Forest is close, trees are far

2. Vibeke

In Betlovert, half the creatures admired Delta's boys. The other half feared them because they were frightened by number of those who admired them.

They were posh in their wealth, they kept together, the four of them, when they found themselves on the road, it emptied itself to clear the way for them. Their parties were like them: accessible to the chosen, too far for the youth of commoners. The families of Delta's boys owned half the city, the plains, the buildings, the roads. No wonder it opened as soon as they stepped on it.

She watched them while they still went to same school. All together in the same building, same place, all the same age. That's when the idea first came to light, with a smoldering glow, burning stronger each day.

Many eyes watched her. The news would have spread quickly around the city had the kids from her old sides been here tonight. It was all bustling with those like her, who feel better in their own skin since they have switched. She didn't go to Delta's boys 'parties often, though they invited her regularly from the day she told them she didn't want to have anything to do with them.

"I don't want to be associate me with you." She came prepared, on that rainy day, more than three years ago, to their lair, where, she learned by observation, they arrange the deals.

"Neither do we with you." Kristnan replied, as if she were some kind of lowlife who had nothing to do in their elite club. She didn't expect nicer welcome. They didn't know each other yet. But Vibeke decided long ago that she wasn't just anybody. She came to make them agree with her. She wanted to laugh. Things are going exactly a she planned. But she refrained, because the Strangers in the city had taught her how to tie a mask so you don't need to readjust her again. "Great! Seems we are on the same page then. "

The glasses gleamed under the lights as if everyone held  lamps in their hands. Alcohol was everywhere, music was playing. Harold's estate was like a wild beast released from chains running into the night. But the patrol will not come. And they knew it. And that was enough for the party to continue flowing into the oblivion that follows sobering up.

Sorgnen joins her when he notices her. The other boys she located, but she was not greeted. Maintaining discretion was the key to the deal. The boys remained sober. One of Delta's rules.

"Did you?" He asked her in the dim light, where to some stray gaze that couldn't contain its curiosity they would look friends talking maybe even flirting.

"And the last one was destroyed."

Together they looked into a space that, although huge, has succumbed to darkness. She could have sworn there was a smile that seemed to linger on the edges of his lips.

She didn't stay long.

She had to return to the house she was fleeing from, someday. Even then her smile doesn't appear. In the shadows of the night spilling through the gaps between the curtains, she sought a sign of consolation that she would ever find it again.

But she finds nothing. Only the outlines on the walls that are sneering as if they would attack and devour her at any moment, and the lies she is made of will taste too bitter even for them, so they will spit them out into the light of day.