that had been with her last night. Nor could he see Willa.

‘Where’s Willa?’ Miles demanded, pointing at Alice accusingly.

‘Chill,’ Alice raised her eyebrow and continued coldly, ‘She’s over there.’

Sure enough, Willa was sitting on the swing, her bare legs swinging weakly back and forth, the sun behind her making Miles squint as he took in the scene. It made Miles remember, as he watched Willa  sitting there, not so much swinging as sitting, that she was only eleven, which made it his job to look after her. He was all she had, and last night he had failed her. These…these people had saved her instead.

Turning huffily back at Alice, Miles made no attempt to apologize. Instead he asked gruffly, ‘Where’s that boy…Tyrone, or something?’

Alice had never looked at anyone like she looked at Miles now, ‘What are you, stupid? He’s in the tree. Where you left him. Do you understand?’ she spoke as though trying to explain a simple concept to an angry two-year-old, slowly and clearly.

It was Miles’s turn to look coldly back at her, although he had nothing to say. The boy was high in the branches of the tree, looking as though it was a perfectly normal thing for him to be doing, sleeping in the branches of a sycamore. Alice looked a little less comfortable on her branch, although carried the same air of indifference. Miles had barley managed to hoist himself into the branches earlier that morning, although the other three had scrambled up the tree as if they had been doing it all their lives.

Alice chose that minute to swing her legs out as far she could and leap from the ten foot branch, landing lightly beside Miles. He flicked her long blonde hair back from her face and shot him a haughty look.

‘Willa! Come on,’ Miles called over to the park, not really wanting to be alone with the two strangers he owed his life to.

‘Oh, you’re awake!’

By the time Willa had ambled slowly over to the shade of the sycamore tree, Tyron had managed to navigate his way back to solid ground by swinging from branches and sliding down the trunk. Miles did his best to look un-impressed but found it a little hard to express his awe.

Willa made no secret of her own admiration, ‘Wow! That’s so cool, will you teach me how to do that?’

‘Maybe one day,’ Tyron looked down at her, smiling warmly.

‘How did you learn?’ she insisted, sitting down and leaning back against the trunk of the tree.

The warm expression disappeared from Tyron’s face but he didn’t look angry, just sad, ‘It wasn’t anyone…really. I sort of taught myself.’

Miles’s prayed that Willa would pick up on his sadness and steer clear of the subject – sensitivity wasn’t exactly her strong point – but she did.

‘Oh…oh, well thank you for saving us last night! We would have died!’

‘It’s perfectly okay,’ Tyron smiled back at her, ‘I’m not sure what those things were using, but it seemed pretty painful.’