Test

chapter one

        He was a tall man. In another life perhaps he would have been handsome but I soon learned that looks were always deceiving.  In hindsight I should have tried to run then and there but I wasn’t looking at the man, I was looking at the little boy behind him. The adults were talking but I was fixated on the little boys face.I had never seen another boy my age before, the boys in my village were much older than I and they were always rowdy and dirt smeared.  This boy however was different, how regal he looked standing there in his little uniform his chestnut hair ruffled and a small knife at his side. How noble he looked I thought staring at him, until he stuck out his tongue
The first few days with Morfran are hard to remember. After a while we were led from the room by a sweet, slim woman. The hallway outside was lit with a light that seemed to come from nowhere, the blue glow cast weird shadows on our faces and along the florescent, white steel walls. I suppose we should have known then that we weren't going back to our old lives but some part of me thought that after we rounded the next corner, went through that next door, we would be back home with our parents. That false reality was crushed when the woman led us through the last door.
We gazed into a room as big as our living room at home, at first I thought it was a living room until I saw the beds standing at either ends of the barren room. Anais was looking at them too, I knew she felt as I felt, alone. Our parents couldn't help us here in this white sterile world, they couldn't hold our hands and show us the right path to choose. I stood there, pudgy hand clutching Anais’s warm palm, the tears came unbidden but I let them fall. I always do.
    Sleep wasn't easy that night. Anais came to me in the night. We cried together under the sheets, muffling our sobs with the thick, fluffy pillows.
The next day i awoke before my dozing friend, the early morning light was poking its way through the pale blue curtained, windows stationed at the end of our rather plain room. The bed was low enough to the ground that i could just barely touch it with the tips of my toes. Even so I managed to tumble out and fall with a thump on the sleek wooden floor. The clean wood smelt faintly of lemon and waxy floor polish, intrigued by the smell I smushed my face into the cool boards. “ what are you doing?” the boy was standing over me, brow wrinkled in confusion as to why I was on the floor in the early morning smell wooden floors. Evidently he never had smelled them. “What are you doing?” he said again slowly as though I was crazy to be smelling pieces of wood lying on the floor.
“ I-i w-wh-what?” I mumbled slowly straightening from my fetal floor position, “I-i w-was just...just…”
“Smelling the floor” he grinned sarcastically leaning over me and gazing transfixed at the same spot on the floor I had previously been inhaling. “What is your name?” he asked. It took me a few moments of awkwardness to realize he was still speaking to me
“ C-caroline” I stammered standing finally and looking down at my bare toes.
“Well Cara”, he said arrogantly, “my name is Jaxon but you  can call me Jax.” I could not believe this boy, he came into my room in the early morning without knocking and now called me a stupid nickname and expected me to call him one in return. I did the only thing I could think of, I slapped him.
I suppose I hit him hard because he staggered a little bit and, eyes wide, put up his left hand to graze his now slightly red cheek. “What the heck was that!” he yelled hand now firmly pressed to his rosy cheek, “what did I do to you?”
It took him a moment I guess to realize he had been incredibly rude, “oh yeah sorry...I probably should have knocked.i-i was going to as-no nevermind.”
“Well thanks for apologising...Im sorry about your face…” he just shrugged it off.
“It's okay i just didn't expect it that's all.”
“ I'm still sorry, I shouldn't have hit you.”
“Quite the lady are we, should I get you a bandage for your hand? It must hurt after slapping someone for the first time.” he smirked. I slapped him again.
“Thats better, princess.” he sneered.
I suppose it was a very violent first meeting but we learned to soon settle our differences in a less painful manner, at least less physically painful.
It occurred to me in later years that I never asked him why  he was in our room or what he was going to ask me.