The Ancient Guardians

The Ancient Guardians (Chapter 25)

I was woken up by the sound of birds singing very close to me. I opened my eyes and immediately regretted it; the morning sun shone much too brightly for my poor tired eyes. With a cautious second attempt, I very slowly opened them again, allowing them some time to adjust to the light. We had slept in a nearby park after the events of the night before; I was sitting on the ground with my back on a tree. The pathway came into view, along with the trees on the opposite side and the empty wooden benches here and there.

A man on his morning jog passed by on the trail, glanced at me and sarcastically said: "Nice outfit." With a little snicker added at the end.

"Thank you..." I answered with a tired tone; I couldn't bring myself to say anything more out of drowsiness (and frankly, with his pink tank top and long brown socks he wasn't much better off than I was). I untied my brother's sunglasses from my belt, put them on and felt instantly relieved. Now that my eyes weren't dying, I could check up on Will, who was in the tree on which my back was resting. Looking up I saw that the singing birds were all perched close to William's sleeping body (I guess they adopted him as one of their own). He was also starting to wake up from the birds' noise. "Come on, Will! Get down from there so that people can at least make fun of both of us."

He sat up from the branch he was laying on, making all the birds fly away. "It's a bit too early to be shouting..." He said while wiping his eyes.

"Well, soon it's going to be too late to stay here. I don't know about you, but I wasn't planning on being the park's sideshow today."

"Alright, alright..." He replied. "I'm coming." He jumped down from the tree, landing beside me, and instantly regretted doing so. His face winced in pain. "Ow... Damn my legs are killing me."

I felt his pain, my legs were also very sore from the night before. "It's going to be a long day. Let's start by finding Marla."

"How far do you think she went up the river?" He asked.

"I don't think that fact actually matters." I answered. "Jameson's people have most likely found her by now; they're keeping a close eye on the majority of the city."

"And how do we find Jameson?"

"We don't. We just head downtown and he'll find us; we're not exactly inconspicuous."

William nodded; being oddly compliant (is he finally accepting my unappreciated wisdom?). "What are we waiting for then?"

It was a nice change from the highly critical William; we were moving on much faster. We left the empty park and started walking towards the center of the city (walking is pretty much all we can muster at this point). Needless to say it wasn't long before the streets started to fill up with people going about their business, and the more people there were the more we generated attention. At first the reactions were mostly lingering stares, but as we marched on they gradually escalated, ranging from nice comments to what kind of convention we were going to attend. As I originally thought: most of them imagined us to be cosplayers. Some of them wanted to ask us some questions or take pictures with them, so we had to come up with many excuses to let them know we were in a hurry. Others followed us; sneakily touching William's wings in awestruck disbelief at how well they were made (does this count as sexual harassment?) and he was constantly shooing them away.

After what seemed like an eternity, we finally came across a familiar face: Carl Jameson. "Welcome back, young Guardians." He said with his distinct accent. He had just come out of the alley ahead of us.