The Peculiar

The most prettiest thing

Alpha saw her the moment she merged into the shadow of Old Crow Alley--a great lady dressed all in plum-colored velvets, striding up the muddy street with the bearing of a queen. He wondered if she would ever leave again. In the corpse man's barrow perhaps, or in a sack, but probably not her own two feet.
Alpha closed the book he had been reading and pressed his nose against the grimy window, watching her progress down the alley. The fairy slums of Ellina were not kind to strangers. One moment you could be on a bustling thoroughfare, dodging tram wheels and dung piles, and trying not to be devoured by wolves that pulled the carriages, and the next thing you could be hopelessly lost in a maze of narrow streets with nothing but gaunt old houses stooping overhead, blocking out the sky.
If you had the ill luck to meet anyone, chances were it would be a thief. And not the dainty sort, like the thin -fingered chimney sprites of Ellina. Rather the sort with dirt under his nails and leaves in his hair, who, if he thought it was worthwhile, would not hesitate to slit your throat.
This lady looked very worthwhile. Folks killed for less, Alpha knew. If the half-starved corpses he had seen dragged from the gutter were anything to go by, folks killed for less.
She was so tall, so strange and foreign in her finery; she seemed to fill every nook of the murky passage. Long gloves the color of midnight covered her hands. Jewels glimmered at her throat. A little too hat with an enormous purple flower in it sat on her head. It was perched at an angle so that it cast a shadow over her eyes.
"Beta," Alpha whispered, without turning from the window. "Beta, come look."
A girl appeared next to him. She was kind of thin, her face resembled his,her hair was golden, shining full of light. And her eyes were blue and bright. Full of curiosity.
She pushed a lock of her hair out of her eyes and let out a little gasp.
"Oh, Alpha," she breathed clutching at his hand. "It's the most prettiest thing I've seen in my whole life." He on his knees next to her, so that both of their faces were just peeking over the worm- eaten wood of the sill.
Pretty indeed, but there was a wrongness about the lady outside. Something dark and unsettled.