Okay, so~ It's not the -entire- first chapter, but it's a few pages of it. ;D
The sound of footfalls echoed around the corridor, breaking the melancholy silence that normally inhabited the dreary building alongside its many patients. Three sets of feet hit the floor simultaneously, causing them to blend into one harmonious thud. Nathaniel allowed a bitter smile to creep onto his face when he paused and the echoes stopped.
“473,” A caramel-skinned guard asked softly, “Is something wrong?”
Said guard couldn’t have been more than nineteen years old. His chestnut hair caressed the tips of his ears before lengthening to brush the nape of his neck. Matching eyes shone with worry for his young charge. A dark haired man stood next to him, arms crossed broodingly. He snorted, lime green orbs narrowing in contempt for the young boy.
“Like it matters. The brat’s only another pain to deal with.”
Nathaniel ignored him and turned to the younger of the two.
“No, Cairel, I’m fine. And I’ve asked you many times to call me Nathan.”
Cairel stiffened, his body tensing automatically. He could tell the guard was uneasy with his suggestion. It was pointless. The boy already knew what his answer would be, but it didn’t hurt to try.
“You know I can’t do that, 473.”
Nathaniel sighed.
“Fine.”
Silence settled over the group once again. They continued down the barren hallways, never speaking a word to each other. The albino allowed his gaze to wander to a pane of sound-proof gl*censored* built into the wall. He cringed at the sight of a child even younger than him, perhaps ten, straining to get away from something unseen by any but him. There was a wild look in the youth’s eyes as he tugged at the sleeves of his straightjacket that were pinned to a steel table that was placed upright in the center of the room. His mouth was parted in a scream Nathaniel couldn’t hear through the pane.
Looking away, the pre-teen shook his head in disgust and persisted along the path they were walking. Wasn’t this institution supposed to help people? It seemed more like they were putting everyone’s problems on display.
He silently thanked whatever deity there was that his chambers had no windows.
Their procession stopped abruptly in front of two tall metal doors. They glinted threateningly, intimidating in the dim light the florescent bulbs provided.
“Are you sure you want to do this now? We can still go back to your room if you aren’t ready.”
The worried tone had returned to Cairel’s voice, and the guard placed a rough hand on Nathaniel’s shoulder. The boy shrugged it off, not comfortable with the contact.
“I’ve been here for quite a while; don’t you think I should try and make a few friends? We both know I’m not getting out of here anytime soon. I’m going to need someone closer to my age to talk to.”
The brunette nodded, resigned, knowing the twelve year old had a point. Nathaniel gazed nervously at the double doors, his stomach flipping uneasily inside of his abdomen. His vision flashed. Through the six inch steel, he could see swirls of sickly red and black. They intertwined occasionally when their owners would hug or bump into each other. The dark colors scared him. No, ‘scared’ wasn’t a strong enough word… They terrified him. Panic gripped him and he fell to his knees, chest heaving as he gasped for breath. The familiar red-gold of Cairel rushed to his side and pulled him back up on his feet.
“Na…el…re…yo…ay? Nath…!”
Nathaniel blinked and his vision returned to normal, but not before a flash of bright gold appeared amongst the blurs behind the door. He clutched at his hair in agony. It felt like someone had taken a sledge hammer to the back of his head.
“I…I’m sorry, what?”
“Are you okay?!”
There was no way he was going to reveal what had happened to Cairel, no matter how kind the brunette was. If there was one thing he had learned in his six month stay at Llewellyn’s Home for the Clinically Insane, it was that telling the guards about one of his ‘episodes’ resulted in nothing good. Tests would be taken, everything from blood work to an IQ test, as well as being put back into a straight jacket and a stay in solitary confinement.
“I’m okay. I just had a dizzy spell. I’ve been feeling slightly lightheaded and sick lately.”
His story seemed to have checked out, because Cairel smiled pityingly at him. It probably helped that he was an albino and didn’t respond to light well, and the fact that the flu was going around the asylum may have contributed to his lie. When he looked up at the young man, the child jerked back. Some of the swirling golden-yellow colored dust had not disappeared like it normally did. The substance was swirling all around the light-haired guard. Every few seconds, a tendril of the color would reach out to stroke his cheek, as if it was checking to see if he was okay. A sudden realization dawned on Nathaniel. This dust… was Cairel. Or, at least, it was connected to him.
The color was light, unlike the others he saw behind the doors, and it was calming. Did that mean it was good? If so, were the dark colors bad? Nathaniel looked over at Leopold and shuddered at the liquid crimson that wrapped itself around the older man. It looked like he was being covered in blood. The substance unnerved him, made him feel sick, though it wasn’t as bad as before. When this liquid would reach for him, however, it would bubble angrily and lash out, before jerking back, acting as though it was struck by something. Maybe he had his own color protecting him? But then, why couldn’t he see it? His head spun with all of this new information it was trying to process. The whole thing was making his headache even worse and he decided to ignore it for now, if only to relieve himself of some of the pain.
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