2 1: Fated Meeting

Nature. The esteemed Mother of all living species, dumb or otherwise, on earth. The bringer of life, and also – ironically – the bringer of death. The perfect embodiment of peace and chaos. And right now, Leilyn is basking in her glorious presence.

Leilyn Xander, age thirty-one. She’s the second and only female child of her mother. She’s what you call a prodigy.

At the age of sixteen, she graduated from the top high ranking school in the world with six World Honoraes Achievements, and from the age of seventeen to nineteen, she bagged a Degree of World Excellence (DWE) in Astronomy, Aerospace Engineering and Computer Engineering; a Newton Level Doctorate (NLD) in Biomedical, Chemical and Environmental Engineering and a Degree of Higher Researches & Achievements (DHRA) in Electrical and Mechanical Engineering.

At age twenty, she became one of the world’s most famous engineer and scientist. At age twenty-eight, she resigned from her job due to certain… incidents. All in all, she has made quite a name for herself. Due to the huge checks from both her former job and her mother’s company, which she occasionally invent things for, she decided to stop working and isolate herself from the world.

Because of her love for nature and wildlife, Leilyn decided to purchase the land close to the woods in the Town of Christland (such a funny name that has her face palming with a snort every time).

As the name implies, the town is largely populated by those of the christian faith. Leilyn was never – and still isn’t – a big fan of religion. She viewed it as one of humanity’s greatest delusions and weaknesses that clouded their minds and common sense, preventing the human race from evolving.

The only reason that she’s even here to begin with is because the town is one of the few remaining that’s located near natural vegetation.

The last years of the 21st century and the starting years of the 22nd century was marked with the occurrence of the bloodiest war in human existence, along with the earth’s degeneration. The eco system became depilated and overpopulation got… well, overpopulating. Most of the animals went into extinction and the earth became as hot as Hell’s Inferno making it impossible for anyone to stay under the sun for too long without a modified umbrella.

To put it simple, the earth was dying. Humans were – and unfortunately still are – fucking up the entire planet. Leilyn wondered if people were becoming more brain-dead as centuries pass to not learn from their mistakes.

The War of Decimation made things worse. The war eighty years ago made the planet to almost give in on itself. But even after that, humanity still didn’t show their planet mercy.

To prevent their total annihilation, various scientists, many years later, branded together and created artificial plantation that helps to regulate the planet’s eco system. And Leilyn here was one of them. Better still, she was one of the top twenty scientist who formulated the needed arithmetic and calculations, as well as helping in the development of the project.

No matter how strongly she felt that the human race needs to perish for the earth’s survival and total revival, she still helped in the revitalization process, bearing in mind that some humans are innocent and deserve to live.

Leilyn, having the back up of her mother and two siblings, created a project of her own – Project Paean, otherwise known as Healer101 or Medicus. With the help of many engineers from her mother’s companies and from the government, the creation of Medicus was a success. The project involves equipped satellites with bio friendly chemicals stationed around the globe which helps in thickening the ozone layer, reducing the intensity of the sun and helping in oxygen production.

And the government, being the government, decided to twist her work into weapons of destruction. Joy.

Christland Town (again, still an amusing name) is one out of twenty or so towns that still had a good natural eco system. Animals are SIGHTLY safe here, and the town has a low population number. Leilyn hopes it stays that way.

At first, Leilyn didn’t want to step foot into the town – at all – but she had no choice. She wanted to live in a peaceful wood covered area and this was a perfect option. And besides, she kind of fell in love with the place. The place, not the people. Her mother and little brother did a good job in convincing her too.

Seeing as she was coming to a religious territory, she decided to ignore them all and not get involved with them. She built her dream house and for two years now, she has been living in her own slice of heaven. She lived alone and damn was it peaceful. She settled far away from the town and its other inhabitants.

Due to her decision of her isolating herself, Leilyn always gets suspicious looks from a handful of people – no doubt the town’s gossips – whenever she goes to town to restock her supplies. But, as usual, she doesn’t even give them a lick of attention. Some humans do tend to fear what is out of their simple minded understanding.

Currently, she’s working on her garden where she grows her own organic vegetables. The sun’s high out today, and due to its heat intensity, Leilyn’s sweating buckets, making her free flowing, sleeveless crop top to stick to her skin. Even though she chose to wear the shortest of all shorts and crop top she had in her wardrobe, it seems it didn’t help to reduce the hot temperature she was stewing in. An obvious consequence of humans fucking up the planet.

