An outcast girl, an exiled fairy, and an escaped thief. What do these three have in common? Nothing. Nothing except for the lack of justice dealt them by their kind. Now, hunted by good and evil alike, they have no choice but to band together. Join Kishe, a fugitive thief, Rame, a banished fairy-noble, and Scheneu, a girl thrown from her home, as they seek the only one who can truly clear their names. But they’re more important then they seem. Are they important enough that the forces of good and evil will team up to find and recapture them? And why? What started out as a simple bid for justice now turns into a race against time for the three fugitives, and time is starting to pull further and further ahead.

Chapter One

Keepers of time live forever. They live forever and they watch as world after world is born; They watch as those worlds rise to their climaxes, then die away. They have watched the rise and fall of many countries, many empires, many rulers and monarchs; They have witnessed wars, peace, happiness and joy. It was only out of boredom that Sixteenth Time-keeper was watching Earth’s inhabitants on January 12, 3021. It was only because she was so bored that she saw the three figures flee. They all glowed slightly, and she knew they were important somehow—whether it was because of a prophesy or not she couldn’t tell. She was intrigued, and so it was that she continued to watch the three figures—two female, one male—as their lives unfolded. She watched their timelines carefully; she could see them intertwining, forming a bond of friendship born out of necessity but carried on because of sincerity. Sixteenth’s boredom was washed away as she watched the three figures’ lives unfold before her eyes. They had rough times ahead—perhaps it would be fun to tweak their fates a little. She could aid them, perhaps. It wasn’t her place to aid them, nor was it her place to hinder—but if she did either in small, almost unnoticeable ways, perhaps nobody would observe. Perhaps, she thought, watching her new charges intently, perhaps no one would care. Perhaps.

Scheneu’s breath steamed in the bitter cold air as she trudged along. She had been walking for three days, and her feet were numb from the cold. She was shivering—she had been shivering for a day now—and her strength was waning. The young human didn’t know how much longer she would be able to hold out in the snow and the icy cold wind blowing in her face. She couldn’t drop to the ground, not here, not in the Wilds. There were beasts, fowl things that preyed on the weak and the helpless and thrived on fear. And there were the fairies, rumored to be magic-wielders. The stories she’d heard about them made her shudder. Ever since the existence of other races—fairies, elves and suchlike—had been discovered in 2010, hatred had grown between them. The elves and the fairies got along with each other, and the humans tolerated the dragons as long as they didn’t disturb the villages—but humans, elves and fairies had a mutual hatred for each other.

But Scheneu’s strength dwindled by the minute, sapped by the stinging wind whipping her hair and making her gasp. She could go no further—not tonight. With fingers numbed by hours of exposure to the frozen outside world, Scheneu dug a quick hole in the deep snow. It was easily two feet deep, and she dug her hole as deep as she could. She quickly lowered herself into it, and the wind lessened. At least here she was sheltered from its icy rage. Scheneu curled herself up into a tight little ball on the floor of her hole, her hands tucked close to her body, and fell asleep. Her sleep was light and fitful, her dreams full of evil creatures of the night. But she had survived another day and another night, and that was well.

Kishe’s sixth sense warned her just in time for her to leap aside and avoid the dagger that had been aiming for her throat. The young human’s reflexes were as quick as ever, but she couldn’t keep doing this forever. The irate elves behind her had amazing aim, and it was taking all her concentration to duck and dodge all their arrows and daggers. The hail of sharp weapons was unceasing, and the thief’s only other choice was to flea. And flea she did, nearly as quick as a fairy in flight and almost as agile as an elf. Long years of climbing walls and leaping quietly from window to ground had trained her body to be quick and light, and her lithe form would have been too quick for any human archer to even hope to shoot at. Many close calls and near captures had taught her to be fleet-footed and almost perfectly balanced, and it was partly this that allowed the young thief to move with such stealth. Even in the deep snow that had piled up on the ground, she was still more-or-less surefooted. Her short black hair had been cut because when it was long, it was too inconvenient. At this moment, her strange amber eyes were wide with unconcealed terror. She knew well that humans were hated by elves, and she shuddered to think what would be done with her if she was caught by the angry beings behind her. It was fear and adrenaline that pushed her onward, faster than she had ever thought possible, always barely dodging daggers and arrows.

Kishe was panting, stumbling and tiring when she finally saw a suitable hiding place. She was getting too tired to carry on much longer; she’d been running for a good fifteen or twenty minutes, and the elven archers and civilians were still right on her heals, shouting and shooting with as much vigor as ever. Quickly, Kishe made a sharp turn right and then another, so that she doubled back, running back along the line of elves, not ten feet to their right. It was extremely risky; if they heard her she was dead. Silently, she ran along the snow-covered plain, back toward a dead tree. She knew this place, and she also knew something she hoped the elves didn’t: the tree was hollow. It would allow her to slip inside and hide until they had given up.

