chapter 5: out doors

Once i was done changing i stud in front of the mirror, it stud to attention hanging on my wall as I looked at my choice in clothing carefully inspecting every inch to see if they matched each other and complimented my shape.

I was wearing a pair of size four white Nike pumps with a large golden tick on the side of it along with a pair of black Adidas tight leggings, a white crop top and a red, black, white and grey flannel shirt resting on my shoulders.

When i was satisfied with the way I looked I brushed myself down, walked out of the room and over to varsity closing the door behind me and locking it as I smiled with pure joy pushing a peace of hair behind my ear gently.

We both slowly walked down the halls together, varsity kept looking down bends in the building and peeking into some doors like she had no idea were she was or were she was going.

After a while of walking we reaches a door at the end of the never ending hall and walked through, it was so beautiful.

Flowers were everywhere and it made me smile so mutch, it was like the one i had seen with Toni but this time, i wasn't enclosed in a small space and it lead all the way out this time into a open and beautiful area.

Against the wall was a mixture of Gladiolus flowers mixed in with a variation of Lilac's and Nerium oleander's, different shades of pinks, blues and purples blending in together.

At the end of the garden was the fence every family wanted, a white picket fence with a gate that when you opened sprigged back into place.

"Do you like it?" Varsity asked kindly as she looked at me with a wide, kind smile.

Everything looked so magical, the idea of death, hell and sin couldn't even cross my mind right now, it was just to beautiful to bear the idea of those horrid things, vines were woven tightly against the brick work of the building as ivy took over, a front patio only covered the left side of the building and curved around the corner slightly, potted plats hung from the seeling bathing in the sun light.

My head slowly began to nodded in answer of varsity's question, she smiled more and more happily clapping her hands like a child as she jumped up and down in happiness like a rabbit, her silver hair bounced up and down on her shoulders while her wings made a small flapping action lifting her less then a inch away from the floor.

"Yay the master knew you would love this" she cheered and hummed, her eyes closed in excitement and her hands clapped together.

Slowly my smile began to fade as I looked towards Varsity taking in what she just said, 'the master knew....' what did she mean the master knew? Shaking away the thought I go back to looking around the large front garden more.

In the far corner of my eyes was a large tree that stud as tall as the third story floor and had branches reaching out all over, wooden planks were fixed into the trunk of the tree, at the middle of the tree was were a large home made tree house sat slowly withering away from existence.

From first sight it was easy to see it was old, but at second glance it was harder to see.

Leaves were piled up between branches along with twigs and kindle gathered in the parts that none could see from below, some of the boards were replaced with new freshly polished once, most of the nails were rusty, some of them were even bent as the new boards had fresh, shiny silver nails.

Slowly I approached the rotting tree house taking in the beauty of it all.

the wooden walls were a lovely walnut brown as the roof was constructed from a mixture of old scaffolding and black tiling.

As I got closer to the trunk of the tree I could see knotted ribbons swaying in the winds as the other end clung around the branches tied onto them tightly, there colour looked dull and faded away, they were very old and were even ripped in some places,.but the image of them being once bright and colourful made my lips twitch up.

"Who's tree house is this?" I asked looking at Varsity with a small smile on my face the curiosity of it pulling at my heart.

Varsity shrugged and looked at me in confusion then up at the tree house in wonder and awe.

"I don't know. its been here since my mom was little, I used to come and sneak into it till the master told me never to go in it again" she said gently.

A smirk appeared on my face, I ran up to the planks fixed into the trunk of the tree and clamped my hands around them squeezing them to see if they would brake or come out of the old wood.

Slowly but surely I began to climb up the trunk of the tree, the feeling of freedom and adventure flowing through me as if i was a young child again.

When i had finally reached the top of the tree my mouth curved up and my eyes began to sparkle with joy.

It was beautiful.

The tree house was full of old posters variating from camurshals to bands and actresses as well as singers, a mixture of toys from different generations and centuries even some old furnature.

A large wooden chest hid in the corner of the room engraved with carvins, slowly I pushed It open, the top falling backwards and hitting against the wall.

Inside were toys, pictures, a really old bottle of alcohol and a wooden sword with a once white cloth wrapped around the handle.

It was clearly old but the mixture of things in there didn't link at all especially the gaps in years.

Picking up one of the photos I looked over the people taking in all of there features as mutch as possible.

