The bustling crowd heaved and shoved me farther and farther away from my desired destination.

I had been separated from my family, my mother and father continuing on their merry way with my older brother in tow, all oblivious to their little girl's utter demise.

I had tripped over my undone shoe laces, the laces Mother had told me to tie a thousand times. My small hands had scraped the pavement as tears filled my eyes and spilled harshly down my cheeks.

But my family? They marched on.

I couldn't blame them, though. The crowd was loud enough to drown out anyone's cries, especially a small child's.

I stared after my family, desperately calling out to them, but they couldn't hear me over the sheer noise of a hundred voices raised in tandem.

My father was humming a merry tune as he walked, lightly thumping along on his leg, while my mother chattered on about the fun we were to have later on, my brother happily engaging in her conversation while staring down at his phone like teenagers do.

The fun I was sure to ruin with the panic and frenzy of a search party. A search party that was sure to come once they realized I wasn't among them. All because they couldn't stop for me.

I laid there on the hard ground, crying noisily as unfeeling strangers passed me by. Only a few even bothered to glance at me, and out of those, only a couple showed something more than mild interest and slight concern. But they all continued on their way, never offering a hand of help.

They most likely thought that I was too old to be doing such a thing. Many probably thought I was just throwing a petty tantrum because I didn't get my way. If only they'd known how wrong they were, indeed.

I might have been the youngest sibling, but I didn't want to act like a brat. Tantrums were things I had stopped doing when I was very little.

I raised myself to my bruised knees and scrubbed the dirt from my hands. Then I surveyed the wounds covering me.

My hands were covered in faint scrape marks that bled slightly. A quick look revealed that my knees had fared just as bad. My pants hadn't ripped, but upon rolling them up, I found that the skin there was also bleeding.

A sob escaped me as my frantic pulse beat a tattoo that pushed out more and more of my blood.

A person roughly seized my arms and lifted me to my feet.

I shyly glanced up, expecting to be berated unforgivingly for blocking some important adult's path. Instead, I found the young face of a boy roughly around the same age as me.

His light reddish hair was almost a golden caramel that was shaggy enough to continuously fall into his charcoal eyes.

His eyes. They such a peculiar color that it resembled a swirling fog, stormy night, and a wintery sky all at once. And they were filled with genuine concern, concern for me.

His clothing was slightly unusual and stood out in a place like this. Parents usually brought their children here to celebrate on the weekends, but he was wearing a dull brown school uniform that declared he was far away from his parents. He had to have been lonely as that uniform branded him as an outsider.

Concern coated his gaze as he glanced at my torn up hands and knees.

"Are you okay?" he asked.

More tears built up in my eyes and streamed unchecked down my face. I shook my head quickly, a sob breaking unwilling through my lips. I just wanted my parents.

"Oh," he said softly before he took my shaking hands into his slightly larger ones. "It's going to be okay," he said reassuringly, his eyes staring comfortably into my own.

Weaving through the crowd of excited families, he lead me over to a bench outside of the flow of people. We sat down and he released my hand. His arm draped over my shoulders as I sobbed into my sore hands, which, thankfully, had finally stopped bleeding.

When I had calmed down enough to where only a few sniffles broke through ever now and then, he removed his arm and quietly asked, "Do you want to talk about it?"

I hesitantly nodded my head. "I'm lost. I can't find my family." My voice broke on the last word as another painful sob threatened to come loose.

His gray eyes, which were once sad storm clouds, lit up in a surprising delight.

"We can fix that!" He said cheerily with all the excitement of a young boy. He jumped to his feet and happily drug me up after him.

My battered feet struggled to keep up with him as he quickly weaved throughout the merry families. He glanced at me over his shoulder and I saw his mouth moving, indicating that he was speaking. However, the words were snatched away in the wind, lost to the crowd's noise.

I desperately tried to understand and decipher the different sounds, but all I managed to catch was a small snippet. "...Peter....know...keep...safe!"

Peter know keep safe? What kind of sentence was that?

I didn't try to sort out his mix-up sentence any longer as my small feet desperately tried to keep me up with his longer strides.

I was careful not to trip over my still untied shoe laces, though. I definitely didn't want a repeat of last time.

As we rounded a corner that lead us away from the hustle and bustle of the crowded walkway, I shouted out to him. "Wait!" It was one simple word but spoken desperately, it had the power to stop even time itself.

My voice echoed out louder than I meant to around the empty space and caused a few stray heads to turn our way. For one reason or another, all of them continued on, ignoring the two young children wandering along by themselves.

I gave them the same courtesy, ignoring them as they had just us and pulled the boy to a stop. Who knew where he was taking me? It most definitely didn't look like the way to help.

