Just a few notes that I didn't have enough room to include in the summary.
This is my first fanfiction. I wanted it to be different from the average wolf's rain fanfic, so the original characters won't appear til later on in the plot.
This takes place after Kiba and the others failed to find paradise.
Disclaimer: I do not own Wolf's Rain or any of the characters.
Drip, drip, drip… that tap! It's driving me insane. But then again, so is everything in this place. It sounded a great idea at the time. A week away, a holiday cottage deep in the countryside. A nice break with my family, a chance to relax. That's what I thought it would be. Oh but how wrong I was.
We arrived late in the evening. The sun had set some time before and the mist had descended down from the hills throughout the region. Our view from the car was blurred from the haze. From a distance it looked quaint. A postcard view of the hills and a stream close by. Vines growing up the sides of the cottage. Surrounded in nature.
But up close it was a mess, and the cottage had been abandoned years ago.
The cottage was almost completely out of sight. The trees and surrounding vegetation had taken over the building. It was totally out of the question for anything to be asked to live in there for a week. The owners were at the other end of the country, with no contact number. They had said, oh yes, it was a beautiful country cottage fit fully with modern appliances. Huh!
We were stuck there for a week. And it wasn't like we could just pop out and find a hotel, at least not for that night. There weren't any around for at least 20 miles and with it getting dark… nobody wanted to backtrack down the long dirt track road that brought us here to find one.
My enthusiastic mother decided to make the most of the situation. She loved camping trips. 'Loved' is an understatement… she lived for them. A holiday to her, was getting back to nature. For me it wasn't fun.
It wasn't right, I thought. Not again. Not another camping trip. The only reason I agreed to coming on this trip was that it would be in a cottage. A comfortable, habitable, human cottage. A trip that didn't involve pumping up an air mattress.
I don't know why I have such negative memories of nature. It seemed to scare me somehow, down to the core.
Inside the cottage there were the rotten remains of furniture. The walls were covered in moss, and the air was damp and heavy. My brother coined it as he looked around with disgust, "What a dump."
The cottage had four tiny rooms. The first being a kitchen, in which the front door led into. A huge ancient porcelain sink occupied one corner and rotten wooden cupboards were arranged over the walls. The second being the sitting room. It once must have had a few chairs, and what looked like a shelf. The third was a bathroom with a broken mirror and filthy tiles. The fourth room was the bedroom. An old and roosted bed was in one corner. It had lost one of its roosted legs and it's damp, moth-eaten mattress was almost touching the floor.
I was angry at the owners. How dare they rent out such an excuse of a house to anybody. It didn't even have electricity and barely had running water.
We started to cart some selected belongings into the cottage. 'We' being my younger brother, my mother and I. Once again, my father had been sent away on a business trip conveniently around the time of our long planned holiday. Something to do with some high classed noble. He is very involved in all their funny business. I don't like it one bit. It was typical of him but I knew my mother would have a much more enjoyable time without him.
We brought our things into the middle room. It was covered in dust and dirt. But it was the least colonised by fungi and other creepy crawlies that I couldn't bear to think about. It also had the remains of an ancient fireplace. We looked up it's chimney and found that it was blocked by a few years worth of countless bird nests. We found an old broom and tried our best to poke it up and dislodge the unwelcome visitors from the smokestack.
Our mother gave us instructions and we each carried out separate tasks. She arranged our snacks from the car into a makeshift supper, mainly of crisps and fizzy juice. I could tell that she disliked having to eat our 'rubbish' for our supper. There wasn't really that much to eat, but enough to fill a hole.
My brother took in a suitcase full of my mother's clothes. Her frumpy long jumpers and thick woollen socks were the best choice to keep warm in this cottage. While I looked around outside in the gathering darkness for firewood.
I muttered as I went. This was not my idea of a break. I didn't like nature. I didn't want to be here. If I had known…
The cottage was cocooned by a wall of trees on all sides except the front where the road met the cottage. The trees were old and gnarled like old men's hands. Many of which were long dead. I reached high into one and pulled my weight down onto a thick branch which snapped easily. I knew from experience that dead wood that was still standing would burn far better than dead wood that was lying on the ground. After bringing it inside we had a hell of a time trying to get it lit without any matches, but with my mother being an expert in that department I let her handle it. After ten minutes of rubbing and twisting two sticks together and placing the glowing embers onto some dry timber, the flames sprung up.
