1 Chapter 1

The crisp air of fall makes me cough, taking a deep breath I inhale the smell of cypress and cedar wood. Brown and yellow leaves crunch under my fur lined boots. Golden light shines through the barren branches void of their leaves. The light causes me to squint, it's almost to the point where it's too bright. My brown hair flutters in the corner of my vision with the whisper of wind brushing against my cheeks red with the cold.

I pull my hood around my face covering my ears and hair and pull up my mask leaving only my bright green eyes peaking out from underneath my layers of cloth protecting me from the bite of the wind.

There is no one out on the streets due to the cold and the location of my walking path. Trees line the gravel path as I walk leisurely, and start to actively avoid the leaves. My footsteps fall silent as I glide down the path. This has alway been something I could naturally do but I have never thought too much about. The leaves are left undisturbed in the wake of my silent passage.

I start to pick up speed, I must be home before dinner or else the orphanage will provide me with no food this chilly evening.

When I was three years old I was abandoned on the doorstep of an old orphanage in Austin Texas. Now that I am 15 I only vaguely remember the sound of my father's laughter and the sent of my mother's embrace.

The orphanage doesn't treat me cruelty but I'm pretty much invisible, there is an overpopulation of abandoned children to look after and I am just one of the many. Soon after I was abandoned I learned that I could only depend on myself for survival so I usually pick up odd jobs here and there to get some form of income.

That's actually where I am returning from now. This past week I have been cleaning out an old lady's garage and I was caught up in work that I didn't notice that I was late. Labor jobs tend to suit me well, I have always been a very adaptable and what I don't have in strength I make up for in quickness.

I am halted at a street light waiting for the pedestrian white walk sign. There are people around me now that I have entered a busier section of the city. A man wearing a suit bumps into me and quickly apologizes without looking at me in the eyes, and looks back down at his phone in his hands. How can people be so utterly unaware of there surroundings, I don't find it hard to process everything that is happening around me. Isn't it normal to know exactly what is happening around you and where every single life form is at?

Without looking up I understand that there is a flock of 12 geese crossing the sky heading south for the winter and a small rat is curled up burrowed in the roots of a tree across the street. That's how I can see the little boy running to grab his ball in the middle of the street his mother paying no attention to his actions. And how fast the car is moving heading towards that very same boy. Time slows down as I make a quick decision.

With no time to spare I run through the crowd waiting for the light and fling myself at the boy pushing him out of the way of the speeding car. I have enough time to register that the boy is out of the car's trajectory and the stinging cuts on my knees where I fell before the car rams into me. Wheels crush my torso and my breathing becomes painful. My head smacks against the concrete and the last thing I register is the smell of iron and the pool of liquid underneath my fingers.