|Speak Softly|
Chapter  O n e


IT WAS AN OBLIVOUSLY moment.
To the point of impossiblities.
But it was happening.
Right in front of me.

“You must think I’m crazy, Adrian, because I am not going to give in that easily.”
A white-skinned, perfect-faced boy mocked her with an overly hanging chuckle. His prickly blonde hair brushed across his face as his pale cheeks burned a flushed pink in a loud laugh.
“It’s not funny, Adrian.”
He finally blew back a few gasps of fresh air before returning to his fake-serious-glare. “Leah, why do you take things so seriously?”
“Because I apparently” —gesturing to his giggling poster and bubbly face like he couldn’t hold it in— “can have a laugh once in a while.”
Adrian put a hand on Leah’s shoulder reassuringly. “Don’t take it like that. You need to cut yourself loose though.”
They were nearing the corner in which they would part to their individual condos. The large city of New York was like a blur when they were centered through a conversation. Leah’s heart jumped.
“Fine,” she agreed, “I won’t.”
With that, as the buzzing air of bustling traffic began to settle back into their keen ears, and the sights of people brushing past them in the never-ending crowd, they said their silent good-byes. He turned a backward glance to see her vanish around the corner, as he crossed the street with a crooked smile.
It was then he realized her sudden disapperance; with the aging night dragging itself tiredly into the sky, with orange and pink stripes painted up next to the clouds in a watercolor aray. Navy blue and luchious purples dotted the puffy bits of sugar-white. Tiny, subtly blinking stars began to sprinkle the evening.
Too late.
Under the natural beauty almost desirably impossible to see in the heavy light from street lamps and tower windows did he understand the likliness in the picks.
She was under guard.



The night shed over New York City in a blur. Leah had slammed her door shut with a bang of guilt—a feeling of misfortune washing over her. She was no match for her friend.
Finally, someone that knows what she’s gone through—almost entirely—and turning him down was her only choice.
It was beginning to eat at her from the inside out.
“No!” she screamed to herself.
I can do this. Adrian is nothing compared to me. Nothing.
Even the truth bit at her.
Her duty began to sink in. It was the night. The night, where she was to watch over the innocent Wholesomes as the good-being she was.
A Guardian.
She striped of her filthy-but-humanly-clean jeans and cuffed T to a light undergarment and over shirt that mocked the night’s darkness. Her new jeans were ripped and sewn with poison-spider’s thread, where she had marked her won battles in past times. Leah pulled up her brunette, dark-bronze hair into an untidy ponytail.
Smiling in a disgusted grin, she stalked over to the floor mirror. Her eyes thashed out in a white-golden amber, like the sun, except blackened by hideous memories of foolish mistakes.  Leah snickered as she buckled a leather strap over her shoulder, containing a  bundle of swan-feathered arrows as sharp as her venom.
Her bow was stashed in hand as well as a razor dagger in a pocket clipped to her jean-pocket.
It was time.
Leah decended swiftly through her window, gliding up onto the stone ledge of the apartment building. She clasped the lock shut from the inside. No need for breaking an entry.
The night had dropped. Chatter was like the sun’s ultra-rays, bouncing off of the buildings from the still-crowded sidewalks, and honking traffic of annoyed taxi drivers.
Perfection lurked. Leah’s shadow was a faded pastel as she climbed effortlessly to the rooftop. Her gaze as she settled locked onto three innocent girls.
They walked amongst themselves in their own world, unaware of the people around them as Leah had been talking to Adrian. Two snotty blondes flipping their hair with imposturous giggles smothered their heavy jokes to the lonely girl in the middle. Her gloomy-expression was washed with dried tears clearly visable to Leah as she leaned over in interest at a fatal angle on the roof’s edge.
She zeroed in on their conversaton.
“Don’t be such a snag, Emmie!” one of the twins called.
“Leave me alone, why don’t you?” the strawberry-caramel haired girl in the monkey-in-the-middle situation pleaded. “I really don’t have the time.”
Leah grinned in disgust at the pathetic situation.
The Wholesomes chuckled. “Emmie, you are a disgrace!”
“Leave me alone,” she begged, half-sobbing.
“But Emmie, we are just having so much fun!”
Torturing her, be my guest, Leah thought.
The caramel-haired Emily broke free of their grasp on her elbows. Struggling to push past the crowds, she didn’t realize where she was going. Her tears blocked her clear view through the New York streets to an unseeable darkness.
It took most of Leah’s strength to follow her. The Wholesome hadn’t seen her, or wondered actually, that she was headed into the outskirts of the city. Street lamp candles were blown out to a gray ash, where broken windows and glass littered the streets and garbage cans rolled onto their sides in the narrow allies connecting the what-seemed-like an everlasting nightmare.
Leah’s heart sank as she leapt onto the roof of a half-burned building. Seeing, watching the human slide down to her knees on the cracked pavement drove her mad.
They weren’t alone.
Better yet, they were far from being alone.
Emmie’s cries of distress broke from her dried throat to the air. Her heart thumped loudly in her ears as her sobs loomed. She could feel her eyes burning with the severing stream of salt and water flow down her icy-cold cheeks.
She hadn’t recognized her location. Let alone care. The twins had ruined her possibilities of returning home; finishing her college-intutiun paper, and finally relaxing. Life was tough.
“Huh?”
Oh, damn it.
A fleeing can rolled across the street. It couldn’t do that by itself. Someone else was there.
“’Ello, Wholesome. How’s it going, deary?”