Tales of the Travellers

3

I knew where Erica lived, because once it was raining and she decided to show me her home. It was a comfortable little house with one bedroom, a living room, kitchen, bathroom and a small backyard with a laundry line. She didn't own the small house, not yet anyway. She didn't want to buy it because she wanted to move to the country.

I walked in her room, a small room with dark green walls and brown wooden accessories ranging from the bedframe to the bookcase and the frame that framed the window. I ran my fingers over her array of books, I had read some of them, most appeared to be about adventures.

Erica mumbled in her sleep, causing me to look over to her every now and then to make sure she was okay.

I was surprised she survived having her Soul Strings messed with and then suddenly yanked out. When I went in there myself none of them appeared to have snapped.

I sat at the window sill and watched the golden yolk of the sun slowly drip behind the hills. It was going to go away entirely soon.

"What were they...?" someone asked.

I looked over to Erica, who sat up in her bed, and rubbed her eyes. I smiled at her and sat at the end of her bed. "How much do you remember?"

She stopped rubbing her eyes and looked to me. "All of it," she said through gritted teeth. "I want answers Harold! What were they? What the hell are you? What happened?"

She seemed angry, and rightly so.

I opened and closed my hands, but before I could offer an explanation she offered another question with a softer tone. "Why are you wearing that?"

I smirked at the question and looked to her, "They are my work clothes, my dear. It proves that I had a reason to be intimidated," I explained.

She stared at me still, her eyes waiting for an explanation.

I wanted to tell her, I almost did right there and then, but the idea of what may happen, of what she may do, frightened me to no end. I was scared she'd be scared of me. I was scared that all of my efforts, all of my attempts to make sure she wasn't sent to the most horrific place on earth would've been overlooked just to see me as a creature of Death.

She wouldn't care about me anymore...

And I wanted so much for her to care, to care as much as I cared, to care so much that you can't believe like I do.

"You're not human, are you?"

This statement laboured my breathing, like a punch to the heart, but all I could do was nod.

"And those things... they weren't human?"

I shook my head to the information of them being human.

"And you managed to bloody save me again? Like some sort of damsel in distress?"

I smirked and straightened up.

She rolled her eyes at me. "Looks like we both haven't been completely honest with each other then," she said.

My confusion must've shown, I never expected this conversation to sway the way it was.

She kicked her legs off the bed and shuffled closer to me until she could lean her head on my shoulder. "As you know, my name is Erica Wright, daughter of Mitchel Wright and Olivia Wright, two of the most richest and influential people in the trading industries at current time." I looked at the top of her head criss-crossed with golden locks. "I'm Erica Wright, just a pawn in their chess game to be sold off to marry some Bishop in another family."