The Bench

A young American tourist walking past midnight by a park in the old city of Edimburgh. After a dozen minutes of contemplation in a slow pace, he encounters a most beautiful woman sitting on a bench, all alone, dressed with a white gown as dictated by the Greek usance.

Parsimoniously with the manners of an old dixie planter or a careless sage, he took his side of the bench with amplitude. But as he opened his mouth a carstic "Hey" was emitted, he instantly regreted to have unleashed without feeling or thinking, such a horribly and disgraceful sound.

But as the attractive ginger-haired gowned woman accepted his thirsty salutation with an explendid charm, he continued his introduction, probably with a "how you doin'" (perhaps the most confined and evolved developement to his eco-system). After the inmensely appealing young lady and the lost but gentle tourist completed their addresses, -the woman in the initiative this time- asked the most common –So, what do you do for living?- then, the story you are now reading gets interesting and abnormal.

-Well ... I'm not allowed to spread that information, so today I'm a wraith hunter- He showed a cunning smile, and bending with his elbows supporting him over his lap, inhaled the smoke of a delicate white cigarette; then continued. -Have you heard about wraiths?
-Tell me about them- Said the young woman with an elegant tone and glaunced back to him. -Are they dangerous?
-Well indeed, that's why they need professionals like me.
-And, do they scare villagers and so?
-Just as dragons do, my lady, and very intelligent creatures they are, you see.
-How much? - Asked intrigued.
-Like having a degree in philosophy-.
-Today that isn't prove of being intelligent. - Having a slightly affected tone.
-Such as being a wraith. - He concluded, being proud of himself by having such a fast response.

As this to be the key to a more familiar game, in which flirting takes a tacit role, she moved towards him.
-So tell me boy, you look fit; how hard is your work? Seems that you need to be in a good shape.
-Well, the agency has trained us. - Having showed a less than proudfull arm and pounding it with his bare hand he laughed.
-But tell me more. - With graveness in her manner. -Why is there an agency in combat to them?
They're hostile to us, men; they claim we've occupied their sacred forests.
-Well, you men have.
-Presumingly you are talking for every man?
-There is an ancient legend among certain people called Buryads, in the north of the land you call Siberia. Anyway, the kernel of truth in this legend is that once there was a lede who were the first intelligence created by God. In the early days of Eden, before man was conceived, all the lands and animals and waters, scents and sounds and colours were given to wraiths as to be the ultimate guardians of the creation. They were by far intelligent, and looked always ahead towards that commitment. And so they erect a golden kingdom; which lacked of misery or authority or work division. Everything was at hand, everything was easy, and the King ruling the Eden was innocence.
 But as God became bored with that perfection, he created man in His image. With all his power, with all his will.
And then, this creature, new to this paradise, broke the only law to them: reproduction. So in the land of the unharmed they multiplied without an end. In matter of solar cycles they overwhelmed us, and being outnumbered in the finite lands of Eden claimed its consequences.
God as a conciliating father created for us Earth, marking for us every danger and every obstacle we should learn to avoid. So in this beginning we shared with you the countries, hence you discover richness and greed surfaced your skin like sweat every time you moved.
You drown us into the rivers, the Tigris, the Nile, the Euphrates and the Indus and the Ganges and the seven seas themselves were tainted in our fluids by your selfishness. We gave you response we assembled an army and stroke your blossoming societies.

He thought she was exaggerating the gamed conversation, and so his face showed it. The woman in the light dress saw it and markedly changed its tone, less biblical, a tone to be understood, but still the same one, the only way in which she had learned the language of them. He then offered a cigarette to try to calmed own that odd lady which takes to an encounter.

-We have been in every culture, named by different tongues and worshipped by most of men, all of them who agreed to offer sacrifices as a symbol of the importance of nature, our realm, would be protected and blessed with our wisdom and luck and if not they shall be punished by their co-dwellers. Still, you returned to decimate us and vanished us to the forests, where we were protected by your elders with legends of disgraceful endings. Our last stronghold that it was. Was.

But till the last inch of that land is returned, the flower of your progeny, your sons and daughters will be continue to be terrified at night, that may not seem to be a threat to mankind, but between dreams is when the army of wraiths can extract the power of the soul, and little by little we have been depleting your race from its vitality, we have introduce to humankind, the worst of the plagues, the apathy.
Another once he offered a cigarette.

She accepted.  Vaporising as she enter into contact with the cigarette.

Agent Noth was found in a demential state.