Green Light

Maeve read that article dozens of times.

She changed some words, verbs and whole paragraphs. It was far from complete.

She even tried to find the right time to read it but, from noon to dusk, no angle of the sun had managed to change her mind.

The girl looked at the mirror in front of her.

Her face had sort of a tired appearance: her shorter hair, in front, framed her face like a raven outline. He was losing the mild tan, fairly noticeable on his already naturally olivaceous skin.

Her article was missing something and the due date was coming up.

She got up from the table and fastened her shoelaces quickly.

"Where are you going, Mivi?"

Her sister watched her from the armchair with the curious look of a child.

"I have a school project to finish, Charlie."

The younger sister nodded with her frowny face.

"When you get back, will you get pink ice cream? Won't you, Mivi? Will you get pink ice cream?"

The big sister smiled tenderly. That child was able to totally change her mood and make her feel every time, even just for a few seconds, at peace with the universe.

In the end, besides her aunt, Charlie was the only family she had left and Maeve would do anything for her. So the teenager smiled and came up to leave a kiss on her light hair. A sweet smell of lavender invaded her nostrils enough to hold her for a few more seconds making her doubt if it was really the right choice to go out.

"Of course I'll get it for you. When auntie gets back, can you tell her I'm finishing up a school project with Grace?"

Charlie nodded hastily, probably thinking about the ice cream she would eat.

Maeve had to memorize it. She did not have Harry's number and, even if she had it, she would never have written to him: just to think about the possible syntax of a message would have spent hours there. Too much wasted time and too little time left.

She had an excellent photographic memory that gave her the ability to rarely get lost.

After several minutes from when she entered the secondary streets of the neighborhood she had finally recognized some particular graffiti that had attracted her last time. Despite the silence that reigned in those streets, the light of the sky colored by the sunset gave her the necessary feeling of safety to continue.

She had just turned right she stopped.

The girl managed to get back to the fountain square. At that moment, the colors of the sky created an atmosphere very different from the first time, although nothing had changed, or almost nothing.

No noise or laughter of children: the whole square was empty.

A figure stood out from the top of the dull classical fountain. This, in profile, was sitting on the highest of the three empty basins. The back was resting on the central pillar from the slightly worked and dulled-by-time top. When he saw her he pulled forward pointing his eyes on the figure of the girl.

"I was expecting the curly-haired man."

The metallic voice from the figure broke the silence making the girl shudder. Despite this, Maeve tried to get close, something in the voice of the shadow prevented her from leaving. The figure smiled with white teeth so contrasting with the rest of himself.

"So you've been waiting here for two days?" asked Maeve in a lower voice than she would have liked. The voice of the figure had come out in an inhuman tone despite the face being free from the cheekbones to the chin. No filter was standing in front of his mouth, no human striving would be able to speak with such a voice.

"What? Do you really believe that? I didn't think you'd be back the next day, usually it takes longer to... I don't know, convince yourself? People often come back to a place that intrigued them two days later."

It was then when he dropped from the highest floor of the fountain ending in the central one, wider than the previous.

To Maeve's ears his voice sounded unreal.

"Are you human?" let the girl get away. Without waiting for the answer she made some steps forward on the uneven floor formed by the old tiles up to the wall of the fountain. Maeve wanted to see who she was looking at.

"I got to tell you, that's the dumbest question anyone's ever asked me, bitty thing."

He slightly raised his face.

Although the sun was disappearing on the horizon, it was much easier for Maeve to see the outlines of the figure in that moment.

The dark appearance was mainly due to the black sweatshirt that, open on the front, left a glimpse of a shirt of the same color. From the abdomen were applied shiny metal plates that rose up to the neck and branched towards the shoulders covered by the sweatshirt. On his left, just under the covered clavicle, wedged between the worked metal scales, stood out a mineral of a semi-transparent and bright green, like the eyes of a feline in the dark.

The face was largely covered by a mask of the same material that covered the chest. This, starting from the forehead and arriving at the nose, gave a heavy air to the shadow face. The two parts of his eyes were covered by, what appeared to Maeve, dark plates, prompting questions as to how he could see her. The only visible layer of skin of the figure was the lower part of the face: the pink lips and the sharp jawline.

