Daia

She sits down next to his foot on the coffee table and gently places the ice on his ankle. His joy makes her smile, but there’s a slight undertone of pain to it.

This kid is scared of something, likely being hunted by the same ones who hunted people like her. Still, there’s something a little different about his mind; he doesn’t feel like most other people she knows, even people like her, and it makes her curious.

“What’s hunting you?” she asks after a long silence, his cocoa half gone. It’s too blunt, but she doesn’t know how to ask.