In The Dark Of Night

Chapter Four - Familiar

Chapter Four

Familiar 

Sometimes people are beautiful

Not in looks.

Not in what they say.

Just in what they are

~Markus Zusak, The Book Thief 

Wynella had never dreamt of what she was faced with now. 

This morning, when she'd awoken in her hammock of Skie-Leaves, she'd spent the day frolicking with the new sprouts, and watching the humans who couldn't see her from afar. She'd never thought that that very night, when she was taking her usual stroll to the water's edge to visit her sister, that she would stumble across Abella's body, rotting beneath a tree in the forest, hand chopped from her body and left to wilt all on its own. She'd never thought that she would have to weep over her sister's corpse, crying tears that seemed wrenched from her very soul, a gaping, empty feeling in her hollow chest.

She'd never thought she'd meet Hunters.

And yet here she was, against a tree, with three pairs of cold eyes searing into her. She wrapped her arms about herself, glad for the jacket - yes, she was used to being naked in her Liberta Forest, but here, faced with fully clothed almost-humans, with their invasive stares and shimmering weapons, she'd felt bare and unprotected...

Until the dark haired boy had showed up. 

The dark haired boy that was hauntingly familiar.

Her eyes fell to him now, and she had to blink once or twice to focus on him in her newly-resized pupils. His gaze was still trained on her, but there was something in them - something humane that the other two Hunters lacked. It was like he saw right through her, stripped down her insecurities and walls to her soul; and somehow, she didn't quite mind it.

It wasn't just that he was more beautiful - gorgeous, even - than the Hunters she'd read about and seen. It wasn't even that there was something other worldly about his beauty, about the way he carried himself and the way he talked and the way he took things in. Like he knew just how great he was, and it didn't throw him in the slightest.

It was the way she knew that his eyes - those pools of liquid gold - never lied, no matter how hard or soft his facial expression was; it was how she knew he only came alive when he was faced with dangers that seemed impossible to escape from; it was how she knew when he was annoyed his jaw clenched almost imperceptibly and his pupils dilated just a fraction when he was pissed.

And those golden orbs held her captive, and she felt herself staring again. 

Then the amber-headed one cleared her throat, pulling Wynella from thoughts that were hers, but seemingly from another life.

"Why should we believe you? You're a Fae -" She snapped, the contempt in her eyes so vicious that Wynella felt herself reel back and press against the tree, willing her camouflage to kick in so she could hide from the hateful gaze.

But the big hulking one had grabbed her before the dark-haired, gorgeous one had arrived and muttered some words to her, searing her with some kind of object, leaving her defenceless and nude. 

"Oh for the good God's sake, Faye, look at the body. And now look at her. What the hell do you think?" The dark-haired one snapped - quite at odds with the loving behaviour that the amber-head seemed to reserve for him, evident when she'd cast herself on him just moments ago. 

Faye's glance darted between Wynella and the dead body - her sister, she reminded herself, her heart lodging in her throat - then her eyes widened, just a bit, and then she looked away, an annoyed look on her pretty face.