Half of the forehead was then covered by the hood, making it impossible for Maeve to observe the hair or other characteristic marks.

"I don't want you to go back to these children," the shadow said, interrupting her thoughts.

The girl looked at him with a mixture of surprise and dismay. She did not expect such a statement.

"Why shouldn't I?"

He leaned forward while his serious glare, sharp like a knife, sliced the darkness. She pulled back, taking a considerable distance from each other; from behind the mask, he squizzed his eyes looking at her, bored. Somehow it was as if they were two halves of the same body: opposite, complementary.

"You don't have to get in the middle of their lives, they don't need the little princess to show them how amazing and beautiful everything is away from these places. They are already incredibly aware of it by themselves."

He descended from the second level of the fountain to the first, the one equal to the ground. He leaned his hands on the wall in front of him, facing the girl.

He leaned forward, bringing his face close to Maeve's and dropping from under the hood a small lock of dark hair. Despite the almost absent distance between the two, that moment was far from intimate. The nerves of both were extremely tense, as if they were ready to fight in a physical confrontation that, however, neither of them had any intention of starting.

"They're small, lost, not the Kardashians. You can't interview children."

The harshness in the voice that emerged from the figure was evident and pungent despite the words had been overcome by the change of voice.

Maeve shuddered at once and, as if her words had been a revelation, found out how wrong her first thought had been. The end she wanted to go to, though, she thought it was right.

"They told me things that would impress any person, it's only fair that people know what's going on here. I don't work for anyone who-knows-what paper, not for the Times, not even for the Daily News; it's purely a school project, but somewhere you have to start talking about this."

"Do you really think people don't know that? - the shadow answered harshly - they know it, they know it all, and those who do not know it are among those who can do nothing about it; the world is not as you believe. When someone needs it, it's easier to look the other way than to find a way to help."

The girl took a deep breath looking at the mask in front of her. It was probably true: everyone wanted the big change but few in the small took care of others.

"Then explain: do you really think being a criminal might help them to change their minds?"

Maeve spoke plainly, looking into the eyes of the mask that was in front of his face. She had never felt such strong and full of courage as in that moment, she could feel a fire running through her veins, filling her heart and head with strength. The adrenaline that pushed her to continue had made her muscles tense more than ever. He could not have known it, but the look of the figure, hidden behind the mask, had changed and now he looked at it with a mixture of surprise and admiration.

"Why do you think I'm a criminal?"

He was going to figure out which way she was on, how smart she really was. The figure thought no smart teenager would ever come to a place like this alone and at night. His gaze flicked towards the road from where Maeve had previously arrived. The road seemed empty to him, no one had accompanied or followed her. He felt like he overrated her.

"They say a lot about you, they write a lot about you. Not everything seems true, but I'm almost sure it's not all false, something must have started all this. - said Maeve tilting her head - I don't think anyone woke up and, seeing you walking around, decided to make you look like a criminal."

"But what if they did?" whispered the shadow and looked back at her. The hot breath of the latter came clear on the face of Maeve who took a step back. The figure hinted at a smile that made the girl understand that the intention of that gesture was precisely to drive her away.

She did not expect this. She expected everything in reality, even threats, but not this.

Maeve didn't think that he really was a criminal.

The girl had unconsciously thought that in a story there was a villain, the cynical person who ruins the lives of others, she had never thought about possible nuances of this; either it was all black or all white. That gray was completely new to her.

She tried to take her question as a statement. For her that was confirmation of not having a high-ranking criminal in front of her.

Maeve twisted around her wrist one of the bracelets she wore while that feeling safety was slowly fading; the girl carried a hand in front of him, less than a metre from the figure.

"If that's the case, I'm Maeve and it's nice to meet you."

The shadow in the moment of raising the hand to join it to the one of the girl had immediately lowered it towards the wall, causing the metal fingers to collide against the stone.

Maeve waved a smile without lowering her hand, at which moment she felt it was right that whoever had to step in between the two of the, was her.

At that moment the darkness had almost completely enveloped the square without lampposts. Despite the white light of distant stars, the stone on the chest of the shadow illuminated the back of the girl's hand with a particular green light.

"Call me Metamer."