sees
Alex sees her thin figure in the distance; her arms folded around her stomach, and her golden locks falling over her face. He sees her kneel to the floor, her hand drawn to the pale skin of her cheek; he sees the tears fall through the tips of her thin fingers, and sprinkle the soil beneath her.
He sees her fall apart, but he doesn't move.
He could wipe the tears from her eyes, but he doesn't, because this is all he is; one of the wood's many sharp possessions; teeth the color of pearls stained with blood the color of roses, and tough brown fur that blends with the towering trunks of trees.
And so he flees.
He turns, feeling the sharp tips of twigs scratch along the bottom of his paws; the shadows of pines dancing along his back like a never-ending painting of his world. The subtle sound of a churning brook in the distance makes his ears perk, and suddenly, the girl is far in the depths of his memory; and instead the need for food overwhelms him; the clumsy shuffle of leaves tingling in his ears, warning; prey, prey, prey.
The overwhelming sense of need is comforting; like painting over a blue, and red canvas with pitch white to erase the pain. The edges of his vision blur, and his eyes drift shut, his claws leaving imprints in the ground as he glides over the dirt, and twigs.
He clings to his senses, fees the wind rush over his coarse fur, and then…
He falls to the ground. Legs beneath him, and arms shaking at his side, dirt caked in his blonde hair.
"No." He whispers, throwing his head back, and staring at the tops of the trees. He curls in on himself, thinking wolf thoughts; the deer now standing close to him, staring at his body sprawled on the ground, the wind flying by him.
But he remains a boy; thoughts of a blank canvas, and a girl with golden locks blazing through his painfully human mind.
Ellie thinks he's beautiful; She named him Pine because he always sits at the edge of the clearing, claws digging into the dirt, and pines reflecting shadows on his brown fur. He watches her, his eyes shifting from her tangled curls, to her arms, and legs. His stare scares her in a way; so piercing, and deprived. But underneath it, she swears she can see love, need, even nervous beads of sweat gathering at the corner of his eyes.
If Ellie knows anything, it's that wolves don't feel those things, and of course, she only imagines such feelings etched in his features.
"Ell," Rachel tugs at Ellie's sleeves, and she shifts her eyes from the edge of the forest to the green-eyed girl beside her, "You look like you've lost it. The cold's getting to your head." She giggles, and Ellie forces a chuckle in return.
She sighs, moving her hand to her face, and pulling a stray lock of hair from her eyes, "Where do you think he went?" She asks. As expected, the edges of Rachel's lips curl down into a frown, and her brows crease, her eyes turning to slits on her face, "Ell, he's fine, he just ran off in the woods, he is a dog…"
"Wolf…" Ellie mutters under her breath, the words filled with more venom then intended, "He's a wolf."
Rachel narrows her eyes at Ellie, shifting her head to the side so that her straight brown hair falls over her shoulders, "So, the recital….. got anything planned? I figured I'd play Fur Elise…" Rachel's voice begins to blur, and the words became meaningless.
Ellie wonders what kind of notes could ring loud enough to bring Pine to her door. She can hear the music in her mind, feel the yellowing keys slide beneath her fingers as they glide from octave to octave. Her fingers tingle with anticipation; imagining the feel the piano's shrill voice tickling the edges of her fingertips; vibrating through her bones.
Alex can see the others staring from a distance, their bodies hidden behind snow-soaked branches. Very rarely can he read them while in his human skin, but he can see the worry in their eyes. Bernard comes closer, nudging Alex with his muzzle, and rubbing his fur along the bare skin of the pale boy's arm.
It's cold; snow, and dirt cling to his arms and legs, like dull splatters of paint against canvas. He can't make sense of his human form, not without Summer's heat clinging to his skin and hushing the growling wolf inside him.
"No," Alex's voice comes out as a whisper, the sound of his human voice startling him, and chasing the surrounding wolves away.
Alex thinks hard; he has nowhere other than the Woods, and the warmth of Bernard's house. Alone in his human form, he's lost. His feet shuffle beneath him, the cold causing his arms to convulse; the sting of snow slowly spreading through out his body until he's shaking uncontrollably.
And god, it hurts. He can feel his bones shifting, and collapsing and rebuilding themselves into different shapes. It's overwhelming, so much that he can't breathe, and leans over in the dirt, curling in a ball, waiting for the change to come over him; but it doesn't.
He feels it in his skin, in his bones; in his fingers, and toes. But he remains in his human skin, the freezing snow clinging to his body in the most painful places. A whimper escapes his pale, pink lips.
He rocks back and forth on the ground, his uneven heartbeat echoing in his ears, the pain stronger as each pound of his heart becomes louder, and farther from the next.
And then a figure appears in the distance; the outline of the girl with golden locks. He smells her before he sees her; the scent of sea-foam colored grass, and dust. "He-" His voice is quiet, and he tries to speak louder, screaming with his last breath, "Help me."
