Creatures Like Me

Chapter Three - Child's Prey

The brambles tore at my clothing as I followed Mags into the forest. Nearly stumbling over a tree root, I followed like the obedient disciple I was. Teenage daughter— not so much. My mother would have killed me if she knew who Mags was to me. Let alone my father.

"Are we there yet?" I whined.

"Good things come to chuk'pauhei who wait," Mags spoke in her charming Adapian accent.

"Well sometimes...things just come." I quipped with a smirk.

"Addie! For someone so innocent–"

"Hey now. It was your dirty card game that I played."

"And won. Against my older brothers!" Mags spun around, her hands on her hips. Her raven feather earrings swung with every irritated look. Amongst her jade nose piercing and three dot cheek tattoos, her volcanic layers of multicolored stone bracelets were the most Orobani things about Mags.

I reached for her hand. Grateful for someone so understanding. So kind. She was more of a firecracker than I could ever be. She fought so hard just to vote and own her family's land. All I knew was how to survive.

"Thank you. For everything."

"I love you, Addie. Don't ever forget that."

The thorny bushes opened to a shale flat beach. The creek was at a summer low. Sun-lit shallow water and silt covered tile-rocks for as far as the eye could see. Best of all, Yarrow Creek was usually abandoned. Mags laid down a faded red blanket on the rocks.

"M'lady of Viewfair. Doth it suit thou to sit?" she proclaimed.

"Ah, fair maiden! Of course it doth now that I hast laid mine eyes upon thou."

Her curly black hair smelled of vanilla and flowers only she'd know how to grow. It wouldn't matter how chapped her lips were, her words always made each kiss sweeter. Mags had the kind of beauty that—no, she had the kind of energy that no girl could ever compare to. It didn't matter how much we disagreed. I would always come back to her. We had no secrets. Well, not as many as most lovers do.

Clouds floated overhead, casting our delight with an ever changing array of sparkles on the water ripples. Birds chirped overhead, no doubt pissed over the two humans too close to their fledglings. The creek burbled as it flowed amongst cracks and crevices in the rock. We found ourselves staring at the wispy clouds high above us.

"We should go around that bend. I've never been there before."

A pneumatic cylinder decompressed with a hiss.

Blue TIN light flickered over me.

My hands burned.

Don't go there.

Don't.

Addie.

"Addie."

"Yeah?"

"How about we go for a walk?"

We wore our sandals in the water to protect us from the sharp rocks. Minnows scattered as we waded through the ankle-deep water. I splashed water at Mags when she wasn't looking. She'd get me back. Crayfish scooted out of the way as we meandered through the water. Ever so slowly, the ankle-deep water gave way to knee-deep sloshing. We neared a bend in the creek.

"Wow!" Mags exclaimed.

A dense cluster of willow and mimosa trees grew stubbornly in the middle of the creek on a small island. It couldn't have been more than ten feet across. Boughs cascading into a mess of pink flowers and silvery green leaves, the trees leaned into the water's surface. It was like we had found some long-lost Garden of Eden.