Winter

Chapter four

Four shapes materialized out of the hull of the ship.  They clustered around the bottom of the ship, standing in an awkward circle, their curiosity and fear radiating out to Jake and I.  Soft murmurs wafted out to our rock, and I listened as best as I could, as I observed their silhouettes from the distance.

Two girls and two boys.  I could see nothing other than their general body shape and their height, and they all looked healthy yet thin.  The two older, a boy who i assumed was mine, and a girl who looked like the other eleven, hugged the younger pair close to themselves.  

“Are we safe here?” I heard a feminine voice.

“No.  Of course not!  Look how dark it is out!  We don’t know the way to town, and by the looks of it there isn’t even a road!” The boy shouted back, waving his hands vigorously. 

“Do you think there is maybe people to help us home?” the smaller girl asked, hugging tighter to the eldest girl.  

“There aren’t supposed to be,” my boy whispered back.  Fear was an undertone in his voice, and I wondered how skilled he was at masking his words.  I doubted anyone other than me had noticed, Jake and the younger pair of kids too young to pick up on it.

I nodded to Jake, and we stood then.

“There are anyway, you know,” Jake spoke, walking forward with confident strides.  Instantly the four were on alert, tensing up their bodies and throwing the younger children behind them.  

“Who are you?” The older boy sneered, leaning forward, ready to fight first.  In that moment I took in his general appearance; brown scruffy hair, grey blue eyes, and a tan body that was lean from working out.

“April,” I waved at myself, “and Jake.”

“April.” The eldest boy echoed, visibly becoming slightly less tense.  

“You are?” I raised my eyebrow.

“I’m Shannon Maize, and this is my brother Noah,” The older girl offered her and her sibling’s names.  She had yellowed skin and an inky black, pin straight hair, like a strange waterfall.  Along with that, her and her brother shared the same almond shaped brown eyes and ridgeless noses.  Their bone structure was beautiful, reminding me of round pools of smooth water.  I envied her for just a moment, but not too long of a moment, because I remembered that it would be them without soul mates; Amelia and Davis were already taken.

“This is Cassie,” She pointed to a shadow of a girl.  Cassie had darker skin than I’d ever seen before.  She was such a deep shade of brown that I couldn’t compare her complexion to anything I’d ever seen.  Her hair was put up in pigtails, which reached down to her chin, with black wiry ringlets framing her innocent face.  I stared for a few moments, shocked that something so strange and foreign had come to our planet.  

“Cassie?” Jake repeated, snapping me out of my curious haze.

“Yes?” She asked, her small voice very crisp in the darkness.

“I’m Jake.” He held out his little nine-year-old hand, and she folded her fingers around his.  She studied his fingers as if they were tentacles, and suddenly it seemed that Jake wasn’t as dark skinned as I’d always imagined.  I blinked back even more surprise, I hadn’t imagined a connection like that could form so quickly.  Perhaps it was because they were nine and too young to know the real complexities of a relationship; which could be a curse.

Or a blessing.

“What are you doing?” The unnamed boy, my boy, hissed, snapping Cassie’s hand out of Jakes and pushing his friends back. Both of them reacted with a slight hiss, like pressurized air being released.  Cassie gave the boy a death glare.  He didn't even regard her, “You know there’s crazy weird predators out here!  What if they’re them?”