Deadwood (The Chronicles of Mistar - Short Story)

···Minkin Castor

Bastendin 18, 40318 BW···

I watched her from a distance.

You could say I knew her. I knew her smile, the way she glanced at me. Stared at me. I knew her eyes.

They were ice blue, almost white. Almost transparent. Mostly everyone on Gazar has blue eyes, but I had never seen eyes like hers before.

In contrast, my eyes were a dark blue. They were plain with nothing to make me stand out. The girl across the park had nothing plain about her. To her eyes and hair and the way her dark-tan skin shimmered in the sun. I always wondered why she was interested in me.

I was plain. Nothing.

If she knew what I really was... she would be disgusted. I was sure about it.

I saw her from across the way. I moved after she wanted a gift. It was her birthday and a grand one it was. I watched her open the book, stuck in the tree I had crawled into. Hanging on one of its many branches I watched her start to read the book. Only then, I realized it was the same one in my hands.

Crescent Moon by Elliot Elroy. Same navy blue cover and metallic lettering.

That's when I felt her. I felt her boring into me. The ones that belonged to the girl's gama. They were the same cold ice color when I finally looked at her. I immediately looked away. Her eyes weren't like her granddaughter's. They felt evil. But then again, so was I.

When the girl was no longer looking my way, I jumped down from the tree and left the park. The gama's eyes were a warning. A threat. I was no longer wanted at Chautta Park.

As I walked away, I knew should have stood my ground. I could have done a lot of damage if needed, but I ultimately thought not. I couldn't show the girl my gift now. I was a mystery to her. If she wanted to know me, she'd have to find me and figure out herself.

Walking through the streets of Mayno, I felt like its king. Its puppet master. All of Gazar's government dealings were held in this city while the capital held the castle to the king and queen and all the hotels for its tourists. I'd rather stay away from that. Squeeze my way into a government that doesn't want me to squeeze into it. A government that will never know.

But I left the city. I left its quiet alleys and busy streets. I made my way along Farye Street in the Mayno Skirts, the only road along this way. There were no houses built along the road yet, but I could see the start of a few, its construction laid out and the ground played with and dug up.

I didn't follow the road all the way. I took a sharp right, over a snowy hill and back down it to see the Kakama Woods in my line of sight. They were beautiful. They had twisted roots, broken branches, stumps that littered the forest floor along with its dark green needles.

Deadwood. That's what they had called it. The locals, I mean, and their needy, greedy kids. I was glad I was never like that.

I lived in these woods and their sharp appearance. Somewhere in the shadows I lingered, never sleeping. I no reason too. I was dead anyway. What dead person had a reason to sleep?

My only personal belongs were my Elliot Elroy books. Those, I hid in a little crook of the gnarled tree next to the cave. The darkness of the forest shaded them well and I had no fear of anyone coming to take them away.

I sat in the cave. The waterfall was no longer frozen it being the beginning of Solstice. The sound was almost deafening but it no longer bothered me since I sat here when I wasn't scaling the edge of the cliff's edge or reading in Chautta Park. I could read in the woods, but after I stumbled across the park and the girl, I was drawn to the park's presence and its dark corner.

Part of me wished she would come here. See my cave and give me a smile like she did earlier today, but nothing came. I listened, but she was probably stuck her small apartment house in the center of Mayno city, alone on its brightly lit streets.

I was not one for lights and wished for the night to come.