I stopped in the middle of the street in the city of Mariana. Although it was night the street was lit up well. I tugged on my best friend's sleeve making her look up from her maps.
“Adri,” I breathed, “look at it!”
My best friend lifted her metallic purple head to look where I was staring. A tall muscular statue of a man was standing in the middle of a fountain. We had found it, after two days in the moving city searching for the statue we had found it!
“Alright Wolfie!!” Adrianne yelled in celebration, “we finally found our subject for the project!”
We had come to the ancient city during spring break, we had a history project to complete for the academy after all and the city was our subject. It was surrounded with ancient legends and mystery and the mysterious statue hidden in the maze like roads of the city of Mariana seemed like the best place to start our research. The legend around the statue said that when it touches hands with its soulmate he will become human. We had already written our piece about the statue and it’s legend. Now we just needed pictures about it and we could move on to the next part of the city we needed. The temple.
One step at a time Wolf I reminded myself, fiddling with my camera bag I called out
“Okay Adri, you get to pose first with him” I called. I began to set up my camera as Adrianne climbed into the fountain and then on the pedestal. She reached out her hand to his outstretched one and gently grasped the tips of his fingers with the tips of hers. She then leaned back on the pedestal using her grip on the statue to keep her steady to make it look like she was falling. I smiled at my friend’s pose but something was off...
“Adri, do you still have the bottle of ice spray Tanner made for science?” I asked her, she nodded a smile forming on her face as she quickly understood what I was getting at. She took her purple hair up by strands then sprayed it with the spray she took out of her pocket. Just like that it was frozen in place no matter how hard she shook her head. I nodded as she flashed me a thumbs up and then got back in back in position.
After I got the picture I took my camera to get other pictures of the statue for the report. When I finally moved to take a picture of his face. It was so sad..so full of anguish and pain. Something I had never seen on a male face before thanks to society. I was taken aback by the view. Unfortunately when I began to fall my reflexes kicked in to keep my camera safe from the water below. I instinctively reached out and grabbed the stone hand stretched out to me. I felt it start to fall with me and suddenly I was in the fountain with something rather heavy and warm on me.
I opened my eyes and almost screamed when I discovered a man on top of me. The whole world seemed to freeze as I drank in all the details I could about the man. He had pushed himself up so he was on all fours. His head was down and his medium-length black tightly curled hair dripped down hanging over his face. Like the statue had, He was wearing combat boots and pants which I could now see were army green and were now soaked to his skin. He had no shirt which revealed his rather muscular form but it also revealed that any small chip to the stone his statue had received over the years only seemed to result in deep scars. He lifted his head and brushed a soaked black curl away from his dark olive skin.
“What happened?” the man asked, his voice came out as a deep croak.
I unfortunately was still too stunned to speak and a quick glance over at Adrianne told me she too was still frozen in surprise. I swallowed when I saw his face so genuinely confused.
“You’re a-” I started, “get off of me!” I said instead while shoving him off with both hands. He fell back surprisingly easily - considering his size - into the water. I stood up and stared down at him. Adrianne came up behind me and rested a hand on my arm. The bewildered man looked up at me, for a moment I thought I saw a flash of fear on his face but if it was there it was quickly replaced with determination and possibly a glint of anger.
“Look,” he growled, “I don’t know how I ended on top of you, and I don’t know what happened” he started to stand up, I noticed he was using the pedestal for support. “But you are going to tell me.” The force behind his voice surprised me and I was almost terrified to try to even speak. Until I noticed how unwell he suddenly looked. “Are you okay?” I asked, he looked terrifyingly pale for an Italian.
“Fine.” He breathed, as if to prove his point he stood up all the way, letting go of the pedestal, and walked toward me. Well he began to walk towards me, he only took about a step and a half before pitching forward. Both Adrianne and I immediately jumped to try and catch him. We lowered him and flipped him so he was laying down facing upwards, his head rested on my lap.
“Soooo that was interesting.” Adri said, breaking the silence that had settled upon us after the incident. “What do we do now Wolfie? Take him back to the apartment with us? You know these European rooms are already small enough without another person living with us.”
I chewed on my lip, at this rate the insides of my mouth would never heal. “Adri, we can’t just leave him here. He literally has been a statue here for thousands of years! He’s clearly ill and needs to be cared for.”
Adrianne sighed, “yeah you’re right Wolf." a pause in her words made me look up to see her grining like a mad women. "he's also your soulmate so we can't abandon him"
I shivered, finding my soulmate was something I had dreamed of since I was little It’s just...I stayed clear of everyone ever since the incident a few years back, I'm not ready for a partner, not ready for all that comes with a significant other. Adri knew this of course but she still tried to set me up with someone every now and then.
"what do we do with him?" I asked What do we even tell him when he wakes up?" Adri looked at him, "shouldn’t we like...take him to the hospital or something?" she asked
I shook my head, “Adri, we can’t.” She glared at me, exasperated I went on. “Look, they are gonna ask all kinds of questions about him and we don’t know anything about him. Look, let’s just get him back to the apartment ok? We can work on the rest of the project tonight and-”
“Wolfie, how are we supposed to work on the rest of it when we need the statue pictures to finish the first part?” Adrianne had a point.
“We’ll figure it out, im sure i have enough to finish, even if the ones of his face are super blurry. just help me bring him back please?”
“Fine.” Adrianne stood up and went to pull him up off me so I could stand. “Woooo this boy’s heavy!” Adri exclaimed, I rolled my eyes and went to help her.
“Since the streets change each way you go, I need my map to see if I can figure out which change it took on this time.” Adri said. I nodded and put the man over both my shoulders to bear his weight although he was surprisingly light, despite Adrianne's claims . Adri looked over and with a sharp gasp, ran off through the street opposite where we entered to get back to our apartment.
