Starting Life From Zero: Far From Home

Chapter Four

The sun was close to that Golden Hour point of the day where the light took on this sepia yellow just before it began to sink behind the edge of the sky. They had been walking for some time, but thanks to Plum's father they had something to snack on as they moved. The city slums were less of a packed district like the part of town where Peter had first come to.

The streets here were dirt with the buildings laid our less and rows and more in little pods around central squares where there was a well or other small rundown fixture. People milled about, but as Peter and Satella got closer to them many would cross the street or outright turn the other way and power walk back where they had come from.

Peter didn't get it, were his clothes some kind of symbol of something wrong or was it something else.

Was it even him? He hadn't considered it till now, but he thought back on his time with her throughout the day and he wondered, who really was she. Too late to ask now, Peter thought.

A young couple in ragged clothes stepped out of a side street, saw them and hurried to get across the road. Peter didn't let them this time, he jogged them down. "Wait up, hey wait, I just need to ask you something."

They froze mid step and turned back to look at him, their eyes slowly drifted to Satella.

"Look, I'm Peter and I am just trying to find something that was taken. It's very dear to my friend here," Peter said pointing over at Satella.

"Stolen," the woman in front of Peter said. Her hair was pink, but in the dying light and with how flat it was it seemed to almost have gone brown. "If you're looking for something that was taken you can almost bet it will end up at the Loot House."

"Loot House?" Satella asked.

"It's k-kind of a large building toward the edge of the district, looks two floors tall, big double doors. It'll be hard to miss," the man said.

"Thank you," Satella said with a bow.

"You've been a huge help," Peter said. He forked over the last four of the fruits they had gotten from the stand. "It's not much, but it's all we have."

"Th-thank you, thank you so much," the woman held her dress out to catch the fruits in it as the man bowed to Peter. Even after that they seemed to be in a hurry to leave.

They walked for a few more moments in silence as Peter didn't trust himself to speak without asking Satella what exactly was going on, what had she done. His only real guess was that elves were rare and scary to people here. He couldn't tell if he had seen another one as they could have been covering their ears with hair. He also didn't spend a lot of time looking at people's ears. After he had spent the day walking around in streets crowded with men with tiger heads and giant iguanas someone with long ears would barely stand out.

There was something different about her face, though he couldn't be sure without seeing another elf or half elf. Like her eyes were bigger than a human's and there was a softness to her that he'd never seen in another person. Her purple eyes were unusual, though they weren't simply purple as there was a bit of blue in the center. Then there was just the way she moved, Satella had a kind of fluid grace to her movements that looked natural to her, but certainly made her stand out.

Was she the only one in the whole city or was she just rare?

"This looks like it," Satella said.

"I was beginning to worry that we might not make it in time," Puck said, stretching his paws out as he yawned. The cute little display seemed to signal that there would be much more time with him there. They best move while they could.