“I’m up.” Rana kicked off the leathers she usually slept under and pulled back the one that covered up the opening to her boxroom cabin bed. She got out, appearing a bit away from her parent’s door. They were out scouting about the other settlements for the week, as they always did when the village had to be moved, so she had a much-reduced list of things she had to do before she was allowed to leave the house. The shortened list was also much easier to ignore in the absence of parents.

She walked to the kitchen, finding a half-asleep Rena sitting by the table. Not an uncommon sight.

“Rena, I’m going out.” She was waved off. Rena didn’t particularly care about making her do her chores, her parents didn’t expect her too, the whole babysitting thing was more about her mother giving her little sister some space away from their parents every now and then. Her mother was aware of how annoying parents can be, but she still had the audacity to nag to her.

She walked out the door into the dark streets, apparently, she woke up a bit early tonight. Some fire mages would be going around lighting the lamps at some point. She had night vision though, so the darkness didn’t bother her. She started running to Lora’s house, it was on a different segment and kids weren’t allowed to cross the rope bridge without adult supervision during relocating.

Billy sat by the bridge, as he had every day for the past couple of days. He was supposed watch over the bridge, but from the look of things he was deep in meditation. So deep that he didn’t feel her approach. She was a good girl though, so she poked him in the face. He didn’t wake up, so she poked him harder. That woke him up.

“You know, I could have just crossed the bridge and you wouldn’t have found out.”

“Good evening to you too Rana.” He yawned, making her think he could have possibly fell asleep during his meditation. Not a hard thing from her experience. “And no, you wouldn’t, if you did, we’d both be in trouble.”

“I’d get a slap on the wrist, and you’d get your skin flayed by my dad and the chief, again.” According to her dad, Billy was not a dependable person. Most of the grown-ups thought it was best to not entrust him with any tasks but that’d be unfair to everyone else, so he was only left with tasks that were near impossible to mess up. Like watching this bridge. She was the only person below twelve that lived on this segment, so that meant watching over her and her alone when she had to cross the bridge. Something that only happens after sunset and before sunrise.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

She watched as Billy slowly got up, resisting the urge to just run to the other side as he meticulously dusted himself off. He offered her a hand once she was satisfied which she promptly took before she tried to drag him to the other side. She failed. Instead, she was forced to walk at Billy’s much more relaxed pace. She couldn’t force him to move faster so she took the chance to look down to the side of the bridge.

“How high up is the village right now?” she couldn’t see much except for blurs. According to her dad, the village couldn’t move too fast before the winds overpower the air mages. So, the only reason she couldn’t make out too much should be that they were too high. The limited range of her night vision didn’t help.

Billy looked and thought a bit, “We’re only seventy metres up at best.”

“Isn’t seventy metres the highest the village can do.”

“Which means I’m not wrong. Ah, look. We have reached your destination. Tata.” He let go of her hand and plopped down without any theatrics. He looked as if he was re-entering meditation, but she had her doubts.

She pushed him out of her mind and ran onwards to the next bridge. The other bridges had some sort of rotation so she couldn’t be sure who was in charge until she got there. She found Max, who now stood just in front of her. Max nodded at her before she grabbed her by the shoulders and lifted her. A blur later she was on the other side and a bit dizzy. Max diligently watched over her until she gathered her wits. Rana looked for her at that point but found she was already back on the other side. She had one more bridge she had to cross before she could freely run to her destination.

“Hey, Josh.” It was a bit strange to find a human guarding at night, but Josh was supposedly skilled so maybe it wasn’t too bad.

“Sup, Rana.” Josh took her hand and allowed himself to be dragged along unlike someone. “Night Josh.” She was now on one of the major segments. The fire mages had already lit most of the lamps here.

She ran past a few streets before reaching her target, or at least the house in which her target lived. She knocked twice on the door before she yelled, “I’m coming in.”

“Hi Mr Dale, Mrs Ava, Nora, little Jace,” she was running towards the stairs when she saw a familiar smile on Dale’s face and the weird colour of Ava’s, Nora’s and Jace’s faces. A vampire’s face had colour. Rana’s heart clenched in foreboding as she pushed herself to run even faster.

“Don’t run on the stairs, Rana.” Dale put on the face of the strict but loving uncle cautioning a misbehaving kid, “Knowing you, you hadn’t eaten anything just yet. After you’d woken up Lora, hurry back so that I can make sure that you’re well fed by the time the first session starts.”

She immediately requickened her slowing steps and in no time, she was on the second floor. To the end of the corridor was the steep set of stairs that led to the attic. She went up reaching the relatively neat storage room. There was an opening in the wall on one side, she went through, on the other side was Lora’s bedroom. As always, Lora was sleeping on a pile of leathers stacked two feet high. The roof was about a foot above her on this side so there was enough head room.

She approached, jumped and body slammed Lora.