The Trials

leal.

We continued on our quest, but my arm was THROBBING. "Agh!" I screamed in pain as I held my hand on my wound.

My partner stared at me. "Y-your arm!"

She ran up to me and moved my hand away from the sliced piece of arm. "Take off your sleeveless cardigan," she commanded me.

I nodded and slipped it off as she wrapped it around my arm. "Hold it there. We need to find a lake or creek or a source of water to wash it and clean it."

I grimaced but nodded again. After about half an hour of searching for some source of water, we found a shallow lake. She brought me to it and poured water over it, which stung and made me wince. She then tied my cardigan around it so it acted as a band-aid. As she was doing that, I looked into the water and immediately regretted it. The more powerful me stared back at me. She waved at me teasingly. "Hello, Nancy Bennett. Join me..."

I swiftly looked away, trying not to think about it. After that we went along with our day. It was going fine until we were trying to hunt and we got interrupted. I turned around quickly. Cassandra frowned at me. "What? Did you see like, a bird? For food?"

I shook my head and hissed at her to be quiet. She shook her head annoyed and turned around to look for prey to catch. But I still listened intently at the noise I heard. It sounded like... sobbing. I walked slowly towards the noise. My partner looked at me alarmed. "Nancy! What are you DOING?" she whispered loudly to me.

I held up a finger at her to shut up and wait. I walked to a tree, as it seemed like that was the place where the noise was coming from. I walked to the opposite end where a small African American girl with frizzy black hair in pigtails was curled up against the tree, her face buried in her arms. I crouched down and put my hand on her shoulder. "Hello," I said softly to her.

She looked up quickly and tried to back into the tree trunk. Her eyes looked frightened, as if she were a cornered animal.

I smiled at her softly. "Hey, little girl. What's wrong?"

A tear dropped from her eye. "N-nothing. Who're you?" she mumbled.

I looked at her straight in her sad brown eyes. "My name's Na- Um, Nora!"

I didn't want to tell her my real name, because what if this was a trick? Another play on my mind? I couldn't take the risk. "What's your name?" I continued on.

"Leal."

I smiled. "That's a beautiful name, Leal. Now, why are you crying?" I asked her as gently as possible.

She tucked her legs in tighter. "No reason."

I pursed my lips. "Okay. Are you hungry?"

She nodded. I held out my hand for her to take. She reluctantly took it, carefully avoiding my claws. I brought her to show to Cassandra. She raised an eyebrow at me. "Hey, I thought you were the one that said 'Oh, don't trust anyone! It's not SAFE!'?"

I scowled at her. "I'm not confident she's trustworthy, Cassandra. She's hungry and seems all depressed, so why not get her a meal?"

She rolled her eyes at me and sheathed her sword and bent down to pick up three quail carcasses. "Lunch time!" she sang.

We dug into our meals. Leal wolfed it down quickly, as if she hadn't eaten in days. Well, maybe she HADN'T judging her scrawny body. After we were done, we both looked at the small girl.

She stopped wringing her hands and looked at us with fearful eyes. "What are you going to do with me?" she whispered.

I blinked at her. "Do you have a family, Leal? Or a place to live?"