After looking for over the faces for five minutes I realised one of the faces I was looking at was familiar, it was Asher, he looked like he was around the age of thirteen and the other man from the painting I had seen in the hall was standing next to him, maybe a year younger or so to how old asher was.

They were both in posh cloths and looked like they had a lot of money.

Asher was wearing a long black tailcoat with a pair of black trousers and a white tucked in shirt as the boy by his side had a similar look, behind them stud a man in his late forties and a woman roughly in her early thirties.

The man wore a more sophisticated version of the boys cloths and the woman wore a long puffy light dress with many layers of frills on the skirt as well as puffed up sleeves resting on her shoulders, a pair of soft gloves pulled up on her dentie fingers and a large bonnet wrapped around her head only revealing a bit of hair.

The woman's hair that you could see looked like it was tucked up into a large messy bun and around her waist a lovely bow pulling her dress inwards to give her a nice figure.

"Miss Lucy we really should leave. I don't want Master telling you off" Varsity said with a small worried look on her face and the sound of fear hinging in her throat.

Looking through the box more I saw a wrinkled black and white picture of a young girl, she was around the age of fifteen or sixteen and had a very beautiful face.

Her hair looked to be fairly dark with some small bits of highlights, but was hard to tell because the photo was printed in monotone.

Her style of cloths were a lot different from the the previous photo I had looked at, her dress was very short and only came up to under her ankles, a large bow was wrapped around her hip as she had beautiful puffed up sleeves that were the correct size with a matching pair of flat boots tied up with a lace even though they was in the wrong time line, a pair of long socks pulled up just under her ankles and a thin chocker drapped around her neck with a small upside down cross for a charm resting against her skin.

Looking over the photo i studied the pair of hands wrapped around the girls waist leading up to a older version of Asher maybe roughly a year older then the girl he was holding.

The photo felt so familiar to me but I wasn't sure why.

I didn't know the girl and I had never seen her before, the idea of asher with a girl just felt out of place anyways so I just put it down and ignored the thought of him holding someone so close to him.

'He can't even be nice to his staff' I thought to myself

Slowly and gently putting the photo back down I realise a small wooden shoe box is hidden under a small tatted light blue blanket full of ripped holes and covered in faded dark brown stanes as well as a few light once from were water had seeped through the box.

It was like a babies blanket small and soft but was also rough were the Stanes had soaked into the blanket and dried up from not being cleaned, the smell was old and damp it almost smelt of mildew but had a small sent of fresh air clinging tightly onto the small fibers.

The hidden box reminded me of when i was younger and would hide trinkets in a small box to remember what i had done with my friends and family and what I thought was important to me I life, Ironically I can't remember any of the objects I put in there, now that I look back at it I only remember small bits of my life, my memories was always so bad from what I could remember, but some of them were very fun and amazing to experience.

Trying to look at my memories was like looking a large jigsaw puzzle full of over one-thousand peace's variating from different sizes and shapes.

I could remember how I would always hate really sweet foods and how they made me feel so sick after eating them and how I always still eat them just to feel belonged with the other kids in my class because they called me weird and strange.

Small bubbles of memories would accrue when I wasn't thinking about them like the feeling of anger I would get when I lost someone close like they had chosen to leave me behind as a punishment and how it all felt so similar, but I could never put my finger on it, other then the time my child hood friend Lilith left me at summer camp when I was twelve just for having my first kiss with a guy we both liked, I had never felt so much anger until my mom and dad died and I had to talk at there funeral.

The constant reminder that I was left on the street by my real family and taken in by one that couldn't have kid's of there own but never remembering were they found me or how old I even was when they took into there home.

The reminder of my mom and dad flash into my head, the image of the way they would hold me when I would cry when I was sad or the way I was fascinated with my dad's history work and how sometimes I would say facts that I didn't even learn in school or had been told.

Some memories always felt crooked, acted out almost.

Like they wasn't even real to me, as if they was a tape ready to be watched or a script ready to be acted out for a play, others were very clearly real to me, like when they took me to the beach for my fifteenth birthday even though I had none to take with me, or the time when me and my mom went to get ice-cream from the time that we went to Blackpool for the weekend and my dad went on a trip for work back in Scotland as we lived back in Edinburgh on hill street. 

