Tales of Aradia The Last Witch Volume 1 Read Free Page A

his wife.
    Liza restrained herself
from chuckling at his bravado.
    Before going into law
as a profession, Ross had served a tour of duty in the Air Force.
He had seen spotlights, flares, and all kinds of explosions, but he
had never witnessed a light which was so brilliant and so piercing
from so far away as the one he’d just seen.
    After ticking off all
the likely causes he could brainstorm, he started thinking of
unlikely ones.
    “Maybe it was aliens,”
he muttered under his breath, only to sarcastically add, "Ross, if
you really want aliens to be the perpetrators of crimes transfer to
Area 51."
    He chuckled to himself
and started to relax.
    His guard came back up
fast, though, when he noticed a soft, otherworldly whimpering sound
from somewhere nearby. After a bit of sleuthing he realized it was
coming from inside what looked like a shallow cave. The eerie sound
was echoing off the stone walls, which confused his sense of
direction. With a hard look in his eye and his can of mace raised,
he edged into the cavern.
    The setting sun cast
almost no light through the east-facing cave mouth, and it took
Ross’s eyes a few moments to adjust. What he saw perplexed him. He
saw nothing.
    “Well that’s… weird,”
he mumbled.
    Perhaps responding to
his voice, the whimper returned, and now inside the cave, Ross was
able to make it out much more clearly. It sounded like a
child.
    Casting his gaze
downward, he saw a little girl curled up, wrapped in brown linen
which blended almost perfectly with the dirty stone floor. From her
size, she couldn’t have been over six months old.
    At first Ross simply
stared in shock. He’d been prepared for bandits or some sort of
vicious mutant creature. A child threw him off.
    He checked her
immediately, but found no signs of abuse or neglect, aside from
having been abandoned alone in a cave. Near as he could tell, she
was perfectly healthy and sound. Beyond that initial assessment,
though, he was at a total loss for how to handle the girl. He
completed a sweep of the cave, finding nothing out of the ordinary.
It did not take long. Once again, he looked down at the girl in
complete disbelief.
    “Now what on earth are
you doing here?” Ross asked the baby as he again crouched down
beside her. As a lawyer for the District Attorney’s office, he had
come across too many unfortunate case of abandonment. A child comes
to someone who does not necessarily want it, but has it anyway.
Later the person comes to learn that having a child is not like
having a complacent slave or an obedient dog. Then, rather than put
it up for adoption, the freaks just leave their child somewhere to
die.
    That pattern just
didn’t fit the facts in this case, though, Ross noted curiously.
He’d already seen that the little girl looked surprisingly well
nourished and completely free of signs of abuse. “Camping, maybe?”
Ross asked himself, or perhaps the baby. Either way, he didn’t get
a useful response. “That wouldn’t explain the flash, anyway,” he
thought aloud.
    “Well, I can’t just
leave you out here,” he concluded. After a few contemplative
seconds, Ross very carefully and very awkwardly scooped the girl
into his arms. He held her for a few seconds, not sure if he was
doing it right. He knew he had to support her head, but that was
about it.
    She stared straight
into his eyes, and he wondered what she was thinking. The warm
little bundle clung to him with surprising strength. Then she
hiccuped, which, strangely enough, set Ross’s mind at
ease.
    He knew he was doing
the right thing by taking her with him. More than that, though, he
hoped she might cheer up Liza. “You know, kid, you are too
cute.”

    "Oh Ross, she's too
cute!" Liza exclaimed as she reached out to take the little girl
from her husband.
    Her initial confusion
at seeing Ross emerge from the forest carrying what seemed to be a
small brown sack had evaporated immediately upon realizing he held
a baby girl. Once she’d realized it