The Lost

14- Others

Lyn

I'm dead.

A crow devoured me. I never actually made it out of the house; Edward must have crushed me in his pocket. Or that insufferable heat from the inside of Lucius' hands really did get to my head after all... that's called heatstroke, I think. It makes you see things that aren't there. This couldn't be here, so yes, something was wrong in my head. I thought of a thousand possible ways that I could have died in the past twenty-four hours. Because heat-induced hallucinations or some sort of strange heaven-afterlife were the only ways to explain this... to explain them.

This isn't real! Oh gosh, well- it probably was. I had to have come from somewhere, didn't I? Not as in a place like this city, but like, a family. My mother. I had to have a mother because everyone had a mother! And I seriously doubted that an enormous human could be a parent to me... so it made sense that there would be others like me. And this was... proof. Proof that I wasn't alone in the world, that there were others like me. So that meant I did have a family! Oh my god— I have a family somewhere out there! And I once again imagined a big brother to play games with me, and a big sister to tell me I was pretty, and that I didn't look strange with my white hair and my pale face— I imagined there were people out there who... who could hug me. Actually put their arms around me and hug me... oh my god. I could have cried or shrieked with emotion as I ran after the two girls.
Was this really, really real?

What could the chances of me meeting them here have been? Out of all the land in this sprawling city, goodness; all of the land in just the park... that must have made it something like... one in... a thousand. One in a thousand I could have met them here like this.
God no, far too low. One in... the mere thought of it made me dizzy. One in a hundred thousand million trillion! This was a miracle.

This had to be a hallucination. Or heaven. Though, as I followed in the footsteps of where the duo of impossibly-sized girls had disappeared to, I was sure that it had been real.

A girl by the name of Azure and her friend had been before my very eyes. People my size had been in front of me! With wings too? Well, maybe I imagined that part in my excitement. Wings were a bit of a stretch. Oh, but how wonderful they had looked, even all covered in dirt and cuts...
Giddy with the thrill of it all, my bare feet were pitter-pattering across the dew-laced blades of grass with a greater speed than before. Wide eyes blinking, I stared around the thickening foliage.
They must have gone this way.
Spears of greens and browns pricked and scratched from all sides as I progressed through the leaves, and I was sure that the two people must have some sort of superpower to be able to navigate through so much... well, nature? I wasn't quite sure of the word for it. The garden back at the house wasn't 'nature' compared to this; it was tamed and dying. This single bush was a tight maze compared to the flowers I had left behind.
How had they run through here so quickly?

After a few more steps forwards, the murmur of hushed voices hit my ears. I felt a thrum jolt through my heart. My feet stopped sharp and suddenly. Voices that I could barely hear! After living around people whose mere breathing could be loud enough to be deafening, I wasn't used to being unable to hear a conversation. There wasn't much that they could possibly be talking about after their encounter with Lucius.

I crept forwards. Slower now. One step at a time. Softly, quietly. The leaves hurt my feet and the bushes scratched, but I drew closer and closer until I could almost see the break in the leaves. If I squinted, I could see a blot of browny-pink. Oh my god, oh my god. To the left, red. Is this really really real? I took another step forwards and a leaf decided to split in half under my foot. The little fragments spiked the underneath of my toes like a hedgehog. That wouldn't have been so bad was it not for the agonising crunch it emitted as it broke.