This was it. Tonight was the night when all of my dreams would end. I knew that. This wasn’t like dancing at all, when you`re practicing a 3 hour choreography and your legs hurt like hell. This time I couldn’t feel my legs, I couldn’t even tell for how long I’ve been running, and that was maybe due to the fact that a man was running after me. It felt like ages though I knew that it wasn’t that long. Will he give up or keep running after me. I couldn’t even think about what he wanted from me, though it wasn’t that hard to guess. I was wearing a short black cotton dress at 3 o’clock at night, alone on the street. What was I thinking going just by myself at that time? Well, running from your boyfriend is a good reason. Fake boyfriend. Luckily, I had my Converse on my feet. And, of course, luckily I had 5 years physical practice history behind me. The man was strong, I could tell.
“Wait, please, I don`t want to hurt you!” the man said. Yeah right, he didn’t want to hurt me. I was young but I wasn’t stupid.
“Please!” the man said again. No, I wasn’t going to fall for that. I knew from my little experience of 19 years on this freaking planet that when you are a sexy dressed-up girl going on the streets of Boston in the middle of the night and a man is chasing you, it can definitely NOT be good. Who knows? Maybe I`ll end up on the news tomorrow. I could even see the newspaper titles “GIRL RAPED AND BRUTALLY SLAUGHTERED ON THE STREETS OF BOSTON”. NO, I was definitely not going to stop. The man could die as far as I cared.
“It`s about THE STONE!” WAIT! THE STONE? Were this man had got that from. No one knew about the stone except for me and my family. And THE STONE was safely kept in some place that only my dad knew about.
“I’m a messenger! Please stop, Arianna.”
“Arianna? A messenger? NO! THIS WAS DEFINITELY NOT HAPPENING. What was a messenger doing here? Where did he know my name? And why was he chasing me? I thought I made it clear to my father that I wasn’t not going to take part to his madness. I pretended to believe that story of the stone, but the other story I couldn’t believe it. I just couldn’t. I was impossible what he was telling me. No connection to reality what so ever. And there it was: a man running after me in the middle of the night telling me that he is a Messenger, and that he wanted to talk with me about the stone. IT WAS CLEAR. I was OUT OF MY MIND. The Messengers didn’t exist. Maybe the stone did but I was completely sure that there was no magic in the stone.
“Wait or I’ll talk to your father! Do you want me to do that? It’s really important Arianna.”
I suddenly stopped. Talk with my father? I knew that I wouldn’t want him to do that. Talking with my father was the worst thing that could happen. After all I’ve been through, struggling to make my father stop convincing me that I was some kind of key for some kind of weird world, I couldn’t let all this happen. I stopped and turn around. He stopped too.
“I need to talk to you! Please, I`m not going to hurt you.”
I looked at the man and saw a…well…a teenager. Just like me. But that was just his face. His voice and his body didn’t look like an average teenage body would look like. He had a strong body, fit, and his voice sound mature and deep. We were on a narrow street with just one light a few meters away. In that light he looked worried.
“What do you want?” I said, trying to sound rough, but I was sure it didn’t come out the way I wanted.