The box was a plane, light, nutty brown colour covered in a small amount of old paint remains cracking and curling into thin flaky places that fell to the bottom of the toy chest, it was hard to make out but I could faintly see some letters carved out onto the side of the box as well as a few patterns of curls on the top and on sides.

"Miss Lucy?" Varsity said again snapping my attention away from the shoe box and over to her.

She looked so scared.

Varsity had gone from being happy to sceptical within seconds, she was no longer smiling, she was looking around with a scared look on her face as she fiddled with her fingers and her small fangs dug into her bottom lip as she bit down hard on it.

"Okay varsity we can go" I said gently, putting all the stuff back to were it belonged as if it was never touched.

The thought of varsity getting hurt or in trouble because of me made me want to scream at the way the devil treated her when she was so nice and kind, she looked so innocent.

Looking back to when I first met varsity I think about what she said about him.

"He's not that bad, he can be very nice but, he can be very protective over his belongings or deals"

Maybe the tree house was Asher's, but all of those toys they couldn't have been his, he just doesn't seam like the type to keep toys from when he was little.

He was so mean but that would explain why he made varsity not go there again, because it was his and he didn't want anyone to touch it, he didn't want anyone to touch what was his and his alone.

Grabbing varsity's hand I slowly helped her back down out of the tree house and down onto the ground beneath us.

We both smiled when aware feet landed safely beneath us, it was nice to feel the fresh warm wind hit my face as it hurried on past me and carried on running.

It was so mutch like home, but at the same time it was so different, none would have thought hell would have looked so amazing let alone the fact that it wasn't burning to the ground like most Christians thought it would be, but I would be surprised if there was a part of hell that wasn't.

In the distance, high up in the sky was a flock of birds, they squeaked and squealed down at people searching around the ground with there small round black eyes for any food they could gather up in there large curved beaks.

They was amazing.

The grass was freshly cut and the smell of pollen filled the air, getting stuck up my nose and into my hair as well as cloths, chaise would have been sneezing non stop at it all.

Chaise?....

I forgot all about the way that he made me feel like I was nothing when I saw him with coral, my smile dropped slightly to a frown as the sound of the birds grew in the background reminding me of the beach and how the seagulls would hunt for left over peaces of Picnic snacks to mutch and peck at.

Looking over at the water i see something jumping in and out like a dolphin from the way they jumped around, only they was smaller and no were near close in shape.

Running up quickly i try to get close to the red river, watching the water carefully ready for the next animal to jump out so i could see what it was.

There nose was small and black as there skin was like a dark leather, now and then I would see them kick there back legs like dogs would when swimming, but they didn't have the head of one.

Getting on my hands and knees I watched the water carefully looking at the rippling water, after a while a head came up, it was a otter, well it looked like one at first.

The behind legs were like a dogs and a long tail followed along behind its body all of it's fur tightly compact except for the end of the tail were it spread out widely.

"What is that?" I ask varsity with a wide happy smile returning to my face as I watch them swim and jump in and out of the water, the thought of chaise leaving my mind once again.

"There Dobhar-chú, there a type of water hound from Ireland, some are nice some aren't so mutch" she hummed out with her reply while rocking back and forth on the tip of her toes and holding her hands behind her back tightly.

"We see them every now and then but not mutch as they are always moving around" she hummed out.

Some of them didn't look the same as the first one I saw, they had fluffy dog heads and a slim tail so there front was a dog and the back was a otter unlike the first one who was a otter at the front and a dog at the back.

Some of the Dobhar-chú were fighting one and another on a small part of land opposite the side of the river as others bathed in the sun light and some swam in the shallow ends of the water.

There teeth were sharp, almost sharper then knives that could cut through iron as there whiskers were as thin as wire, there tails turning into a bundle of mess with dried up peaces of mud in them.

I smiled watching as they pounced on each other and swam against the current happily taking in the feeling of fresh air and the cold against my skin as sometimes the temperature seemed to change so quickly in the atmosphere.

On the other side of the water sat some small wooden huts, half sunk into the ground with a small bench that dunked into the water, it was more like a shelter then a hut but it could have fit at least three or four beds into it.

The shelter was covered in green soft moss and some mud pushed up against the edges while vines curled around the tiles of the roof as if holding the place together.

It looked like there was something in the water moving around that was larger then the Dobhar-chú, but the water was to dark to see what it was.

