The Blue Lillie:(Rewritten)A Splendorman love story

Chapter Three: Lost Possessions

Lily was sitting on a branch of her favorite lumbering oak tree. She had climbed as far as was possible-with how flimsy the top branches were- without causing her to fall to her death, or at least break her legs. She was intently reading "Pride and Prejudice", which was cradled-almost reverently-in her right hand. The worn pages flipping smoothly against the hard cover. In her left hand she clutched a handful of small colorful rocks, their jagged edges pressing uncomfortably into the soft skin of her palm. She was absent mindedly tossing the rocks, one by one, against a near by pine tree's trunk. She was a terminally klutzy person by every standard in the book, but for some unknown reason the universe had blessed her with near perfect aim. She didn't even really have to look at her goal as long as she had a general idea of were it was. She read her book fervently as each rock thudded against the tall pine. The rhythm of the impact was lulling her into a dreamy state as her eyes darted across the page.

"Thud..."

"Thud..."

"Thud..."

"Thud..."

Her hand was quickly emptied of the small rocks. As she got to the last one she rolled the rock up from her palm to the tips of her fingers, a particularly sharp edge jabbing into her index finger as she squeezed it.

"Ow!" She cried out, glancing over to her injured finger, as she was pulled out of her trance.

She was shocked to see that her pointer finger was actually bleeding. There was a small stream of dark crimson blood dribbling down the side of her finger, becoming lighter the father away from the small puncture it got. The minuscule rock in question was not small enough to be deemed a pebble, but not large enough to be considered a full rock. It was dark grey with deep sapphire blue streaking across it, and some splotches of turquoise here and there. Though the coloring of the rock was most definitely some type of paint, from construction or graffiti-an all to common thing in these woods-Lily had picked the rock out particularly. She liked the way the colors popped out at her, or maybe it was her partiality to the color blue. 

She looked at the divot that had been forming in the tree she was using for target practice. The wood had started to chip away to reveal the, light colored, younger, wood underneath. Her aim had been very precise. She almost felt bad for damaging the tree, but she felt that it couldn't be any worse than when love sick high school couples carved their names into the bark of a tree. Actually what she was doing seemed less permanent. She then heard a soft and slow dripping sound, and looked down to see that blood had dripped onto a page of her book.

"Crap!" She groaned as yet another drop made it's home on the dated pages. She stuck her finger in her mouth, sucking it clean of the dark liquid. Her fingers were still curled around the rock, so after her finger was free of blood she threw her favorite, and last rock at her target, waiting the final, "Thud" it would make against the tree She did this while attempting, in vain, to wipe the red stains off her book with her thumb. Like that was going to help.

The "Thud" she anticipated did not come. In fact there was another sound that replaced it. It almost sounded like bells? Like the kind one might hear at Christmas time, like sleigh bells.  She looked up from the blood, only to see nothing out of the ordinary, just the defiled tree and pile of rocks below that. She shrugged it off and went back to her book.

When she was ready to go back to the "Hen House" she placed her book mark, or rather "Save the Children" flier, in her book. Then she started to climb down the tree. On the second to last limb to the bottom she stepped too far from the bough and lost her footing on the thin part of the branch. She fell, and let out a cry. Within what felt like less than a second she had landed on her back, getting the wind knocked out of her. She couldn't move until she was done gasping for breath. She sat up slowly, and groaned once again, rubbing her back-side. She then realized she had landed on something quite soft. Though she had landed flat on the ground and mildly hurt herself,  she imagined it would have been much worse had what ever it was not cushioned her landing.

She let her hands slide across the silky material, it was obviously some form of clothing. She stood up and picked up the squishy attire. It was a black tailored suit coat, but there were a few very strange things about it. The first was that spread across the black, probably expensive, material were an assortment of polka-dots, they were each a different color of the rainbow. The other thing was that the coat was huge! Lily had to raise both her arms almost all the way up to keep it from grazing the rocky forest floor. She wondered how tall a person would have to be to fit in a suit like  this. She let out a short laugh of disbelief, she had the strange urge to put it on, but figured that would be rude to whoever actually owned it, not that they were actually around. Though if the owner did show up and she was traipsing around in their costume that wouldn't bode well. She wondered if they really cared about it if they just left it laying in the dirt. She guessed that it belonged to some performer, the kind that wear stilts and long suits, with masks and make up. What they would be doing out in the middle of the woods she didn't know, though these woods were strange. Like what she had seen the other night, that massive shape could have been the owner of the coat. Then she wondered if it was some kind of forest gang. Fear bubbled up in her as she stared at the thing. If so they had been very close to the house and it worried her.  Regardless she shook it out a little bit-wiping some dirt off of it-before folding it up, and laying it next to the bottom of the tree. She felt guilty for smooshing the coat into the dirt even further when she landed on-top of it-in the event that it didn't belong to a gang member.

She rubbed her lower back again and sighed, muttering to herself about being "graceful". She picked up her book which was laying open face down in the dirt, bookmark long gone. She looked for it but had no luck, and as it was getting dark and she already had all the "Save the Children" meet up information written down on a paper somewhere, she gave up. Hopefully she could find the paper in her bag somewhere. She brushed the pages off and walked away from her reading tree, attempting to walk and read at the same time. Needless to say there was a lot of tripping on her way back.

Little did she know, a large shadow had been watching her gallivant around, damaging trees. The said shadow stepped from behind the oak tree and picked up the neatly folded coat. In his free hand has the flier that had drifted down onto his lap when she fell. He watched the girl as she got further and further away.

"What a strange human."

He smiled.