Kishe’s family lived not far from here, in a tiny house that sat alone—the only one to be found for miles around. They lived on the huge, open plain the people now called Tradarre. It stretched for hundreds of miles in every direction; it was perhaps all that was left of the former Earth; the mountains had been leveled long past, the valleys closed. Now, the Tradarrean plain—flat and nondescript, with lush green grass in summer and spring and snow two feet deep in winter—covered the whole of what had once been North America. The lands beyond Tradarre were more wild than even the outskirts of the Plain, and no one had ventured there before.

Kishe threw herself into the dead tree as fast and as quietly as she could. Snow had been blown in by the winds that continually blew across the Plain, and the ground inside the tree was coated with a light dusting of white. But it was bearable, and Kishe sank down to squat with her back against the inside of the tree. And there she waited for hours as the elven searchers scoured the land for two miles in every direction for her. They did not think to search the trees, and it was because of this that Kishe’s life was spared. But really, it was not the fault of the elves that they overlooked her. If there had been no interference, they would have found her quickly. As it was, though, Sixteenth stepped in to save the young thief. Every time the elves looked towards the opening of the tree, she made it look as though it were covered in dead bark like the rest of the tree. None of them thought to second-guess the images they received. Sixteenth was pleased with her work, and when the elves had left, she returned to her place in the hall of the Time-keepers, to continue her vigil over her charges.

Rame was confused. He paced around his cell, walking along first one wall, then another, in a square. He stepped around the perimeter of the cell, over and over, lost in thought. He had done nothing wrong, or at least nothing that he knew of. He had been talking with his younger sister when there had come a knock on the door. Thinking that one of his friends was at the door, he had answered it without much apprehension. He should have been more suspicious. As soon as he had opened the door, the fairy noble’s arms had been pinned behind his back. One of the three fairies outside his door had grabbed a handful f his light brown hair and yanked his head up so that he was looking into the fairy’s eyes. “You are under arrest,” Said the stranger, uttering the lines he had been taught to speak. The lines that had been used in the days of Old Earth, and were still being used in New Earth. But why? What was going on?

Rame tried to ask, but another stranger’s hand over his mouth silenced the fairy-noble. He was bundled quietly away, and by the time his sister came to see what was taking him so long, he was all ready gone.

And now here he was, pacing restlessly around the edge of his cell. He was in the dungeons of the Fairy ruler—but he still wasn’t sure why. Fear nagged at the back of his thoughts—what would become of him? Why was he here? Was this arrest authorized at all? What would his sister think? Rame, barely the human equivalent of fifteen years old, didn’t have an answer to any of these questions. It made him more restless, and so his endless walking went on. Around and around and around the edge of his cell, around and around like his thoughts—spinning, but always ending up back where they began. It made him jumpy, the combination of the nagging fear and the deafening silence. He jumped at any small noise and unconsciously prepared himself for battle. But what was there to fight? Just another unanswerable question. There were too many questions—too much silence, and the light was almost nonexistent. Rame couldn’t tell whether it was day or night, but what he did know was that it was cold.

The young noble finally resorted to sitting on his knees in a corner of the cell, his wings tucked around him to try and keep him warm. The darkness was pressing on his eyes, the silence on his ears; it felt like the walls were closing in. He needed light—needed it badly. He felt like he was going to suffocate. And then, a shaft of light—moonlight, by the look of it—fell on his face. He stared at it, and he kept his eyes on it. It was light, and now the darkness didn’t weigh so heavily upon his thoughts. Rame fell into an uneasy doze, and the shaft of moonlight continued to shine on his face.

High above New Earth, Sixteenth glowed with pride and happiness. She had kept that little fairy noble from breaking down by giving him that little light. She was doing good; she could tell. His glow was increasing. Not the glow that signified him as special, but the glow of his life energy. The very light seemed to be increasing his strength. Interesting. She decided that it must be something all fairies react to, darkness. Maybe they are all claustrophobic. At any rate, she had kept the young noble happy, and that, in turn, pleased her, as well. She nodded to herself. She felt content enough with her work to leave it for a little while. She would go replenish her strength, and return shortly to see how her chosen were coming along. It was very interesting to watch how they reacted to different situations. She would like to see more, she decided, as she left her spot by the timelines of her charges.

A/N: How did you like it? I don’t know where the thought came from, but hey—I’m finally posting a story on fictionpress. I’m so pleased with me. Woot! Mkay, people. I don’t know when the next chapter’ll be up, but…I’ll try to get it up soon. Tschau!