I needed an adult's help, not some random child's!

He whirled on me, annoyance and confusion threatening to cloud his stormy eyes. "What?" he barked rather harshly.

I swallowed slightly in fear before gathering my courage. Grandma always said to stand tall in the face of strangers. They would always back down if you showed courage. "I don't think it's a good idea if I follow you. Besides, I don't even know your name yet, and you certainly don't know mine."

Some of the annoyance cleared from his face. "Oh," he said simply, "well, I'm Josh. And I'm taking you to meet my friend. He can help. He helps everyone." He turned to leave but stopped last minute as if remembering something important. He faced me again to ask the question, "What's your name?"

"Wyn," I said simply, preferring to give away my nickname before my full birth name.

He merely nodded before taking my hand and once more resuming on our way to this friend.

***

We were in a secluded back lot far away from where the crowds rushed to and fro. The grass was scraggly and in desperate need of being cut. It was so high that it nearly came to our waists. There were abandoned buildings on all sides of us that blocked the little lot from the rest of the busy world. It had been left to be forgotten from the outside, left to rot and fester.

I was uncomfortable being this far away from the overflowing streets, but Josh had insisted that his friend could help.

Apparently, his friend didn't care much for people, and would only show his face at their meetup point. But that was all that Josh would tell me about this mysterious friend.

When I pressed him for answers, he simply turned to face another side of the lot.

"Alright," Josh sighed as if convincing himself to do something. He raised his fingers to his lips and gave a single whistle that would have left most birds calling back in a second.

Answering calls echoed from around us, all of which I was pretty sure were birds. When nothing important happened, I turned to leave, ready to stalk down my family myself if I had too, but I didn't get very far.

In the next moment, I found myself face to face with a tall dark skinned boy.

He leaned towards me and swiped his black hair aside to reveal light chocolate eyes that shimmered with unbridled curiosity. He studied me openly that way for a long moment before offering his hand to me. "I'm Zac. You?" He said confidently and rather loudly for standing so close.

I took his hand and gave it a slight shake before releasing it. "Wyn."

Zac nodded. His attention diverted from me and turned to Josh. He stalked over to the other boy, a predator on the prowl.

Zac slapped him playfully on the back, to which Josh flinched, and slipped an arm over the other boy's shoulders. "What's up, Josh?" he said casually, seemingly without a care in the world.

Josh glanced at me before spilling his secrets in hushed whispers. They were all too quiet for me to possibly hear.

I took the silent moment to inspect Josh's friend.

Zac's happy go lucky demeanor had changed into one of complete seriousness.

His dark midnight hair fell in straight lines to his shoulders. It was unkempt and made the school uniform he wore seem oddly a little bit too neat. A red name tag that was fraying around the edges was pinned to his brown coat. The name Isaac was scrawled across it in dull letters, indicating the age of the name tag.

He was wearing the same uniform as Josh. Maybe they went to the same school, and this was a field trip of some sort?

Someone would be looking for them soon if that was the case.

I continued my inspection of him.

Was he the one that would help us? He awfully didn't look like much, or like he would be of much help.

Zac looked like the type to be running away from parents, not helping find them. But I had to admit that his loud voice might come in handy in the future. With him, we had the ability to reach above the deafening noise of the crowd.

An aggravated noise from Josh brought my attention back to the boys' secretive conversation.

Josh was speaking heatedly and quickly, while Zac answered in short, calm sentences.

I could tell that it was driving Josh up a wall because his young face turned bright red in anger. I watched him struggle to remain calm and keep his voice down. Then, his dam of restraint shattered.

"I don't care if Peter's busy! I need to see him now!" he shouted into Zac's oddly calm face.

Zac blinked a couple of times in shock before calmly answering with, "You know I can't do that. It's Fin's time. No one can interrupt that." His voice was smooth and matter of fact, straight to the point.

Josh whirled on me and stalked his way over to where I stood. Anger had turned his cheery gray eyes into raging twin storms. He roughly grabbed my upper arm and pulled me over to Zac. I was shoved towards the tall boy, who thankfully caught me in his arms and saved me from making a one way trip to the ground.

"She needs him right now." Josh said angrily between gritted teeth, "Call him."

Zac glanced down at me, a calm sadness within his light gaze. He sighed, shoved a strand of dark hair from his eyes before raising his hand to his mouth and giving a shrill whistle almost exactly like the one Josh had created earlier.

"Fine," he said, disgruntled, "We'll see what Peter has to say."

Author's Note:

Hey, guys! I hope you enjoyed the first real chapter, and I would appreciate it if you let me know what you thought! :D

So, I am trying to set up an update schedule. Every Wednesday a new chapter will be posted. :)

Have a good day!

-Anna