Disclaimer: I don't own Tuck Everlasting, so don't sue me. As if business people look at fanfics all day to check for disclaimers...
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Winnie was standing by the spring in the wood. She'd turned seventeen that day, but she hadn't woken up feeling excited at all, or even happy, just numb, numb all over, unreal.
She stooped down and started to loosen the stones that were stuck in the mud that had built up over the years. Each one was so smooth and bright, one side cooled by water, the other washed over by sunlight.
Six years since she'd been here last, six long years. The forest had achieved a kind of ancientness that hadn't been there before. It'd grown old. The trees' wide canopies created a greenish kind of light that made the place feel even older. Old. What a strange word. What did it mean? What did it mean to Tuck? To Mae? To Miles? To Jesse? "Jesse," she whispered. The word seemed to echoe out through the woods. The sound of it racing past the trees, seeming as if to try and reach for him. Almost like it thought he would hear if it reached far enough.
She loosened the final stone and the water jumped out, the sunlight was hitting it in exactly the right way, colors playing all over it, dancing, shimmering. She'd brought a canteen and she took it out and filled it with the water that looked golden in the sun. She looked at it for a moment, and suddenly, she began to feel a little sick, like that bloated feeling after you've eaten to much for dinner. Like you've taken too big a chunk out of life. Life. That was a funny word too. Did life have to be uncontrollable? If you lived long enough, would life give you just one perfect day to make up for all the ones that were so horrible? Did she want to find out?
Winnie slowly lifted the canteen to her mouth, preparing to drink, but hesitated, and then put it down. She couldn't do it, just couldn't do it.
"I'm sorry, Jesse," she whispered, and thunder began to rumble far off in the distance as if the sky was disapproving, shaking its old, old head at her cowardice. She rearranged the stones over the spring and ran, ran for all her life, never glancing back because she couldn't. And, as she ran, the tears came. She cried as she ran, ran as she cried. And the sky cried with her. They cried together, Winnie, the sky. And Jesse cried too, by the time he knew.
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A/N: review please. did you like it?