Fire Haired Girls and Starlit Skies

Chapter four: another side note

You press the red button again and again, but the signal has broken no matter how many times you try to reconnect. You clutch the document to your chest before tucking it into your coat. Sometimes it's best to abort a mission. To fly solo. You don't have much time and if nothing else, that's what you've learned to trust, your instinct to loner. You've learned from your mistakes.

You can hear their distant chant, the army returning to their bunks. You take a deep breath, force yourself out of the shadows into the dim light. You climb out an open window, jumping to its height from the top of the bunk, the weight of your black bag hung over your shoulder, bearing you down, but you swing over the ledge, onto the dewey grass as the door clicks open. You bolt. You wonder when they'll notice that it's gone. Could be a few seconds, an hour. 'Don't look back' you tell yourself. But you can't help it. Cold air swept into your lungs, you peak over your slim, agile shoulder. You see: an old tin warehouse, rusting on the edges; buildings layered behind it, twirling up into the sky out of sight; a dark grey overcast; shadows and a hundred voices moving inside. Clear. You duck into a trash laiden alleyway, pour a bucket of dirty water you find sitting near a patch of browned garden collected to water two withering tomato plants, covering your muddied footprints.

You pry open the lid to the passage, a rusted iron grate, black painted fingernails scratching the surface until the latch is found and you slip underground, into darkness, the moulding scent of fish, the bold aroma of excrement, and the clear saltiness of rain water barely detectable under layers of age and filth. It's cool, a slight breeze from the current of water, sloshing through cemented tunnels. You swiftly close, lock the passage after you, disappearing from the surface. Undetected.

Except for a pair of beady seven year old eyes, following your slender figure as you hide away. Braiding strands of his long white hair with coarse, penny scented wires on a cracked, shaded stoop, curiosity raising his invisible brow above hopeless grey eyes. Luckily for you, it is not a rare occurrence for this child to witness shady acts of thieves or slashers. He tucks his thoughts deep under memory. He does not tell anyone. Does not follow. He simply watches. And waits.