Varsity stepped forwards slightly and looked into the water as well but after a while moved away, she slowly began to walk down a dirt path heading towards the main path way and into the small town.

Getting up I dusted as mutch of the grass marks off of my knees and began to follow her.

Everything was more like the countryside but more developed, there was less noise but there was more building tightly compact together as you went deeper into the town.

"I guess the devil likes his privacy" I thought to myself as I watched creatures, hybrids and people go around the town walking and flying in and out of buildings.

Some of the building were very tall and looked as if they was endless.

None of the housing or shops were like anything I had ever seen before in my life, there was openings in the buildings, balconies with no railing were it would have stopped people from falling off, the pathways were large and the feeling of louse grit moved beneath my feet.

"Well hello stranger!" A voice chimed out of nowhere.

Looking around slowly I spot were the familiar voice came from.

It was Toni, he smiled happily at me with his lilac eyes set onto varsity as he pushed up his black framed glasses.

He looked the same as the other day I bumped into him the only thing different was he had one flying creature at his left side and on the right a fairly normal looking Caucasian man, one was a woman with bird features.

Feathers covered her arm slowly forming a pair of wings as her hands rested at the end with sharp pointed claws for fingers and feet, her mouth was a small pointed beak as her hair was replaced with a small amount of feathers making it look like a pixie cut hair style.

Her eyes were blue and went nicely with her light grey blue-ish feathers, a pair of gold bangles on her left ankle and a small ring in her beak.

Over her chest laid a louse blue belly shirt and on her bottom was a short darker blue skirt tied at the side.

The man on Toni's right was fairly tall, just a little bit taller then Toni was.

The tall male was tanned to the brim, his skin burnt to a lovely brown as his hair was a silky smooth dark brown, his beard had a prickly look to it, his eyes a lovely shadowed grass green, the choice of cloths he wore were strange it was a neat plum purple waist coat jacket done up all the way with a white button up shirt as his collar at the top flopped to the sides and the top two buttons laid undone, a belt wrapped around his trousers waist and tied it's self together.

The man had a calm look, his hand was glowing a bright alumnus gold around his fingers as the same glow held itself around a clutter of bags floating in the mid air.

"Its nice to see you again my dear" Toni said with a smirk on his face as he fiddled with a strand of hair in his hand, his eyes slowly moved to the corner and looked at the woman as she flapped her wings hovering in the sky, he reminded me of one of thoes rich boys who got what he wanted when he wanted it.

His hair was mutch more neat today, it was combed down so it looked as soft as wool, part of it up in a pony tail as the rest was laying down against his back.

"How have you been?" He asked and looked at me with a smirk crossing his lips and eyes now hovering just slightly over his glasses.

I looked at him with a small smile, nothing had changed mutch since I had gotten here, yes the devil got nicer but that was only when he wanted to be.

"I'm alright, its my first day out side though" I replied honestly and blushed when I saw the male laugh.

After a while of talking Toni left allowing varsity to pull me around shops shoving cloths into my hands and forcing me to try them on as her childish smile was so hard to resist.

I had tried to resit it but it was just impossible, it was like saying no to a puppy begging for a treat.

The shops were amazing and had so many different cultural cloths in as well as centuries.

In the background of one of the shops there was playing Thriller by Michel Jackson making everything just seem so mutch more exciting. 

Varsity squealed loudly when I came out of the changing rooms with a pair of dark blue denim skinny jeans, a black T-shirt, a large leather jacket and a pair of black boots that went just under the knees.

Slowly I rubbed one of my arms up and down slightly uncomfortable with the way I looked, yes I felt pretty, yes they was nice cloths but nothing changed the fact that this wasn't my money I was buying everything with, it was his, the devils.

Varsity began to clap her hands together quickly with a wide smile on her face. 

"you look amazing Lucy!" she squealed out happily. 

A small laugh escaped my lips but was stopped by my own hand clasping over my mouth tightly.

I laughed, I hadn't laughed in so long, not since.... since my mom and dads death.

"thank you for saying that Varsity. it means a lot" 

Slowly I walked over to the side of the changing rooms and looked into one of the mirrors that was close by, my body looked so slim in the cloths Varsity had pulled out for me and they looked so amazing.  

Normally I would have worn something to hide how thin my hips were by a jumper or tying a shirt around my waist, but this time it felt nice to let my body breath more out of its comfort zone.