Shazi and the Demons of the First Order (Book 1)

Shazi

Something pinged at the end of the hallway, and then the silence was filled with footsteps, light but heavy with weight on their person. 

Whoever these steps belonged to, one might think that it would take a god or some deity to lift the weights off their shoulders. 

When the owner of the steps entered the light, I was surprised to see a young woman walking towards me. 

She was unlike anyone I've seen in this prison. 

She was so distraught, her hair unkept and messy, as if she hadn't had the time to fix it in the morning and rushed to put it up in a bun but failed miserably. 

There were bags showing on her light brown skin, and the brownness of her hair mixed perfectly with the deep brown of her eyes that seemed to be filled with more than just misery, but something else. 

Something... lonely. 

When she came up to my cell, a few feet away from the bars, I could hear the fast and nervous beating of her heart in her chest. 

She was scared. I could tell that much from the way she held herself before me, like a prey before a predator.

 I looked up, and in that moment, when her eyes met mine, she held her breath. 

Good. She must've seen my eyes, then. 

I grinned, unable to help myself. 

"What's wrong, little lamb? Are you scared?" I said, mockingly, and slid over to the bars, closing my hands onto the metal tubes with such calmness it almost took her off guard. 

She gulped, the lump visible in the middle of her throat. She looked down and fumbled through the purse at her waist, stammering as she struggled to respond. 

"Uh, I just came here to, uh, interview you. If you don't mind." 

I leaned back, surprised. 

Did she just say she wanted to interview me? 

What in all of Hell was she talking about? 

"What do you mean?" I couldn't help but ask. 

She looked up, her expression mirroring my own, but for a different reason. 

"You don't know what it means to interview someone?" she asked, and when she saw the shake of my head, she huffed. 

"Well, alright, then. It's basically when a person talks to someone else, about their life, their story, or anything like that. It's just like talking to someone normally, but instead, you're just taking notes in the process of the speech. You get what I mean?" she explained. 

I cocked my head to the side as I tried to understand what she was telling me. 

Did she seriously think that she could talk to me? Ask me for my story? 

What kind of a child was she to ask such a thing? 

She looked around her, and when she saw the empty chair to her right, she sat down and sighed to herself.

"I promise I'm not going to ask anything personal. Like, about why you look like you are, or something like that." she told me.

 I raised an eyebrow and edged closer to her, despite the fact that we were separated by metal bars. Interesting. Her heartbeat has lowered considerably in speed. 

Has she calmed down, somehow? 

"You don't want to know why I look like this?" I asked, suspiciously.