One Day

I.                    Brand New

Such a barren wasteland, she thought. Looking around without an inkling of where she could have been, Aerolyn struggled with the pounding at the back of her head. The pain was nearly blinding her, but the strange light that had no source was not much help either. The coarse ground didn’t seem to be made of any material she could recall. It was like a mixture of sand and asphalt mixed together.

She let out a groan and leaned back to stare up at the oddly illuminated sky that glowed a soft blue. Closing her eyes, she willed her head to stop throbbing. Not long after her headache subsided had a strange shadow come over her. Cracking an eye open, her golden brown eyes met the silhouette of a young boy. She struggled into a crouching position before the young boy.

Noticing an odd clink sound, she took into the odd battle suit she had on. It seemed to be a mostly black suit—slick black pants with a matching thin, long sleeve shirt. The material was light and could easily breathe despite the odd weather conditions. The clink sound had come from a thin quiver full of metal arrows. The sound of them clashing together in the quiver was nearly musical to her ears. She looked around for a bow for the arrows and found one by her feet, which she quickly picked up and slung around her shoulders.

The odd boy didn’t seem to notice much though. He just stared at her with the darkest brown eyes, his eyelids and long lashes shadowing most of his eyes. His curled black hair swept across his face in a messy way. A soft gold ribbon wrapped itself around his neck, knotting into a perfect bow. His shirt was largely too big for him; the grey material hung off of his shoulder, revealing a slim pale shoulder. The shorts he wore exposed most of his legs, making them seem much longer than she was sure they were. The poor child look rather malnourished, and it struck a chord within Aerolyn’s chest.

“Are you okay?” she asked, furrowing her brows together in concern.

“Are you okay?” he echoed. She blinked at the response.

“I suppose.”

“You need to know,” he replied. Though the boy didn’t look a day over eight, there seemed to be something older and more mature about him. “If you don’t know, you won’t move on.”

“Move on? From what?”

“This place.” He gestured an arm in a wide sweeping motion to indicate exactly what he was talking about. “Hell, the Afterlife, the Underworld, the Abyss; call it whatever you like. It’s really just a home for souls.”

“Souls?” she repeated. The idea, though foreign, sounded odd.

“It’s the basic persona of a human. We can go into detail about that later though.”

She cast the boy a look of confusion, but he only seemed to look as confused as she. He offered her his hand, which she took as she rose to her feet. The battle suit she wore clung to her like a second skin almost. A mass of dark waves fell from a tied point on the crown of her head. She let the small boy lead her through the barren desert area.

There was no vegetation and no sun. Yet the light was bright enough to sting her eyes as she traveled with the small boy. She wondered idly if he had a mother or the like to care for him; however, something else was telling her that he didn’t really need one.

“Make sure you watch out for weepers and cyns. Well, down here they’re called cyns.”

“What are those?”

“Weepers are the people that have died by their own hands. They’re restless and tormented by their own ghosts.” The little boy let out a small chuckle. “The ghosts have ghosts.”