"Her soul was like that far distant universe that no one would ever make the journey to find it."
*
Athena's eyes felt heavy in their sockets. A small faint murmur of her name slowly rising her from the deep sleep she somehow slipped into.
"Athena." The voice rang clearer, sweeter than she had dreamt it to be.
Her eyelashes fluttered open, catching sight of the speaker. She flenched away from him at first as the visions from the night before rushed through her still tired mind.
"I won't hurt you." He said in such a smooth tone athena could only stare. His hands lifted a small mug, slipping it into her small frail ones.
"Just water?" She said softy with a hint of a smile. "No poison? Man I thought better of my kidnapper." His eyes widened and he began to protest.
"Forgive my morning humor. It is a bit rusty." A relieved smile crossed his handsome face, revealing a cut just above his eyebrow. Somehow it made his features stand out even greater. She wondered how her parents had known him. Whether he have been a son of their friends; which she had always imagined her parents not knowing anyone. Her father worked everyday from home, and her mother stayed in and tidied the house. Athena's studies had always taken place in the small office just outside the library, taught by her mom. Of course they went out to by food from a very nearby market, and fabric for new clothes; but Athena didn't have a friend that she could recall besides her ladies maid, Cassie.
A wave of worry crossed her soft face. "What of my parents?" She took a sip of the water in the mug as if bracing herself for the news she had already guessed upon.
He shook his head sternly, not wanting to be the barer of bad news. He parted his lips to speak but they came out in failed attempts of stutters. His specialty was definitely not speaking to people, especially when it involved someone he was only told about.
"Are they dead?" Her voice was steady, though her eyes were stinging with wet grief for the possibility that they were truly gone. She pinched herself while the boys head was in his hands, conversing with himself on how to tell her about the fate of everyone she held dear.
A soft ping of her fingernails digging into her sensitive skin made her accept the fact that she was truly awake, not dreaming, nor in the worlds of her books.
"They are not dead." He finally said, looking up at her with strikingly blue eyes. A flash of confusion painted her face, shaking her head.
"Then why do you look as though they had..?" She said, realizing she didn't even have the boys name. She was lying in a bed with only a night dress on in front of a boy she didn't even know. Her mother would faint.
"William." He said in response to her unspoken question, smiling softly up at her.
"It seems that those people who came in through the roof of the library have taken them. If you know anything at all, Athena, you have to tell me. Your parents. Their lives are at risk." He said the last part with great meaning, taking the mug from Athena's hands as it seemed she was going to spill it everywhere.
"I would never hold any information back. I know nothing at all. Nothing." Her voice broke on her last word, bringing her knees to her chest. Her veins felt as though there was ice carving itself through her chilled blood.
"I know. But I'm required to ask." His voice was gentler than he had to be, she knew. He could be demanding and cruel. But he wasn't. His fingers tangled themselves absently with the hem of his jacket, wishing only that they were tangling in the girls fiery red hair that effortlessly fell over her shoulders. It was slowly killing him, not to be able to tell her who she was to him. They were once friends, playing in his fathers farm fields, only being a little over eight years old. The image of her crawling through his window the day after she had turned sixteen stuck feverishly in his mind. He shook the thought from his head and looked back up to her shining green eyes that he found so irresistible.
"You must be famished though. Is there something you prefer to eat?" A simple crack in his voice was evident at the ending of his sentence as she moved a strand of his curling brown hair from his face.
"Sorry. I've no idea what came over me." A blush formed fiercely over her cheeks, humming across her chest.
"Soup will be fine." She said quickly and retrieved the mug that he had laid on the nightstand. He nodded and stood up quickly, walking out of the room without another word.
'How very very odd.' Athena shook her head and then set the mug down, noticing a small book. She instinctively picked it up, smiling brightly that her very own copy of Alice in Wonderland embraced in her hands.
