I help Marcilene up to her feet.
"Why'd you run off?"
I groan when she gets up.
Taking a step away from her, I begin to walk back and forth.
Try to figure out which way we came from.
"Okay, so we are in this direction, and we took a left, left… right?"
I roll my eye.
"Fuhhhhh."
I reach and grab my white eye patch that's on my eye, pulling it off.
I blink a few times for myself to get used to the environment, for a second it's completely black, making it hard to see any colors.
Then I look at Marcilene who's face says she wants to go back now.
Her aura around her wobbling and shaking, like a scared child.
I put the black eye patch on and the aura fades away.
I walk closer to Marcilene.
Once we are a step away I grab her hand and I give one good squeeze.
"We'll be okay."
I tell her as I hold her hand in my hand.
"Follow my breathing."
I take a deep breath and let it out after a second.
"And again."
She follows my instructions and my lead.
"Okay, for now, I'll lead the way."
Marcilene takes a deep breath then nods.
I walk around her and begin to walk in one of the four ways that are available to me, so I just walk through the first way I see.
Turning my head completely every now and again to see if I can get a full view since only one eye is available for me to use.
I take a left, then another left, then a right.
As we continue down the pathways the lights don't get any brighter, but on the plus side, the lights don't get any darker.
I turn my head and Marcilene is still practicing the deep breaths.
She sees me look at her and she holds my hand with tight squeeze.
"Are we getting closer to the place we were at before?"
I nod.
'I don't wanna give her false hope, but I don't want her to panic.'
"I'm sure we'll be there soon."
I smile at her.
Marcilene grabs a tuff of her hair out from under the hajib and fidgets with it, mostly for her to calm down.
"We're going to be just fine."
The second time I said that was less for her and more for myself, sure in reality I'm like seventeen, but right now I feel like an actual child… probably because I am.
I turn my head forward and continue taking my steps closer, then a right again.
A light, looks like a campfire, the sound of crackling logs.
'Yes, that's definitely a campfire.'
I grab Marcilene's hand even tighter and begin walking faster.
"See Marcilene I told you we're going to be fine."
As we get to the edge of the alley, I look around and see that a tent, a large long tent, inside the tent I can hear something, but I'm not really sure what it is.
'Is it a circus tent? Then why would they be far from the festival?'
I look around some more and see where the light and the campfire is at.
It's toward the left side of my eye sight making me turn my head completely to even see the fire.
But that's not it, there's also people around it.
A wolf man thing, with a wooden bow strapped around to his back. The fur looking like it'll stick to him when he tries to pull it free. The wolf looks like it has an angry face.
The other one is a woman with a scar over her eye.
The discoloration of it, giving it the look like she has no pupil.
She also looks well built, as built as Steel, she has a short sword to her side strapped to her waist, they both sit on a log as I stare at them.
She has short brown hair, with only one of hers eyes, being black.
Both of them wearing a sort of leather armor, covering only certain parts of their bodies, which is mostly true for the woman, since she's has armor on her body, but her chiseled abs are showing from them.
"Don't let go of my hand Marcilene."
I turn back just to look at Marcilene a bit. After doing that I turn my head right back towards the people sitting on logs.
Marcilene's grip on my hand grows even tighter.
I take a few cautionary steps towards them, growing closer and closer.
I take a deep breath, though still afraid, I have to make sure, that both Marcilene and I get home safely.
"Um.. He.. Hello."
My voice timid, breaking through their rants, that I didn't even pay any attention to before.
Both of their eyes fall onto me, then onto Marcilene, then right back to me, as I wave my hand in front of my face.
"Can... Can you bring us to the festival area?"
Both of them look between each other and with a small pause between themselves, they stare at each other, as if they are reading each others mind.
"We... We are lost and would like to just go back to our sister."
They look at me once more, then right back to each other, and they nod once.
The wolf stands up onto his hind legs and walks backwards over the log and stepping back a little.
The lady, speaks up, pointing toward the log.
"Come sit down, we will get you guys back to safety after our jobs are done."
Her voice, is scary sounding, like there's something else on her mind.
I wave my hand in front of myself as if to decline the offer physically.
"It's okay, sorry for bothering you, we'll be on our way."
They woman immediately puts her hand onto her sword on her waist.
"I wasn't asking."
Her voice is commanding and she nods for the log, even the wolf, with their maroon colored fur, grabs their bow that is strapped around his body, grabs the string and is ready to pull it off at any moments notice.
