Fire Scarred *Un-Edited Version*

Chapter Twenty-Three

"Yes. That is the City."

"Is this all there is to it?" I asked. "It's so small."

Leo chuckled. "No. There are four different sections that make up the city: North, South, East, and West. Each of those sections are divided into smaller sections, each resemballing a force of nature. A spirit lives in the neighborhood that is the element of which they died, and the section of which the strength of their powers go best with. North is for the strongest, south the weakest. East is for those who are mediocerly strong, west is for those mediocerly weak. This small portion in front of us is like a town square. All the shops and services are provided here. Come on," he said leading me down the hill and closer to the gravel streets.

"Where are we going?"

"My house."

My feet stopped moving, my legs stopped functioning. Everything just stopped. I didn't think I'd be taken to his home, where he actually lived, this soon. I gulped. "You're house?"

He stopped walking and turned back to face me. "Yeah. My house. That's okay, isn't it?" He bit at his bottom lip waiting for my reply. I nodded, but the butterflies fizzling in my stomach didn't do the same. Actually, they barfed up more butterflies that repeated history. Cursed things. He let out a breath of releaf and rushed to say, "So, my family's weird. I'll put that out there now. They're loud, and crazy, and really annoying. I'm sure you'd hate them, and I wouldn't blame you. It's just my dad, me, and Remy. My dad, he--"

"Leo, it's fine," I said. My hand was placed gently on his arm, and I watched how he breathed in big breaths and only let half of it out.

He smiled, and his eyes glittered in the sun's yellow light. "Follow me, then."

We walked through the fog that circled its way around us. It followed us on to the empty road and flowed up the buildings like an upside-down waterfall. Voices echoed up ahead, and bodies appeared like shadows as they cross across an oil lamp in the night. Curious shades of blue and green and brown and violet reached out to me from the eyes on people's faces. They watched us as they went along, and they whispered, they spoke, and they pointed like we hadn't any eyes or ears or senses to notice them at all.

"Don't mind them," Leo's voice was in my ear. "They are just curious."

"Are these all the other nature spirits?"

"No. They're the dryads. They wander around the outside of the town to get the things they need for their bodies, the trees, and help protect us. They don't speak," he says after I wave to one, "At least not to us anyway. They have their own language that we can't understand. No one has ever learned or tried."

I slowed my step just a little to hear the words they said. They were garbled like their mouthes were filled with clumps of earth and hay. They motioned with their hands towards me. They're skin was nearly translucent, and their fingers disipeared into strips of smoke at the ends. If I squinted hard enough, I'd vaguely be able to see through their shadey forms. The colors of their skins were tinted green, and brown, and red like the bark of the trees that are rooted near here.

Their eyes probed over the length of my body. When they touched me, their skin was rough, cold, and filled with a greater sense of life than I'd ever felt before. "They're so. . ." my voice trailed off. When I found it again, I was able to finish. "Creepy."

He nodded in agreement. "Yeah. Look, up ahead." He pointed to a break in the fog where the cluster of bodies became more crowded. "Now those are the nature spirits."

This group of spirits were more vibrant this time, and more solid looking. The didn't stare as openly. They didn't gape or point. They went about their business, and only followed me faintly out of the corner of their eye.