The Lost

19- Found

Lucius

It took ages to get Azure to rest. After we had managed to get some food and water into the small girl, with her making desperate sounds between every forced mouthful, she finally passed out in Rosin's arms. It was obviously not her choice, but Azure's body had finally won the battle against her. An empty stomach, saturated clothes, wings that were greying and incomparable exhaustion. Was this girl even human? No, I realised. No, she's more determined than any human could ever be.
Her passing out was maybe ten whole minutes after she fell out of the sky. I still couldn't believe she had just appeared like that.

"Look at her..." I murmured. She looked half dead.
"What about her?" Rosin snapped back at me. The girl leant protectively over her friend, who was now laid in the grass on a bed of leaves that Lyn had made. I only sighed at Rosin's usual hostility.
"Meant how tired she is, Rosin." Was my dull reply. I was starting to get tired with this spite towards me. Rosin could be scared of me all she wanted, she didn't even have to like me, but this aggression? I had done nothing to her. Literally nothing. Yet she was making me feel like I was back in the school with the boys again. No wonder Azure got so annoyed at her, I thought to myself, then stopped. Not my place to think that. As shit as Rosin was making me feel, Lyn still needed her help with getting home and finding stuff out. So I would just have to deal with her attitude until Azure woke up.

"I'm so happy she's back..." Lyn unknowingly defused Rosin's glare. The pink eyes mellowed out at the sound of the girl's worried voice, "But she's all cold and wet... where did she go?"
Rosin sighed at that. Gravely shaking her head, she muttered, "What does it matter?" Her eyes darted to the side, her voice lowering, "She didn't find him, did she? So she'll wake up and probably go looking for him again..."

I frowned. Him meant Aspen. Azure might have finally come back, but she was very much alone. Alone and more battered than ever.
I thought of her glare at Rosin before she disappeared. I thought of the three days we had spent waiting for her. Had she been flying around all that time? And now she was in a real bad state... she really was dead-set on finding her friend. But three days of searching and still nothing, not even a clue as to where he might be? Whether he was even alive...
"We could get out of here now," I suggested glumly, "While she's still asleep." Oh, I felt awful saying it. But the situation was getting bleaker by the minute. The reality of it was that Rosin was right; Aspen was gone and Azure needed to go home, wherever home was for her, otherwise she would end up killing herself in this city.
The girl glared up at me with her pink eyes, "You aren't taking me, much less her anywhere."
I huffed, oh for the love of-

Lyn looked genuinely annoyed, "Don't be mean! He's only trying to help you!"
She surprisingly went quiet. The stoney gaze deliberately avoided the frowning face of my friend. I smiled a bit despite myself. Thanks Lyn. A person ten times bigger than Rosin couldn't intimidate her, but one frown from Lyn was apparently all it took to get her to stop talking.
"In any case, we aren't leaving yet," Rosin eventually replied through gritted teeth, "And when we do leave, Lucius isn't coming." The winged figure stated this very firmly. Not up for discussion, that voice seemed to say. When Lyn began to protest, she waved her hand, "But that time hasn't come yet. There's no use in going anywhere until she wakes up. Azure will never forgive me if I bring her back home against her will. She would probably return here anyway..."

All eyes turned to the sleeping girl. Would she refuse to leave when she woke up? Probably she would shoulder Rosin away from her and fly right back into the mess of the city. Or, though I seriously doubted it, would she finally just accept things? Move on and go home?

I had heard so much about this boy now. Azure was so damn set on finding him that it made me sure he must be something amazing. Probably he wasn't though. Probably he was just a boy, like me. What did he look like?- I wondered. Did he have wings, like they did? Dark hair like mine or red hair like Azure? Maybe he was more like Lyn; no wings at all and colourless features.
To think; all this time that we had been here in this park, he had been with whoever had stolen him from his home. It wasn't a pleasant thought. Azure sounded so afraid of that human. From the fragments I had overheard from Rosin and what Lyn had reported back to me, the guy sounded pretty bad. Well, that was an understatement. He sounded awful. All I could hope was that this... Sam wasn't...
My heart twanged. I hoped desperately that Aspen was okay, if he was alive. I hoped that Sam wasn't like Edward was with Lyn. But I was beginning to realise that not everyone wanted to look after these little guys like I did. Not everyone saw them as people. So what the hell was my hope worth in the end? Nothing. Aspen could very well be dead and I wouldn't know.