Heart of a Child

A/N: This was written as a response to a prompt indirectly given to me by Bhoie Aviles. By that I mean, he asked EHMforJESUS to write a story with the title "Heart of a Child", and then EHM told me about it, so I decided to write it. And took it in a completely opposite direction than Bhoie was probably expecting, and for that, I apologize.

Anyway, this story is written as a sort of prequel to the anime Shinsekai Yori. As such, it does spoil a couple things from the show. Of course, considering how many twists the show has before the end, I'm not spoiling anything too major. Still, I highly recommend going to watch Shinseaki Yori as it's one of the best anime I've ever seen. However, I did try to write this in such a way that someone unfamiliar with the show could follow along. So enjoy, and this will probably be the last time I'm given a prompt like this because of where my mind takes ideas.

...

Saki couldn't sleep.

It wasn't like she wasn't tired, even as she paced through her room trying to calm herself down, she kept yawning, as if her body was telling her that she needed to just go to bed.

But there was something that seemed to tell her she needed to be awake, that there was something she needed to be ready for. It would be simple enough to just dismiss that as a figment of her imagination, that she was just jumpy because she was tired, but even if she told herself that, Saki's heart wouldn't believe it.

Saki sat down on her bed and yawned. She looked out at the stars that filled the sky, even seeing some of the reflections off the river that wasn't too far from her house, though the water was moving too much to make out anything beyond a couple flashes of light from this far away. But as she looked, she saw something moving, much closer. She walked closer to the window, and saw what almost kind of appeared to be a small child, someone about her size who seemed to be sneaking closer to their house. She caught another glint of light out of the corner of her eye and saw something else moving in the shadows, but couldn't make out its size or shape. She then heard the sound of something coming not far from her window, but she couldn't see it.

Something was wrong.

She slowly walked to the door of her room, getting ready to open it when she heard the footsteps. She froze as much as possible, trying to keep her breath as silent as she could. The strange feeling within her that kept her awake told her that she shouldn't know about this; that she should just be sleeping and ignoring anything she heard. Not knowing anything was safest; not questioning was the easiest. If anyone found out, then there'd be problems.

But if no one found out...

As quietly as possible, she leaned her ear against the door, hoping to get an idea of what was going on outside. She heard the footsteps and they sounded like they were coming from the stairs. Except they stopped, and she heard what almost seemed like a voice inside her head telling her to go to sleep. But even as the voice said that, she wanted to know more.

Was this her sister Sakura going down stairs?

Maybe Sakura couldn't sleep either?

Saki's hand rested on the door knob for a second, thinking that she should open it and find out. After all, her sister wasn't anyone to fear. But before she opened the door, she a knock at the front door of their house.

Stay back

That time the voice in her head seemed to be louder, but it was all just her imagination, right?

Saki continued pressing her ear against the door of her room, hoping to hear what was going on. She heard the front door open, a couple heavier footsteps as some people entered the house. She could hear her parent's voices as well, though it was too muffled to make out any of the words that were being said. Even so, it almost sounded like her mom was crying.