I gulp and take a few steps closer to them.
I hold Marcilene's hand tighter.
As I take the steps it feels like the world is spinning and time is slowing down.
The log stands at right beside my foot, but Marcilene, doesn't have any space if I sit down now. I don't want her sitting next to the woman, and still have this wolf hovering over us.
Marcilene has since tucked the tuffs of hair back into her hijab.
The wolf tensed less on the bow and the woman moved her hand away from the sword.
"We don't plan to hurt you or anything, but you'll have to wait here till we can leave, don't want you spreading that you saw some suspicious people."
The woman says as she grabs another log and spreads out the flames a bit more.
"Yeah, it'd be bad for that.. wouldn't it?"
The wolf puts its hand on Marcilene's shoulder, making her tense up.
It's voice sounding suggested.
I wack it's furry hand away and pull Marcilene closer to me.
"Don't touch my sister."
Her breath is already ragged but she's nonetheless practicing the breathing technique I told her.
The wolf looks at its hand in surprise and then looks to me, its slightly red eyes, growing a bit angry.
"Tough brother?"
It retracts its arm far behind its head, ready to smack me.
I close my eye completely ready to take the entire hit.
I wait for a few seconds.
"Stop!"
The woman yells.
I open my eye to see the hand right in front of my face. Close to striking me.
The wolf moves its hand away and toward its side.
"Okay, Jahar."
The wolf looks at the woman who's named Jahar.
She stands up and walks over toward me standing over me her height towering over me.
With such quickness she slightly unsheathed her sword and the blunt end hit me, making me fly over the log and sliding backwards as I hit the ground.
I let go leaving Marcilene with the woman in front of her and the wolf behind her, with a smile on his ugly furry face.
I groan, the back of my head bleeding and my thighs scraped fro the slide.
Marcilene gasps, her eyes look like their tearing up.
I slowly try to get to my feet.
The woman moves fast once again, and stands before me, as if she just teleported right in front of me.
"Don't get up."
She has her hand back on her sword again.
"Your eye. Why's it covered?"
She eyes it as if it's a danger.
With a deep ragged breath:
"I cut it, the pupil also damaged same as yours."
"No, that's not it."
She tilts her head slightly then straightened back out:
"I can feel it. Your eye, something's different."
She turns her head back.
"I can feel something different from your sister as well."
She smiles at me, one that scary, like she's enjoying the torment over both Marcilene and I.
"Choose, I'll want you to take off the eye patch, or the weird cover your sister is using."
She draws her sword, the tip of the sword, tapping just ever so slightly on the ground.
"I'll take mine off."
I didn't even give myself time to process the choices, I already know that elves are seen as bad people after the war.
I blink a few times under the patch and I slowly pull the eye patch off from my head.
Revealing the green eye that was hidden under the patch.
Along with the reveal.
My eye sees the black aura off of the woman right in front of me, along with a faint aura covering her sword as well.
I out of the corner of my eye is the color of Marcilene's aura and the green color of the wolf aura.
His own jumping around with excitement as if he's happy.
The woman's aura is calm and slowly flowing around her body.
Marcilene's own aura spikes nonstop like she's afraid.
Behind them is many other colors behind them as well, the circus tent cloth isn't thick, like cement nor is it remotely as thick as wood.
Making me see a full view of all the different colors that are behind them.
"What the hell? Kid has two eyes."
The wolf says exclaiming like it's the best thing in the world.
"No, it's not only that. See it's small glow… this eye is embed with Soul Energy."
The wolf looks closer at my eye:
"Yeah… yeah. I see it."
My eye stares at all the colors and it's starts to sting, not as bad as when Steel released his aura into the air, but it still stings.
Instantly my hand goes to cover my eye.
"It hurts to leave the eye patch off for to long."
I plea with them.
"Then we'll take off your sister's cover."
Before I can even rebuttal with them they grab the back of her covering and yank it off the showing the entire face, her blonde hair, down to her face, to her ears.
Those long pointed ears.
They open their mouths in surprise of what they see and then they smile.
"Jahar, we got ourselves an elf, we're going to be rich, and another brat that has an eye with Soul Energy. We're going to be rolling in coin."
Jahar laughs at that and with a nod.
"What do you mean. You'll rolling in coin?"
I ask as I look at them covering my stinging eye.
"I mean why else would you still be here? I would have had Wolfe cut you down as soon as you smacked him."
She scoffs:
"We're slavers."