He repeats the words over and over again, tears gathering at the corners of his eyes, when deep down, he knows she can't.
She'd brings him home; tears falling down her face as much as they were his. Her wolf, no longer a wolf, is shaking in her arms.
She wants to take it away; the pain that made him cry out, and lean his head against her shoulder, but she can't.
She doesn't know how else to get him to her house, so she makes him walk, his skin deathly cold, and his hands shaking over hers. She doesn't know what to do to make him better, because she doesn't know what's making him shake against her, or why his bones sometimes look broken, and sometimes look just fine.
She doesn't know what to do to fix it, because she doesn't what he is.
He's Pine, but he's not, because his skin is pale pink, and he's leaning against her with arms, and legs, and everything that he was is gone; replaced by a boy that can hardly breathe, with his eyes shut tightly so that she can't see the color that floods around his irises.
She lets out a sob when she thinks, 'Maybe I'll never see the color of his eyes."
She lays him on the bed in her room, locking the door shut, and laying an electric blanket over his body, holding him tightly against her. She rocks him back and forth, her fingers combing through his blonde hair, and she nearly sobs when he stops moving.
She reaches her fingers to his neck, and they hover over the vein, shaking. She's afraid to put her fingers to it; afraid to feel nothing. But there's a heartbeat, and it's steady, and rhythmic, and she lays her head on his stomach and cries until her eyes drift closed, and her breathing turns shallow.
He smells her, before he see her sprawled over him, her cheek resting against his bare chest; the same smell of sea foam grass, and the dust of aged possessions.
For moments he can't breathe when he see her face; her cheek a rosy pink, and a trail of tears visible, crawling down her chin. Until now, he'd never seen her through humans eyes, and she's so beautiful, he wants to squeeze her to him, but her eyes are closed, and he can feel her chest moving against his stomach, and he wants her to stay like that; laying against him, with his arm draped lazily over hers.
He moves his fingers along her skin, and loses himself in the curve of her arm bent over his stomach; his eyes trail every inch of her.
He doesn't shake anymore, and he feels warm, and safe under the thick, blue blanket. He laces his fingers through hers, and runs his hand along her skin until her eyes flutter open, and she looks up at him with a smile; biting her lip as she gazes up at his eyes, "My name is Alex." He whispers, eyes shifting nervously from her to the white sheets beneath them.
"They're hazel." She says, her voice soft, and tired as she reaches her hand to his face. She brushes his cheek so softly he can hardly feel it, but it still sends a shock through his body. "Your eyes…."
And it surprises him so much that she doesn't ask what he is, that he feels the need to crush her to him again, and this time, he doesn't hesitate. He wraps his arms around her back, and pulls her to him. She giggles, and whispers in his ear, "I was so scared." He holds her tighter, "I know, I was too."
Her hair smells like apples, and snow, and he doesn't want to let her go, but he loosens his grip, and lifts himself from the bed, leaning on the white wood surrounding it. "I'm so sorry, Ellie…" she's behind him now, wrapping her arms around his stomach, "I never showed you who I was, because I couldn't. Bernard wouldn't let me, and even if I had… Ellie, they'll come after you, the wolves. They're not bad, they have good intentions… but, when it comes to part of their pack…."
She spins around to face him, and he's surprised to see she's laughing, tears spilling out of the corners of her light blue eyes, "Alex. I don't even know…." She stops laughing, and her eyebrows crease with worry, she shifts her gaze to the floor, her blonde hair falling over her eyes, "I don't even know what you are, Alex."
He doesn't know what to tell her, because he hardly knows himself. If he did, he wouldn't be what he is, he'd be a human; and he'd have already been with her, but he takes her hand in his, and sits her down on the bed, anyways, and says softly, "I'm a wolf when it's cold, and when it's warm, I'm a boy, and eventually, the boy part will fade." He takes in a sharp breath at the harshness of his own words, "I don't know why I'm Alex now… but, I-I'm glad. Because that's the reason I'm here with you."
At first, her eyes widen, and tears gather at the corners; not happy tears like before, but desperate ones that leave more trails along her cheek; but then she pulls him to her, and her thin, pink lips are on his, and they're soft, and it takes everything he has to pull away, "How can you do that when you don't know I'll be here tomorrow, Ellie?" and she hardly pulls away from him, her lips inches from his, "I'm doing this because you might not be here tomorrow."
He kisses her harder, and his pale arms wrap around her lifting her into the air. They're against the wall now, and his hands move along the skin of her cheek, tracing along the sides of her stomach, until she can feel the tips of his fingers on her thighs. She moves her lips to his neck, kissing, and nibbling his skin.
He gasps, and a whimper escapes his lips, before he pulls away, and hugs her to him; "I could stay like this forever." He whispers in her ear.
