Aerie's Fallen Immortal

Chapter 3

"So you don't know them." He concluded, looking at Aerie, "and your wallet. I suppose the blue one with red stripes is yours?"

"Oh." Aerie said, choking down the information that was offered to her, "Yeah. I kinda know them. School bullies. The annoying kind."

"I see." He replied, grabbing the said wallet and handed it to her, "see if theres everything."

"Hey." Aerie tried to say, shaking as she was doing so, "you sounded, familiar. Have I ever seen you before?"

"Really?" He replied, smiling as he said so, "because me too. It seemed like as if I saw you somewhere, but I don't know. You remind me of someone."

"Sounds cool." Aerie replied, walking casually out of the back ally,"why are you here in the night?"

"Just bored. Walking at night to grab myself a drink," he followed, and the both of them started trailing down the street, "but that should be the question that I should ask you instead. You shod up know that walking alone in the night is dangerous when the lights are not working so properly these days."

"Back from work, walking back home." Aerie replied, looking back at the ally where the boys laid, "really we are just going to leave them there and expect no trouble?"

"Oh, don't worry about them." He said, "Either they are going to be found by someone who's gonna call the ambulance, or they are going to be wake up like drunk teens the other day and go oh my, what happened yesterday? did we die from drinking?"

Aerie laughed at his tone even though it wasn't supposed to be funny, "And I suppose that they are always drunk too."

He laughed. Aerie could recognize his light voice. The voice that she heard when she was much much younger, the voice that had a special space in a corner of her mind.

"It's late." He said, looking at his watch as he shoved the dust off his shirt, "I suppose people would be worried if you have been gone for so long."

"I—" Aerie said. There had to be something about him.

"Guess I'll have to leave you here." He said, grinning at her, "maybe we will see again if we have the chance. You know, life. I have a weird feeling that we would be meeting again."

"Bye bye." He said, and within two blinks of her eyes, he was already gone.

Aerie stood still on the street, alone. For seconds she processed her thoughts, and until then, when she finally looked down the street, there laid a small white card, lying silently on the floor next to her. So she picked it up, and flipped it over.

The thoughts linked up inside Aerie's mind. On the white staff card where his photo was fixed on, there wrote his name, and with the photo fixed on the card, she knew that it was him.

Cade Canning. Staff belonging to the medical sector.

Aerie glanced around. There were nobody around, not to say sight of him. The night skies made the roads even harder to see, but Aerie could see it very clearly. The reason why those brown eyes sounded so familiar, the light yet calm tone of his could register in her mind, she knew thats he must have had seen him somewhere.

She slipped the card into her pocket, knowing that it would be impossible to give it back to him. The school name was wiped off, for an unknown reason, that now it was only stated that he worked in the medical field.

Aerie sighed, checking to see if there were any sort of contact before slipping it into her wallet. She fell into the bed of the hostel room that she stayed in, breathing the smoky air that came as a result of the bad air conditioning upstairs. The day had been long. The last three months had been longer, that she had been barely staying in the cheapest hostel in town as limited by her budget.

It was not uncommon to see cockroaches to run around in the middle of the night. When she saw one, she would smash them dead with any book that came in handy. The tap broke down as usual, pumping water that had such little water pressure that Aerie lost her appetite to bath. But that does not matter. What mattered was that today would be the last night she stayed there.

For the day after, she would be checking out, and would be on a bus to the university she would study in. And the days in the hostel would come to an end.

Also medicine. Aerie thought. If it was a coincidence, if she was lucky enough, then they would probably be  meeting again as he said. But after all these days, all these years, why would Cade suddenly come back again? And why now?

Aerie had no answer, and she wanted one.

Cade searched for his key card through his wallet, and it came as he expected. Though he noticed that no matter how hard he tried to search for his staff card, it was not there. Clearly he would have dropped it somewhere. But that did not matter. He would sign up for a new one and it would be made within a few days. He would be patient for that.

He gestured his hand to face the direction of the coffee table. And for a moment, the pair of slippers slid across the room and wore itself onto his legs.

There is one thing for sure. London is currently now the safest place to stay away from The Association.