The Discarded

Chapter 18

Sunday September 28th 2014

He pulled up his ripped and torn jeans before throwing on a stained shirt that was old before he'd found it at the shelter. Over everything went his thread bare black hoodie. Walking the dead corridors, he was only another shadow in this place of endless darkness. But shadows never hurt. It takes people to do that, and this early everyone was asleep.

The campus was quiet, held in the razor twilight between dark and light. Swinging around the Vulpes, he took a seat in the forest's edge with his back against a tree. The tree's bark dug into skin, the cold of the earth questing through thin pants and into vulnerable flesh.

He'd thought her beauty would be less. That memory had lied, shading his eyes with its illusions. But she was just as beautiful today as she'd been last week. The robe shone with the baby soft rays of the new-born sun, golden hair gathering the light, purifying it into something holy. Floating across the grass, she was an ethereal thing of beauty and light.

Cesare had seen her mad, furious, blood hungry, and deadly. But he'd never seen her at peace like she was today. A light shone from her eyes and skin ... a purity of faith and purpose.

Alexandra passed him with only a nod of welcome. Her first words would be with god. Nothing was more important than that. It was sacred, no matter the religion. A mindset that found meaning in the world's cruelty. All religions were born from love, the taking of god as your one true love.

He'd never owned faith, only jagged needs consumed his soul. He probably knew Christianity better than many of the devoted, but knowledge was meaningless to God. Faith is what's required, not facts.

Cesare watched the sun rise above the Vulpes as cold crept into meat and dirt stained his pants. It might have been hours or minutes, but eventually she came down the trail.

Alexandra radiated joyous contentment. "Have you come to accept Jesus Christ as your savior and Lord?" Her small smile let him in on the private joke between them, yet her eyes were deadly serious. The confrontation had made her question her duties to Christ.

Standing, Cesare dusted off his pants with a smile. "Nope."

Nodding, her own smile was undimmed by his answer. "Not that I don't appreciate you watching over me, but why did you come?"

Cesare collected what he wanted to say as they walked slowly back to the Vulpes. "I wanted to see you."

Her eyes ran over him before turning away. The silence ripened in the long minutes before her soft words threaded the air. "Some boys get the wrong impression ... but you should know, I don't feel that way about you," Alexandra said.

He hadn't come here to ask her out. No, he'd just wanted to get to know her. The illusion that guys like him could get girls like her had never been a lie he'd bought into. But that didn't mean they couldn't be friends.

No words left his mouth. Instead, he moved off the path and away from her. "Wait! Cesare, I didn't mean ..." Her words faded away as he kept walking. This was a mistake. He never should've come. It was stupid to leave himself open to a person like her. He shouldn't of thought he could be friends with a girl like her. She didn't have male friends, didn't look at them as anything but potential suitors.

Hours later he was working quietly in the cottage when Elizabeth walked in. Coming up behind him, she looked over his shoulder. "What are you doing?"

"Fractional crystallization. It's done by boiling and cooling a solution, filtering out the crystals, and then boiling it again. Once I have the purity I need, I'll powder and melt them down along with a few other things until we have a finished product." The answer rolled off his tongue as he watched the solution. Boiling bleach wasn't something to take your eyes off. Luckily, he'd asked for one of the better fume hoods, along with a cover that came down over the working area.