Once the fire was going though, the situation started to look a lot better. My brother found the tap to be working in the bathroom, the one in the kitchen had long since given up the ghost. At least we were able to clean our teeth. After bringing in a few more branches we were set up for the night. We huddled together next to the fire and leaned on our jackets. This I didn't mind.
I found it easy to sleep on hard floors. I actually preferred it sometimes to my own squishy mattress. It was too… too… just too. That was the same for a lot of things in my life. It seemed to smother me sometimes. Silly little things. Food always being too hot for my liking. Always feeling to hot. Flavours of food were a problem for me as well. Sometimes anything more than salt and vinegar crisps blew my head off. I told myself that I was a freak and that I should go and live at the North Pole and eat snow.
"So, what are we doing tomorrow?" My brother asked. We hadn't talked much all evening. Our family is like that, when we work we just get on with it.
"I will wake you both up early," my mother answered, " And we'll set off out to find a hotel."
"Do we have to get up early?" My brother whined. I had to agree, I didn't fancy having to get up at the crack of dawn. It had been a long day.
"Nothing will be open that early," I added from under my thick jumper that was pulled up to my nose.
"Rubbish. Of course there will be something open. Plus, it will take a while to get to the nearest village."
I sighed dismally. My brother yawned. He was 3 years younger than I was but still very mature for his age. He has a head of short cut brown hair, and flashing blue grey eyes. He has a medium build, still boyish, in that he doesn't look 'grown up' yet. I looked over to my mother's tall figure lying in a curled position facing the fire. She has long natural curly hair that is tied back roughly. She has the same grey blue eyes as my brother but they were even more grey. They looked older somehow.
I thought about our situation. My father wouldn't have put up with staying in a house like this. He would have been straight back out the road again and be half way to a hotel by now. That was what made my mother and my father different. He would give up on a situation, while my mother would make the best of it. My mother and he were having problems. They tried to keep it quiet but it was obvious to my brother and I. We didn't talk about it. Talking about it would only have proved that it was there.
My mother works as an environmentalist. This cottage is in one of the last remaining protected forests around. For years now, the forests have all been cut down. They just don't seem to grow back now. This is one of the very last. My father works alongside the nobles. I'm not exactly sure what he does. When he is home, he never talks about it, even if we ask. They often argue about that. I'd hate to think what dirty work they make him do.
Back to the situation in hand, I wanted to get a good nights sleep.
I voiced my thoughts, "I really don't want to get up that early. We aren't even definite that there is even a hotel nearby. We're both so tired, I just don't think I could get up that early. Couldn't you go alone and come back for us once you've made arrangements."
"That will be such a hassle dear."
"We'll be in a better mood for it and will be more up for travelling later." My brother argued. This was aimed especially at me. I could be very grumpy without my sleep, plus the fact that I didn't even want to be on this trip had made me recently hard to live with.
"Oh alright. I'll go first thing, you have a lie in."
I thanked her and tried to get to sleep. It didn't take long for the other two to nod off. But I lay for a good hour with no success.
After a while I got up and placed another branch on the fire. I took a wander around the house. The place was silent. The only sounds that surrounded me were the soft breathing of my family and the crackle of the fire. I always felt that on camping trips it was good to get away from the noise of the city. Even in a quiet house, it was always noisy. I had sensitive ears, another one of my oddities. I could often hear the whine of a TV on standby or a soft buzz of a light switched on. It was never truly quiet. This house had no electricity and so it had no noise. Strange, I know.
I found myself heading towards the bathroom. I looked at my reflection through the cracked mirror.
I had light brown hair illuminated to a gold-red by the glow of the fire. I had hazel eyes that bordered on being golden. I wasn't tall like my mother, although I was slim like her. That was where our similarities ended.
I've always known I had been adopted. I have very faint memories of someone else being my mother, but I can't picture a face. My real mother couldn't look after me anymore and so she gave me away. That is all I know about her. I've never dared to ask more. I didn't want to know more. It was too painful.
Its obvious when you compare myself to the rest of my family. They are all tall and thin and academic, while I am shorter, and more athletic. Someone once described me as having elf like features.
I jumped when someone whispered my name.
"Faolan…"