From the day that you were born, or perhaps even before that, your parents had been paranoid. At the slightest noise or shadow they would lock down the house, pushing you inside the panic room while they gathered weapons that they handled with far too much expertise. And every single time, nothing at all happened, your parents eventually relenting and letting you out once they finally finished patrolling the house at least a dozen times. So when they both had taken you by the hands and practically pulled you to your usual hiding spot, you assumed that it was just another false alarm. Another night when the demons in your parents’ memories, the ones that they had always refused to share with you, grew far too strong for them to ignore.

But after curling up in the panic room and listening carefully to every single sound outside of the door for so long now, you could sense that something was wrong. The near-silent footfalls of your parents that you had only learned to pick out with years of practice had completely ceased, the entire house now deathly quiet expect for the suspicious creaks and groans that were impossible to tell came from the house settling or instead from your parents’ nameless fears made flesh. It was a fear you now shared, one that whatever skills that you may have inherited from your parents made you swore that you could feel growing closer and closer, until it was standing just outside the cleverly concealed outside your door.

The door must not have been that cleverly concealed though, not when it was pulled open to reveal a complete stranger standing before you.

*She couldn’t have been more than one or two years older than you, but she stood with a commanding power that you could never hope to match. Those fierce green eyes bore down at you in contemplation, the slightest possible shine of surprise flashing in them before her whole expression softened. Stepping closer, the stranger crouched down before you, allowing you to catch the fresh bloodstain shining on her boots. You were quickly distracted by the sudden appearance of her outstretched hand though, with you unable to take your eyes off of it.

“Hello,” she murmured, her hand still offered out to you. “Who are you, little one? Are you their child?”