She’s dirty from the neck down to her slipper cladded feet, which has mud stuck under its soles. Even her face has specks of dirt here and there; but luckily, her hair is safe from such gruesome fate due to it being tied in a large bun, a bandana covering her forehead and front hair.

Leilyn might hate to admit it, but she has come to love gardening. There’s something about it that she just can’t put her finger on it. It’s soothing. Maybe it’s due to her love of nature that she suddenly developed a green thumb. For someone who’s slightly hypochondriac, she sure loves to busy herself in the dirt… and other things. Oh well, there’s nothing a cold bath couldn’t fix.

“Okay~” She stands up with a grunt, dusting her hands – which didn’t help to get rid of the mud at all. “All done! Now to water you babies.”

She connects the hose to the tap and begins to water the plants, humming one of her favorite 21st century classics, THE NIGHT, by Aurelio Voltaire.

“The day is the wife whom I elude,

The one to whom I should be right,

Although forewarned by peers and kin,

I always get into the night.

Mother always warned me such,

Being a nocturnal soul,

Besides just being simply strange,

Spawns from some illness of the night.”

She starts singing, no longer able to hold in the song anymore. She sings out loudly, not minding how horrible and ear scattering her voice was. Her voice might not be beautiful but she was damn proud of it.

“But the night,

She calls me.

She calls me.

She calls me.

She calls me.

She sways in her velvet dress,

And pulls me towards her in the dark,

While the others rest.

While the others rest.

While the others rest.”

She finishes with a huge, happy grin, her eyes sparkling wit happiness. She turns off the water and carefully arranges the hose back into its case. She wipes her brows with the back of her now washed hand with a tired sigh, before bending down and gathering her gardening tools into the metal construction pan and walking over to the tap.

Suddenly, she hears a sound coming from afar and she immediately freezes in alert. She gently shuts off the running tap before slowly standing up. She stands perfectly still and strains her ears to listen to the sounds around her. What she gets first is the sound of water dripping slowly from the closed tap; next is the soft chirping of birds; then the sound of the leaves rustling due to the soft wind; and finally, the sound she’s looking for – footsteps.

Due to her life-long training and her living in the woods for two years now, Leilyn has gotten accustomed to the distinct walking steps humans and can easily differentiate them from the cute animals that sometimes prowl around her fence.

These footsteps are inside the fence, not out. Most animals were scared of humans and avoid human territories as much as possible. For an animal to come close to a human habitation meant that they are either desperate for food or they are simply curious. But these footsteps are clearly human, meaning that someone is trespassing into her land.

“Ms. Leilyn.” A voice calls out softly from the device in her ear. “Intruders approaching. Unable to identify them due to their hoodies.”

Without any hesitation, she grabs the gardening scissors and gives it a quick twirl before gripping it tightly. She takes off her mudded slippers and starts silently stalking over to the direction of the footsteps. She glues herself to the wall, taking a peak and sees that a person is coming towards her direction. She slowly backs away, making sure that the intruder wouldn’t notice her as they walk by.

Immediately their back is wide open, Leilyn lungs at them. She wraps an arm around their shoulders – getting on her tip toes to do so – before positioning the scissors close to their jugular vein.

“Move and I’ll slit your throat.” Leilyn says, her voice as cold as ice. That and the freezing touch of her weapon has the intruder going still in a blink of an eye. “Who are you and what are you doing on my property?”

The intruder, now identified as a male due to his prominent Adam’s apple, is struck mute and frozen still, clearly in fear.

“Rick?”

Leilyn whips around, prisoner still in hand and scissors still pointed at him. When she takes in the appearances of her captive’s companions, she heaves a long suffering sigh.

“Great, teenagers.” She drawls out, releasing the teen in her arm. Said teen scrambles over to his friends. “What are you three doing on my property? There’s a sign that clearly states ‘No Trespassing’. Or can’t you boys read?” Leilyn quips, face stoic and unemotional as she glares at them with cold, hard, chilling eyes.

The teens all flinch at the intensity and couldn’t help but fidget under her gaze.

“Well?” She cocks a questioning brow at them, placing her free hand on her hip.

“We are terribly sorry for the intrusion ma’am.” One of the teen begins. “We honestly thought that the place was empty and that no one lived here. We are terribly sorry.” The other two just nod vehemently, fear clear as day in their eyes, even though they tried so hard to look tough.

‘Do these kids take me as a fool?’ Leilyn deadpans internally, her outer expression changing to an unimpressed one.

