Killing Softly ✞ (gxg)

12 | cigar

"We've decided to let you pigs stay in here for the entirety of the day so that maybe you can educate yourselves on how not to be ignorant little shits."

Lily stumbled as Holden pushed her into the large library where both Jasmine and Peter also stood, both looking a bit startled by her sudden entrance made violent by the hands of her personal guard. Fixing the sleeve of her dress that had slipped down, she gave the guard an evil eye.

"Perhaps you should stay in here too and educate yourself on how not to be an asshole," the blonde retorted, rubbing her arm where his hand had clamped onto.

The guard's face broke into a condescending smile, his hands reaching the handles of the doors as he walked backwards through the doorway. His eyes somehow seemed two shades darker, shadowed by his long curls. "And perhaps you should educate yourself on how not to take people's kindness for granted like a spoiled little brat." With that, he slammed the doors shut, causing the tall bookshelf beside it to rattle.

Huffing, Lily flattened out the skirt of her white dress and looked over to the two humans. She stiffened, noticing their tense looks—specifically, Jasmine's tense look. Peter was tense only because he had gotten an earful from the girl with black braids right before the blonde had been tossed into the grandiose library.

"Hey," Lily awkwardly broke the silence, taking a step towards Jasmine but stopping when the girl quickly turned away from her and walked across the room to mindlessly graze some books on a shelf. "Ouch," she whispered to herself, clenching her jaw as her heart painfully twisted at Jasmine's cold behavior.

Peter, stuffing his hands into his pockets nervously, leaned closer and whispered, "Yea, she's um...a little bit upset."

Looking up at the lanky boy, Lily opened her mouth to ask why until her brain answered herself. So she simply sighed, glancing around the room where hundreds and possibly thousands of books lined the dome-shaped walls. "Well, at least the scenery is nice."

The boy chuckled and nodded his head in response, his bangs flopping with his head movements. "It is, much nicer than where I come from."

"And where is that?" she questioned, turning her eyes back to him.

"An old abandoned barn," he said with a tight smile, the bones of his throat visible because of his thinness. They looked like a ladder being climbed up and down by his Adam's apple as he talked. "With nothing but goats and my little sister. And the occasional spider."

Lily smiled softly, imagining the boy sitting in a run-down barn beside a goat. It must have been the reason he seemed so ready to speak, as most of his company was goats. "Your sister?" she asked, not having to specify what she was asking for him to pick up on it.

He glanced to the floor, his temple flexing as he ran a sinewy hand through his frizzy hair. "She..." He straightened the collar of his white shirt nervously, looking back to the girl with a tight smile. "She was on her way to collect water from the nearby pond when they found me in the barn." He chewed on his lip as his navy blue eyes seemed to drift off, a glaze crossing them as his eyebrows sewed together in reflection. "If they didn't find her, then she's there alone."

The girl looked at up him with seriousness in her eyes, a dull ache of empathy filling her heart. She imagined what it would have felt like to have come back to her camp and find that she was alone, and probably going to be alone for the rest of her life unless she chanced searching for other humans; but that would be a death wish in today's world.

"I'm so sorry," she mumbled, her baby blue eyes filling with sympathy. "How old is she?"

"Fourteen," he answered stiffly, still keeping that forged smile across his lips. "Almost. Her birthday is tomorrow."