Click here for Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3

I wake up shivering. I look around with sleepy eyes and notice it was cold, dark and wet. I rub the sleep out of my eyes and feel a hand on my shoulder. I start to panic and look around frantically.

"Shhh, shhh. It's okay. You're safe, no one's going to hurt you." A soft voice whispers to me. My vision clears and notices that it's the girl I've been traveling with. Angel. Everything begins to come back to me slowly. I take a deep breath before slowly standing up. Angel moves away from me and looks out the mouth of the cave, probably checking to see if anyone is coming. She turns to me, as I begin to stretch and become more awake, and says,

"Come on. We have to reach The Cove before we run into any more hunters."

"Cove? What cove? Is it like a secret layer? Like the Batcave?"

She rolls her eyes at me, mutters a "hurry up" and steps out of the cave. I sigh and follow her. I still wonder how I ended up in this situation. She could've just let me be and I wouldn't have told a soul, but I had to go with her. It makes sense, though. She's just taking precautions for herself. She doesn't want to risk her life and her kind by letting one person running around knowing that they exist.

We walk through the forest, stopping once in a while so Angel can listen for anything. The clouds roll over us, hiding the sun, but I don't think it's going to rain. My shoes make splashing sound as the ground was still wet from the rain. I sigh quietly, but not quiet enough as Angel sneaks a glance back at me. I know that she knows what I'm going to ask, but before I can ask her, she beats me to it,

"Hopefully soon. You look like someone who won't tell anyone, but I don't want to take any chances with your life, especially now that there are hunters roaming these woods. When you saw me, I was in hiding. I didn't want to risk the ones chasing me to see you and take you, even though I didn't know you. The other person you saw was a partner of sorts."

"So, you somehow got into trouble with your mission, got caught and now are trying to escape to this cove?"

"Basically, ya."

"You could've just let me fend for myself, you know? I was clueless and had no idea what was happening, the perfect situation to leave me. Why do you care for a lonely, unimportant human like me?"

She looks at me shocked for a minute before sighing. I jog up next to her, waiting for her to answer.

"Let's just say that last time I left someone in a similar situation, it didn't end well. I didn't want to make that same mistake again, especially since you're human."

We walk in silence. The only sounds are the leaves rustling and our footsteps on the wet ground.

“Do you really think that you're unimportant?"

I look up at her with shock. She gives me an even look and I know that I can't walk out of this one. I open my mouth to give her a sarcastic remark, but she beats me to it, again,

“Because I don't think you are. I may have only just met you, but no one is unimportant."

I don't know how to respond to her. It's true that I think of myself as not important. My life is miserable. My family is torn apart, my parents constantly yell at me and I don't have many friends.

I give her a look of defeat before telling her,

“When you live the life I'm living, then you can tell me that I'm important."

I end the conversation there. She gives me a pity look that I hate with a passion, and we continue walking in silence.

We finally stop at a willow tree. The long branches falling as if it were crying, swaying lightly with the wind. I stare at it in amazement and admire the beauty. I've never seen a willow tree in person, but it looks more beautiful than in the pictures. I guess sometimes it's better to witness beauty through your own eyes and in person and not in pictures. After I finished admiring the tree, I notice Angel staring at me with a questioning look.

"What?"

"You admire the tree as if it were the last tree on Earth. Why?"

I contemplate the answer I have and then tell her, "When you've been through hard times, people fill themselves up with so much negativity that they find it hard to see that there is still beauty out in the world. My life may be bad, but that doesn't mean everything is."

My voice turns into a whisper by the time I explain. When I turn to her, I can that what I said had affected her. She has a new light in her eyes now. We hold eye contact, and then she turns away from me and heads through the branches. I follow her and see her touch the trunk gently. All of a sudden, the tree shakes and it opens, like an elevator. My mouth is gaping open as I stare in shock. I stay like that until Angel snaps her fingers to break my trance.

"Come on, we're here."

I follow her reluctantly into the tree, like a cat not wanting to into a lake. That is not something I ever thought I would say. I hear the doors closing and turn around to see the image of the forest slowly disappearing and then it's dark. Small torches were lit dimly along the walls of a long corridor. I face Angel, but she's staring right in front of her, with no emotion in her eyes and voice, she tells me,

"Liam, welcome to The Cove."

I had a gut feeling, which is usually right, that I wasn't going to enjoy this one bit.

Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.