“And we just heard a screech like voice just now,” he continues, “We thought it was the apparition of the ghost – seeing as it was gritty as fuck – so we decided to check it out.”

Leilyn’s eye twitches. She knows her voice is horrible, but for someone to say it out loud, and to her face no less, it’s quite vexing. The woman sighs under her breath.

Leilyn knows that she was, and still is, the talk of the town. The strange, cold looking woman who bought the land close to the acclaimed ‘Cursed Woods’, who then isolated herself from the rest of the population, doing who knows what.

What even got people’s tongue wagging is that Leilyn has been living near the woods for a two now and absolutely nothing has happened to her. That made bells ring in alarm in the town’s mind, seeing as those who messed with the woods or dared to step into it, meet an unpleasant death.

Leilyn just shrugs every time this is brought up by her companion who keeps her up to date with the happenings in town, and just comments that nature was already tired of their bullshit and was, maybe, repaying them in likewise treatment. Or its just idiots dying due to their stupidity or clumsy nature. Or they stepped into an animal’s territory and got rewarded.

Honestly, the reasons are endless.

According to her mother, who visits her occasional – to mostly nag and groan at her for still being single – and her trusty companion, there are whispers in the town about her dabbling in the occult. The day her mother uttered those words she laughed so hard until her ribs protested and she had difficulty breathing for a whole two minutes.

Her, dabbling in the occult? HA! Everyone knows that there’s no such things as witchcraft or magic, and being a woman of science, she scoffs at any mention of it.

It’s the 22nd century and there are still no real evidence of the existence of witches or anything supernatural. Just because she’s surviving a stupid legend doesn’t make her a ‘witch’.

Humans. Honestly.

“Don’t tell me you kids honestly believed that rumor about me being a ‘scary witch’?” Leilyn queries with a heavy sigh, and when they didn’t reply, only looking at her with a sheepish expression or scratching their necks sheepishly, she snorts out loud in amusement whilst groaning internally in exasperation.

Leilyn feels a smile tug at her lips at how cute they look being embarrassed. The image of her brother flashes before her eyes and she chuckles under her breath.

‘Boys. Honestly.’ She softly rolls her eyes before addressing the teens before her. “Well, as you can see, not a witch.” She spreads her arms out. “Just a regular woman living her life peacefully, no green skin or magic broomstick and wand in sight.”

“Yeah, we can see that.” The teens give her cautious looks.

The older looking teen gives a shaky smile, eyes still trained on the scissors in her hand. Noticing how uncomfortable they are with her bearing a weapon openly, she carefully sheaths the scissors into the side of her shorts, giving them a reassuring look.

“What are you kids doing here anyways? Aren’t you supposed to be in school?”

“Well…” They trail off, looking more sheepishly than they did before.

“Wait… you kids skipped?”

They each give a sheepish laugh, proving her right. Something akin to respect blossom in Leilyn’s chest. A small, amused smirk graces her lips, and she nods her head in approval.

“I’ve just meet you and all, but I gotta to say, I’m impressed.”

“Wait… huh?” Zack stares at her strangely, honestly baffled by her statement.

“Yep.” She pops the “P”. “I’ve mostly met uptight assholes since I got here, so it’s nice to meet normal people.” She chuckles. “Besides, this century’s education system is truly hellish. It’s refreshing to see teens letting loss. Congrats on earning my unneeded approval.”

The boys grin or laugh nervously and awkwardly at her and her heart skips a beat. Maybe it’s the weather or something, but seeing those smiles warmed her belly.

“But seriously, trespassing on a private property isn’t cool. What if y’all stepped into the traps hidden for wild animals? Although, mind you, they aren’t harmful to them but it’s harmful to humans. You three could have gotten hurt.”

She scolds, arms akimbo. The teens give her a sheepish look again.

“Oh well, kids will be kids.” She mutters under her breath in exasperation.

“Okay, look boys, I’m gonna let you three off the hook this time.” The trio let out sighs of relief. “But try this shit again and I’m gonna tie you up before calling the Enforcers on you. Capish?” They nod in confirmation. “Good. Now scram.”

They didn’t need to be told twice. The teens hurry out of there like their asses are on fire. Leilyn watches on in amusement as they make it to the fence, only for her eyes to go wide when the brawny kid basically throws them effortless over the fence before leaping over effortlessly. She blinks in shock, trying to process what she just saw.

Leilyn shakes her head, snapping out of her confused daze. She spares one last look at the fence before walking back to the tap and picks up from where she let off.