Eden

Chapter 2

     Ian raced outside having been awoken by the raucous racket taking place outside. The whole garden was astir with news of the new members. Ian wanted to ask the girl so many questions but was afraid she would just brush him off.

    He approached the chaotic crowd at the table marveling at the age of the young female. Through the crowd Ian noticed her staring at him with genuine wonder. He quickly lowered his head and trotted away from the crowd.

     In his favorite perch in the paradise he pondered ways to escape. He looked time after time at his sketch of the beautiful young woman of his dream. Something in him yearned to take her with him but he was just to shy to even look at her in person. He started to mull over options for the escape. He could climb the wall but that never worked. He thought about going through but after the show last night he had decided that he wouldn't get out that way. He slowly slipped from conscious thoughts of his escape to the brave heroics of his dream.

     He opened his handmade journal to glance through his entries since he had been in 'paradise'. His hands nimbly flipped the pages while he skimmed previous entries. Wind rustled the tree causing Ian to grab one of the branches. He watched in horror as his journal dropped out of his hand onto the ground below. As he was climbing down a hand reached out and clenched the journal lying on the ground. Ian watched the hand retract to the owner which, of course, happened to be the brown haired beauty of his dream. Her head spun around looking up at him. He moved away trying to hide.

     "I know that you're up there," she laughed, "you don't have to hide!"

     Ian blushed.

     "My name is Ariana by the way."

     "I am Ian" He mumbled.

    Ariana brushed her luscious brown hair behind her ear and asked Ian what he had said. When Ian didn't respond she threatened him that she would read his journal. This of course put Ian at a stalemate. Ariana started to flip pages stopping to admire his art on some of the pages. Ian lept out of the tree and attempted to snatch his journal back. Ariana pulled it away.

     "I said if you told me what you said I would give it back!"

     "My name is Ian," He muttered.

     Ariana looked at him unconvinced and flipped another page revealing Ian's sketches of her. She looked at them while her face paled. Her face lifted to meet his, with shock written all over it. He wanted to grab the journal before she could look at anymore of his art. His legs refused to move as his eyes slowly moved to look at hers.

     "How?" Ariana pleaded, "how do you know what I look like?"

     Ian slowly moved up to her taking his journal out of her trembling hands.

     "I had a dream..." He stuttered, "and in this dream I ran beside the prettiest girl I had ever seen. So I decided to draw her..."

     Now Ariana was in full denial. She asked him why she was here, what here was, why had she been chosen, why had he seen her in his dream. Her questions came bubbling out of her mouth faster than he could swim the stream of answers. He guessed no one had told her anything, as usual, about what Eden was. Nobody had told him he was left to find his own answers but he didn't want Ariana to go through what he went through.

     Ian sat down next to her even though he was uncomfortable with it. She was full on crying now. Ian gently lifted his arm around her and pulled her close. Ariana's arms crept around his body and she laid her head on his chest. They sat in that position with Ian rocking Ariana back and forth very softly for hours.