broken thieves

one

Even after three months of living in our safe haven, tucked away in miles of woodland with the people we love most, in a tiny, beautiful village creating our own little community, the nightmares are never really gone.

I toss over again, too hot under my duvet but too exposed without it. My bed feels huge and empty, the space that Blake sometimes takes up feeling cold without him. It's rare that he does stay in this house, but when he does, I sleep considerably better than when he doesn't.

The house, the village even, is deadly silent. Dad is fast asleep in the room across from mine, Tristan and Sean presumably passed out on the sofas in the living room after watching too many movies. The wolves are quiet tonight, no howls or barks coming from the field they roam freely in, and there isn't any music or lively chatter coming from any other house. During the day, this village is alive, but at night is when the monsters come out to play, plaguing the place with darkness.

I turn over, trying to get comfortable but not succeeding. I check the clock on top of my chest-of-drawers and see that it's only a few minutes past midnight. I went to bed around ten. Has it really only been two hours?

There's no way I'm getting any sleep at this rate, so I get out of bed without much of a second thought. I grab a jacket from my wardrobe and pull out a pair of converse, moving quietly as if one creaking floorboard could wake up the whole village, before leaving my room and silently making my way down the stairs. As predicted, Tristan and Sean are dead to the world in the living room, the TV fuzzing with static. I carefully meander my way through their empty drink cans and food wrappers, turn off the TV, find two blankets to cover my brothers with, before leaving the house all together.

We're right in the middle of summer, so it's not exactly a cold night, but the breeze nips at my bare legs and I wrap my jacket tighter around my body. I reach the bottom of the concrete steps and take a moment to look around the village.

Pretty much every single light is turned off. There are eight houses all together in the village, five of them very large with three, small cottages dotted around. I look to the left, seeing the biggest house sitting at the end of the street where Danielle, Adam, Ophelia and Zavier have taken residence in. I did try to convince Danielle to let Posie live with me, but I lost the fight. I do understand why; I'm still basically a kid myself, one that's not getting enough sleep even without a nine-month-old disrupting my nights, but I still felt as though I'd failed Chelsea in a way. I get that feeling a lot. Danielle and Adam have basically adopted Posie as their own.

I start to walk down the street; a straight, wide path that leads to the entrance with the sign 'Octobia Village' arching over. It was Crystal's grandparents who had built this place as a place for thieves to come if they needed to, and apparently 'Octobia' was her grandmother's maiden name. I like it. It's like living in a fantasy world. It looks like a fantasy world, too.

The larger houses are beautiful, with stone steps leading to grand doors with wildflowers sprinkled all over the place. Behind the houses are acres of fields and lakes where we spend most of our free time, and the only light illuminating the street are the few Victorian street lights along the path, large baskets of flowers hanging down from the lamps.

The cottages are beautiful, too. No one is living in them, but they are good spots to go when all you want is to be alone. They're made of stone with the classic thatched roofs and there are flowers all over the front gardens, reminding me of pictures in fairy-tale books.

Across the street from my house is where the Winter's leader, Crystal, along with Claudia, Fauna, Lilith and Aspen are staying. The interior of their house is stunning, the five of them making themselves at home as soon as we got here, but I can't say I've stepped foot in there too many times. While Fauna, Lilith and Aspen are sweet friends of mine, Claudia is still quite dry around me while Crystal is usually cooped up with Danielle as they try to figure out a plan.