What makes these monsters cry?
You can see the gold reflecting in their eyes.
Yea, that's just our heaving skin stretched tight
Greedy hands grab what feels right.
Oh no, nobody taught them to let go, they don't know.

Why don't you stay with me?
I think you could save this beast.
But I'll leave you with an empty look.
Honey that's what takers do...
I'm a thief and I'll take you.

If you stay, you would break.
Your way to innocent
to take after these violent ways...
You still love and I still take.

-The Takers, Barcelona

She was made for the summer. She was a child of the sun with her tanned skin and brown eyes.

Her skin was warm, soft and fragile, his fingertips leaving bruises with the slightest pressure. She made the faintest of sounds, a sigh, a low moan, as he explored further, testing, feeling, memorizing every taste and sensation.

She was beautiful and he made love to her with more care and gentleness than he's ever had with any other girl because she wasn't like them with their bleached hair and fake smiles. They were nothing like her who could see beauty in the most mundane of things and the ugliest of creatures.

She could capture the horror, the beauty, and the rapture of it all and perhaps he thought with the smallest of bites on her collarbone, she could save him.

They parted in autumn. The leaves fell and the wind blew with the promise of cruel things to come.

He waited and waited for that painful sensation in his bones, the aching in his flesh as his muscles rearranged themselves for another form. He was alone as he waited for it to come, naked and vulnerable in the unforgivable forest.

Twigs poked his skin, the tree bark scratching his white back while his insides twisted and turned until he's all raw and red and there are tears in his blue eyes. His screams swallowed by the wind.

And suddenly, she's there. In all her perfections, in all her imperfections and she looked so out of place in this forest of dying things – the daughter of the sun, now a slave to the moon.

But her eyes held no hatred and he could breathe again, past the pain and fogginess of his head as he began to forget who he was. She didn't say a word as she slid down beside him on the cold dark earth, her hand grasping his as they were both racked with the tremors of change.

When it's all over, in her light brown pelt, she ran around the trees, looking so light and carefree. And he realized, maybe he had it all wrong. This was true freedom – rare, beautiful and pure.

He was made for winter. He used to dwell in the cold comfort of winter nights. The hush of snow covering the world white as the Christmas lights of their house twinkled on endlessly.

He was born for winter with his pale skin and eyes like the December sky. His smile often compared to the icicles that hung on tree branches, the frozen water trapped until come springtime.

He was a reluctant predator, laying in wait between the safety of the leaves and bushes, his paws soundless on the snow as he waited for the right time to attack. It took paw prints on the snow as he ran, the puffs of breath he made in the cold air, the startled look of the deer as his canines sunk into the flesh of fur of its neck, red blood gashing from the wound and bright against the snow as it dripped down and staining the white blanket, and with a crack of the neck, the deer collapsed to the ground.

All the while, she watched with café latte brown eyes, the color of Isabel's favorite. The cold biting against her fur as he dragged the deer carcass towards her, leaving a livid bloody trail on the snow.

She didn't move from where she was sitting, her eyes staring emotionlessly into lifeless doe eyes and then to his icy blue ones. She didn't even blink as his tongue flicked out to swipe at the blood on his muzzle.

But when he moved to nuzzle the fur of her neck and bit playfully on her ear, she whined appreciatively and it made his heart swell. They would be fine, he silently promised.

They compromised in spring. She was the picture of perfection as she lay in a bed of puppies, tulips and baby's breath. The very image of all things he wanted, lost, craved and cared for with more abandon than he wanted to admit.

She was the stabilizing force that kept him sane, glued together and stopped him from breaking under such a cursed existence. Still, she considered it a gift, the ability to lose themselves and she didn't blame him not one second for doing this to her.

She's grateful, happy even knowing that he did what he did for his own selfish reasons. Because he needed her more than anything in the world and as he held her to him, her head on his chest, breathing in her intoxicating summer scent, he loved her.

Fin.