Keeper of the Lost Secrets

CHAPTER TWO: Time to talk Santa (after we decide flying poles are overrated)

Now, I'm not too educated on death (or humans), but I've learnt, through human movies and such, that it's usually the 'worst case scenario', which was not a scenario I wanted to be in.

Sophie stood, there, paralysed, in the middle of the street. A few people had stopped to witness the event, but most people walked along the clean streets of San Diego, surrounded by parks and shops.

The car swerved to the right, missing Sophie by hardly a centimetre, then jumped a curb, knocking down the streetlamp, which came hurdling toward Sophie.

As soon as I was sure she was going to die, she raised her hands and, to my shock, held up the streetlamp. The metal pole with its light floated above her, as if it were a cloud in the sky. Sophie looked to be in a trance, hardly able to process the sight.

"Put it down." I warned her, my voice taking the authority as Dame Alina during morning orientation. Sophie shrieked loudly, another earache, and let her hand drop. The light dropped down, and time seemed to quicken before them.

"Watch out!" I yelled loudly, pulling her shirt and the rest of her out of the way, a millisecond before the light hit the ground. The sound was loud and painful, and the force of the impact pushed us both to the ground. Sophie rolled until my body blocked her. Yup, a girl I had met less than five minutes ago was lying on my chest, staring at me as I were both Batman and the Joker.

My eyes stretched wide, not only at Sophie lying on me, but at the event he had just witnessed.

"H-how did you do that?" I asked, trembling slightly. My breathing became shallow and quick. I replayed the last few seconds in my mind. Nothing made sense. I shoved that my mental box of things to hopefully get to.

"I have no idea." Sophie said, eyes darting everywhere but me. She sat up on my chest, and scrambled off as soon as she did.

My eyes scanned the street, trying to find any witnesses. They landed on the petrified driver, who's breathing seemed as ragged as mine.

"We need to get out of here." I spoke. The driver stared at us, as if we had descended from the sky (which I have learnt, is not a human thing to do).

She let out a gasp. "He saw." I nodded at her and pulled her up, still feeling unsteady on my feet. I grabbed her arm and walked down the street with her. Her eyes were glazed, and walking seemed like a second thought.

"Which way?" I asked her as we reached the end of the street.

"North." She said, her voice not above a whisper. Her finger pointed up, and I nodded, dragging her across the street (this time waiting for the crossing lights).

I took off running, tugging Sophie behind me. Her brown eyes scanned everywhere around her, and she seemed to be occupied.

Signs with animals were plastered on buildings. Crowds of people milled all around us despite the poor air quality. The trees still held their evergreen colour, and the wind whipped against my face. Sophie slowed to a walk.

"What do you want?" Her voice was small, but it had a certain conviction to it.

"I'm here to help you, I promise." I said, and immediately wished I could take the words back. That made me sound even more as if I were trying to kidnap her. She studied me.

"Why were you looking for me?" Sophie said. Valid question, I thought. I shouldn't answer it though.

I opened my mouth and looked around. "I'm not sure if I'm supposed to tell you." Great. As if I didn't already sound like a secret government agent trying to run experiments on her.

"How am I supposed to trust you if you won't answer my questions?" She snapped at me.

I thought about it for a second. "Okay- true, but I don't know enough to give you all the details. My father sent me here to find a specific girl your age and I was supposed to observe and report back to him, like I've been doing. I... wasn't supposed to talk to you." I frowned at myself. "I just couldn't figure you out. You don't... make sense." I cringed.

"What does that mean?"

"It means... you're different from what I've expected. Your eyes really threw me off."

"What's wrong with my eyes?" She touched her eyelids briefly, her fingers lingering on her lashes.

"We all have blue eyes – or well, blueish eyes – so when I saw you first, I figured we had the wrong girl again. But I guess not." I took a step toward her. "You're really one of us."

"Whoa, hang on. What do you mean, 'one of us'?" She took a step back, holding her hands stiff.

I looked over behind my shoulder. I suppressed my laughter seeing tourist decked out in the colours of the rainbow. I grabbed her hand once again and tugged her, so we were behind a green minivan.

"I- Okay," I said, wringing my hands. "There's no easy way to put this, so I'm just going to blurt it and hope you don't freak out." Greaaaat. Yet another wonderful line by me, the one, the only, Fitz! "You're an elf. Like me."

Humans are such confusing creatures. One moment they're laughing and the next they're sobbing in front of their entertainment rectangle with a tub of sweetened calories. Sophie's eyes went wide momentarily, her irises surrounded by white all around. Her cheeks puffed outward, and she bent forward. I reached forward to pat her back, but she shot up before I could, a loud, raucous laugh leaving her lips.

"Riiiight." She said, after a good three minutes. "And let me guess, your dad is Santa, and mine is Rudolph." I furrow my eyebrows. I had heard of those legends, but I had forgotten our kind's connection to the myth.

"Where are your little pointy ears and green hats? Aren't you meant to be doing free labour slaving away at Santa's factory, for a cookie and a thank you card each year?" She said, her eyebrow was raised, and she grinned. "Not too different from America, to be honest."

"Where do you think those legends came from?" I said, before she could mention Mrs Claus and the rest of the St. Nicholas lore. "And for your information," I said, a little offended at her bashing. "Elves are divine creatures, superior to humans... and St. Nicholas. Our kind has kept the Earth it's very finest." I almost laughed. I knew I was lying.

Sophie rolled her eyes. "Which is why Earth is melting away thanks to global warming, right? And why there have been fires all around San Diego, right?" I hummed in thought.

"The Earth facing global warming is all thanks to humans." I quipped. "Elves have a much smaller population; it isn't our job to do damage control for creatures who spend all their time on primitive devices claiming to be knowledgeable." Yup, I hated humans.

She knitted her eyebrows together, as if I were an unsolved mystery. "Okay, fine. I'll run with your delusions. Keep going about this elf thing. It's the only interesting thing in my life."

"Well, we're creatures superior to humans. We have a much higher IQ than humans ever could. We're special, Sophie, and you're one of us." I looked at her, awe in my eyes.

"Riiight. Okay, no." She took a step back, and I took a step forward. "You're insane, like, crazy sicko insane, and I might also be, for having a conversation with you."

"I'm telling the truth." I called out. My voice resembled my father's, taking his authority, but my knees wanted to buckle. "Can humans do this?" I closed my eyes momentarily and willed my body to blink in and out of sight. I opened my eyes and found Sophie looking at me curiously. Her body moved bobbed back and forth, matching the wind. She leaned against a car.

"But I can't do that." She managed to say. She breathed heavily, eyes blinking too fast.

"You have no idea what you can do when you put your mind to it." I spoke. "Think about what you did with that pole, a few minutes ago." The image flashed in my mind briefly.

"This is crazy." She held her head in her arms. "I'm crazy. Life is crazy."

"Sophie, no matter how much you try to deny it, I'm telling the truth." I step forward. "The only thing that's true is that... you're an elf."