Nimrah

Where's Nimrah

--------------------------------------Chapter 18---------------------------------------------

“So why are you here? What do we do? How do we get out?” I asked.

Through the dark lighting of the room I could only really make out shadows of Alberta and Colt. Colt shuffled closer to Alberta. Her slender form wrapped itself about his neck, clinging for comfort.

“We ran away from the Changers’ Society…” he paused, ignoring the second two questions. I waited for him to go on but he didn’t.

“I already know that… But why? What happened after you left?” I pressed. My voice echoed, impossibly loud. I released my hold on my shoulder and crawled forward, careful to keep the injury still. I shuffled until I reached the bars separating mine and their cells. Strands of brown hair fluttered across my face, sticking between my lashes and tickling my nose. I huffed out through my lips, crossing my eyes to stare at the stray strands, and tried to blow them away. After a few seconds of futility though I gave up and brushed the hairs back with my fingertips.

Colt remained silent. He swayed slightly as though it would help him to avoid the question. Alberta tightened her grip on Colt for a second before releasing and pulling back. She began towards where I sat by the bars. Colt made a grunt of disapproval but didn’t stop her.

“Colt doesn’t really like to talk about it… but essentially we… we you know, fell in love with each other,” I saw her cringe at her words and tried not to laugh, “that’s sappy I know, but it’s true. Colt and I met and it was like…. Sparks flew. At that point I didn’t know what I was. I freaked when I learnt but Colt was very calm and collected. He just accepted me and told me who he was.

“We both moved into the Changers’ Society, but quickly it became apparent that dating was a no-no for them. So we had to do it in secret. But we’ve never been good at secret keeping. We got caught and were given a choice of breaking up or terminating our contract… which really means…”

“Being killed,” I finished quietly.

Alberta nodded, “So we ran… not without informing Lon though. He was like a little brother to us. New when we were running away and he didn’t have anyone to lean on. There was only Seraphine and Max at the time. Max was dealing with some things himself. He’d just turned nineteen I think and was having trouble still controlling his changes. When you’re a water animal changer… that’s not so great. Then there was Seraphine who was trying to make his life a living hell. She kept wanting to slash his face… that woman is psychotic.”

“She did slash his face. He’s got a claw mark on his cheek…” I whispered, more to myself.

Alberta hummed sadly before continuing, “Anyway… we left and we hid out in the woods by the Society for a while. We thought that if we stay close to the Society we’d be safer, simply because they’d expect us to run far away and so they wouldn’t think to look right on their backdoor step.

“And for a while it was safe… But we forgot to factor in that the Society weren’t the only ones wanting to find us…

“The Determiners planned an ambush to get into the Society and gather as many of the changers as they could. At that point there wasn’t a lot of security. Miriam probably wouldn’t have been able to stop them. And so we they chanced upon us amid their bush tramp, Miriam agreed not to put up a fight for us in exchange for them calling off that attack. After that I think she heightened the security…”

“But yes… we got caught, and traded for the Society, which I suppose is okay, because it meant that Lon and Max were safe, and then we were brought here. And here we’ve been since. How old would Lon be… Nineteen?”