Author: Rachel Sievers

They stood under the overhang as the rain poured down around them. The dark sky filled with angry black low-hanging clouds had an ominous feel to it.
“Do you think it will quit soon?” The girl asked, her damp white hair falling over her eyes.
“Do I look like god to you?” The man replied in his tone letting the girl know to keep her questions to herself.
The girl turned her face from the clouds and rain to the ground where she worked the still-dry dirt into a pile with her bare feet. She had a pair of shoes but in their haste to escape the girl had left them at the river’s edge. That was probably another reason the man was cross with her. Now that they knew one of the creatures roamed there they wouldn’t be returning for the shoes and the girl would go without until they went to town or they met a trader.
“Damn rain,” the man whispered. The girl looked at the man and noticed new lines around his eyes. Everyone ages faster in this world. The man looked close to sixty but the girl knew he was probably half that. The girl wondered how old she looked. She had eleven birthdays with her mother before a creature had taken her and the girl had wandered the forest alone. Those had been long days and nights, hungry ones too. Then she met the man. She had been afraid of him at first. His long beard with silver etched into it. His dark eyes and skin were a contrast to her own. She had followed him in the forest for two days before hunger had forced her to his side. He had never been kind like her mother, but he was steady and they never went hungry for too long.
“We better move,” he said.
“But in the rain, we won’t hear the creatures.”
The man looked down at her and rubbed a hand over his beard and face, “If we stay here too long it will pick up on our scent. Especially with one so close.”
The girl nodded and put her green pack on her back. The man was always right. The girl looked up into the man’s face and did her best to look brave. He nodded to her and they left the overhang and dipped into the rain.