A little something I wrote up yesterday for your veiwing pleasures

He shuffled down the hallway, his long robes brushing the floor as his feet moved in quick momentum. Darkness had come a couple hours ago and he was late in checking the front door. Everyday just after nightfall and again before sunrise, it was his duty to check the steps of the front gate. Winter was dawning early this year and cold winds were coming in from the north, his lateness may cost some poor child their life. The hope swept through him as it did every night as he made his trek to the front gate. He wrapped his arms around himself for warmth and braced himself for the cold as he finally reached the inner door. He pushed the large oak doors outward and felt the cold air blast through his woolen robes, his arms providing little warms. He inwardly cursed himself again for being late and not being able to grab a jacket before he had to rush out into the night air. Quickening his pace in a mock run he scampered across the gravel path winding out from the ominous building growing smaller behind him as he ran away from it. His breath came out in puffs of smoke before his face as he rushed to the outer gate. Breathing harder, but feeling warmer from his run he reached the large wall that surrounded the complex and laid his hand upon the door. Mumbling quick words, a metallic clank echoed within the inner workings of the thick door. He now opened the door with ease, but just wide enough for him to peak out. He immediately gazed down upon the steps in front of the door and his hope faded as quickly as it had come. A little to the side of the door and two steps down, wrapped in nothing more than thin rags, laid a child of no more than a year old. He hastened to gather up the child and took a quick glance around to make sure there were no other children on the steps. There were not usually more than one, if there was one at all. He had sometimes been early or too prompt in his routine of checking the steps, and had sometimes seen a woman dart behind a building as he opened the door. Mothers would usually glance at the steps from afar before placing their babe to make sure no others were about and the appearance of one child already on the steps indicated that someone could be near by. A child hadn’t appeared on the steps in a long while though, it had almost been a year, making him lax in his routine, but every night he hoped that he would find an empty step when he looked out. Pulling himself from his inward thoughts he gathered the excess in the skirt of his robes and awkwardly wrapped them around the child and moved back inside the door and shut it. Once inside the safety of the gate he placed his hand on the door once more and spoke words that were caught away in the wind before they could be heard by any. Once again the metallic click sounded within the door and he turned gazing back on the fortress that he had called home for the majority of his life. The building stood tall and wide against the landscape and was highlighted by the moons rays gazing down upon it. The structure was elegant, yet not too extravagant, yet he tried to absorb its beauty every time he looked upon it. In the center above the main door stood the symbol by which he had lived his life by for so long. After his brief glance at the building in front of him, he looked down at the babe in his arms. The child unconsciously grabbed hold of his finger with his little hand. He gaped at what he saw on the back of the child’s hand, it was the same symbol that he had just seen upon the building. Identical in every detail, the symbol was etched upon the child’s hand, but looked as if it was a part of the child’s skin. A blast of wind hit him suddenly, he came out of his slight stupor at seeing the symbol on the child and remembered that it was cold and the child could have been outside for over an hour. His urgency renewed, he rushed once again back to the building from which he had come before. A new hope bloomed in his heart as he thought of the child in his arms and who it would someday become.