Chapter 3 - chapter 1 part 2

We sat in silence for the rest of the time. Later some friends of his came over and they chatted away animatedly. It was kind of funny listening to them blabber on about their girlfriends but I did get the feeling that James was not exactly listening to it all.

I could feel that something was bothering him and I was about to ask him about it when something stopped me. I was not sure what was going on but something felt out of place in this small hall at the centre of this old house. Something was in this room, in the middle of a huddle of teenagers partying the night away, which did not belong in the fabric of things.

And then I felt it. Small pulses were rippling through the air, breaking the fine molecules of the surrounding atmosphere. No human could have felt these pulses but they were there. I stood up to investigate the strange presence. I noticed James watching me with a slightly puzzled look in his breath taking eyes but right at this moment I didn't care.

Wafting and weaving my way through the crowd like a breath of fresh air gave me more freedom to explore. The pulses became stronger on my way to the middle of the room. And there it was, I found it or better to say it found me. I spread out my arms as if to embrace an unseen presence and everyone including everything turned immobile in the room. I froze the hall so as not to lose the eidolon. I walked past a motionless couple talking to a group of friends.

I moved right to the centre of the hall to where my gaze laid fixed on one tiny spec. There it was in all its beauty, hovering lifelessly in the air. It was a butterfly. Better to describe it is to say it was a ghost of a butterfly. These little creatures never failed to amaze me. They were always almost totally see-through and invisible to the human eye. These little creatures were best described as free roaming pets to us muses. We cared for them and in return they helped us. We call them Omans; sort of like omens but they preferred us to use a long and soft-spoken 'a' instead of the short 'e'.

Well as beautiful as they were, they never meant anything good. That is where the name came from; they were omens of danger to us. In some incredible way they turned up whenever a Leti was near. This meant that somewhere in this crowded room there was a Leti. It came as a bit of a shock to me because the room was only full of teenagers and that meant that we had overlooked a birth of a new Leti. I knew I had to disappear from this place as soon as possible. I cupped my hands around the immobile Oman and rushed out of the room, my cloak swishing behind me. Once I was outside I released the Oman from my grasp and it hung in the air. I cold not leave the room completely immobile. Once again I stretched my arms open wide in an invisible embrace but this time all living things around me moved into motion. I could hear the party getting on and my heart longed to be there, but I knew I could not stay. I turned, the Oman silently flitted around my head and I ran. The way muses run is not like ordinary people run. We have a gliding stride without our heads bobbing up and down like they do when people walk. And it was four times as fast as an ordinary human.

I ran and ran as fast as I could and as far as my feet would carry me. I knew where I would go and could lay low for a day or two. It was a huge lake with some rocky cliffs behind it, which had some interesting caves to hide in. I reached it at eleven pm on the spot. It had taken me a good deal of three hours to get here and I was glad to finally be able to lie down on a ragged old blanket I had placed in on of the caves some five months earlier. This was not my first time of hiding from a Leti. The last one I had encountered was someone I hoped never to meet again. He was a body builder, brute of a type and scared the life out of me when he had snuck up on me while sleeping on a camping trip. I had only just gotten away with the help of a friend and had hidden here for three days.



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