To Ellie, Alex is a song, escalating and growing with each note, until it explodes with sound, and you can feel it vibrating through your bones.
Every second she spends with Alex, the song becomes more clear in her mind. She knows his laugh is soft, and his chocolate eyes always wrinkle at the edges when he laughs. She remembers him sitting cross-legged on her white bed, his hands resting on his feet. Sandy hair fell over his eyes, as he laughed. He fell back, and giggled uncontrollably, "I love you," and the sound of his voice was childish, like a small boy being tickled. She'd kissed him then. Soft, so soft he could barely feel it, and then hard enough to knock him over in the bed.
She knows he likes when she plays him a song; when she moves her fingers faster, and slower, and so loud that the ground shakes, and so soft, that he can barely here the notes ringing from the keys. "It's your song," She'd whisper, and kiss him softly on the cheek.
She knows how his eyes turn to the ground, and he slumps slightly when she mentions them being apart, and she knows that every time she lays in his arms, he sings with a beautiful, soft voice, "… To be alone with you…" and she falls asleep with her head turned to his chest.
She knows that when he was younger, he had no one. That he lived on the streets, and he still wonders what the color of his mother's hair is, and what she looked like when she smiled. He tells her he was bitten by Bernard, because a life as a wolf was better than a life on the streets, and he never once looked back; not that he'd have anything to look back on. Tears gather at the corner of his eyes when he tells her things like this, and she just smiles, and takes his hand, and tells him it's okay to cry about the memories that hurt.
She knows she's never loved anyone the way she loves him, and she tells Rachel that too.
It's a cold morning, and snow gathers at the window pane of her room. The snowflakes paint the window, like a portrait, and Alex smiles when he takes Ellie's hands in his, and gently traces the skin of her arms with his pale fingers. "I want you to come with me," She whispers softly, and the smile slips from his face, "I know baby," And his voice is soft like a little boy, and it makes her want to stay with him even more, "I don't ever want to leave you. But if I go out there with you, it could be years before I see you again…" he pulls her into a hug, and whispers into her hair, "I'd miss you too much."
And so she walks down stairs, and whispers excuses her parents, and they hardly even look up from their newspaper. She walks to school in a daze, the snowflakes falling around her, and putting up walls between her and the other kids walking beside her to school.
"I'm in love," She tells Rachel in Math, doodling pictures of a wolf on the inside of her notebook. Rachel's eyes grow wide, and she glares at Ellie, "How could you… be in…. love? Why didn't you tell me! You don't even talk to boys…"
"I just met him." She whispered, twirling her long hair between her fingers.
She doesn't tell Rachel everything, but she does tell her about his eyes, and the way he sings to her 'til she falls asleep.
She walks home alone, the wall of snowflakes falling over her, and she feels safe. She imagines Alex at home, waiting for her to return, and she smiles, her eyes fluttering closed. She clings her pale, pink jacket to her skin, and counts the steps until she'll be with him again.
One…. Two…. Three…
And then she feels something sharp scratch along her back. She turns, and then she sees them, wolves crowding around her, and jumping at her; claws digging into the side of her neck, and along her arms, and digging into her sides.
She screams out, but she can't hear her own voice, and her head hits the pavement hard; so hard she can't see the wolves anymore; can't see anything but black.
He heard the scream, the howls. He smelled the fur, the blood.
Her eyes are closed, and even worse, Alex can smell the blood as much as he can see it; streaked across the skin of her arms, her legs, even her neck. "God, Ellie." He rocks her back and forth, his fingers tangled in her hair, "Ellie, baby, Ellie, wake up." His fingers hover over her pulse, shaking, afraid that he'll feel nothing, but there's a dull thud beneath his fingertips, and he lets out a shaky breath. Tears are falling out of his eyes, and he can hardly see her anymore, but his fingers are sprawled over her chest, and the feel of her heart thumping beneath his touch is the only thing that keeps him breathing.
He clutches her to him, and lifts her into the air, running towards the house. He's shaking, and the pain sears through his skin, but he can hardly feel it with Ellie over his arms, and when he lays her on the white cushions of her bed, he's almost too scared to look at her body.
He gently pulls away her jacket, feeling the exposed skin; her stomach, and her arms, and her legs, and everywhere, until he's sure that there's no bite; only the imprint of claws spread along her skin.
He runs to the bathroom, a wet cloth hanging limply in his hands, and he wipes away the hurt as gently as he can, and when no red remains but the angry gash along her neck, and the scratches twisting up her left side, he pulls her to him, "Golden locks, and shining eyes; Kept me alive through the poison of winter." And when she opens her eyes, she whispers, "It'll be okay,"
He rocks her back and forth, kissing the claw marks softly, the scratch along her neck, and the fragile skin of her side.