AN- As always I got an amazing response from you guys! you just make me want to write more and more! Anyway, here's part two! I hope you enjoy reading it as much as enjoyed writing it!
Rhydian's POV
Maddy's mum drove us over to the Vaughn's, the look of pity she was giving me every time she thought wasn't looking didn't escape my notice, and I figured her and Mr Smith had probably heard everything I'd told Maddy. I huffed and turned to look out the window so that I couldn't see her or her mum.
I didn't even speak to her when the car stopped, just walked up to the door as she arranged a time to get picked up. I paused unsure weather to knock or just let myself in, I did the same thing every time I needed to get back in the house. I had house keys, it just didn't feel right letting myself in yet, I never usually got to the point where it did. Still, if I knocked then Mr or Mrs Vaughn would have to answer, and I didn't fancy a confrontation. Finally I just opened the door in the hope I could make it to my room without having to talk to them.
No such luck. I hadn't even made it to the bottom of the stairs before Mrs Vaughn walked out of the living room. "Rhydian..." She reached out as if to touch me and I pulled away, not meeting her eyes. "Look, what happened this afternoon..."
"I don't want to talk about it."
She shook her head. "We need to... What James said..."
"He had every reason to think I'd do that." I cut her off. "I don't blame him for trying to take care of you." I shrugged. "You're his wife, you were hurt and he jumped to conclusions based on what he'd read about me... I don't expect either of you to trust me or even believe me, but... I just wouldn't have hurt you, not deliberately." She opened her mouth to say more but I waved her off. "I don't want to talk about this anymore, I'm tired." This usually got me out of a lot of things, since she knew I didn't sleep well.
She sighed, but then something behind me caught her eye. "Who's this?" I turned to find Maddy in the doorway.
I shifted awkwardly "Maddy Smith... The girl from school, the one I told you about..." The only reason I'd said anything was because she kept asking me about school, I knew they were told to keep tabs on how I was settling in, any friends I'd made... So I'd told her about Maddy, just to get her off my back.
"Ohh..." She looked momentarily taken aback, probably because I wasn't exactly known for making friends in the first place, it wouldn't surprise me if she thought I'd made her up, since I'd tried that one before too.
"Maddy... This is Mrs Vaughn." I said awkwardly.
She smiled brightly and I frowned at her. "Hi Mrs Vaughn."
Mrs Vaughn smiled back, now completely at ease. "Please, call me Michelle... It's lovely to meet you."
"Maddy and I have a history project to catch up on." I lied, it was unnerving me that Maddy could already feel more comfortable around her than I did.
"...You could set it up on the dining room table if you like." She said hesitantly.
"We're just going to do it in my room." I told her
Again she looked at me strangely. Most people would assume she just didn't want me taking a girl up there, but I knew it was because she knew I didn't like people in my room. "Okay..." She said finally.
I caught Maddy's eye and nodded up the stairs.
When we reached my door I hesitated, letting her see my sketches had seemed like a good idea earlier, but now we were just on the other side of the door I wasn't so sure anymore. "You don't let anyone in here, do you?" Maddy guessed.
I shook my head. "The Vaughn's are only allowed in if I let them, or if it's an emergency, obviously... It's an extension of what goes on in here." I tapped my temple. "You can just let anyone in."
"So why did you invite me up then?" She asked softly.
I ran a frustrated hand through my hair. "Because you probably understand it better than I do." I admitted, justifying it to myself, I opened the door and walked inside.
Maddy walked in beside me, moving to place her bag on my mattress and leaning back on the foot of the bed. I watched on nervously as she looked around, eyes flicking from one picture to another. "I don't know where to start." She laughed. "It's... I don't even have a word."
"It's like a timeline." I told her, pointing to two of the walls, the ones you couldn't really see from the door. "A month on each wall...It starts over there." I said finally.
She moved to the wall I'd pointed to and I sat down at my desk, pulling out my sketchbook so I could finish today's drawing. I could hear her shuffling over every so often as she moved down the wall. I didn't understand how she could find that first month so interesting, that had been the time around my first transformation, my drawings were hectic, jagged lines, that made no sense even to me... I hadn't started drawing wolves until after my first change, up until then it had just been dark, angry figures...
Eventually, they'd morphed into something resembling wolves after that night, but even then I hadn't really known what I'd turned into, I could see paws and fur... a tail, which had really freaked me out, but nothing that had screamed wolf... It wasn't until my second change, the night before I found Maddy, that I figured out for sure what I was... I could still remember seeing my reflection in the river water... Bright yellow eyes...
"You drew me!" I looked up to find Maddy about half way down the second wall and felt my cheeks heat up.
"I draw the most confusing or memorable part of my day, Maddy... I found a girl with the same freaky eyes and wolf senses I had, after spending so long thinking I was the only one, what else would I draw?" The picture was of her, her hair draped over her face and her eyes, her wolf eyes, the way they'd looked when I'd wolfed out in the dark room.
"You have to have some creepy, stalkery picture though right, this looks like a photograph."
I laughed quietly. "No, I drew you from memory..." I smirked.
She trailed her fingers across the edges of the paper as she moved over the rest of the wall. "Mam and Dad... You've got them spot on as well..." She narrowed her eyes at the wolf on the next sketch below it.
"It's the wild Wolfblood I fought." I told her, I hadn't been able to decide what to draw that day so I'd drawn them both. There was something about that wolf that was playing on my mind...
She nodded and looked down the wall. I cringed because... Well, I'd drawn her a lot over the past few weeks. "Do I really confuse you this much?" She asked. I shrugged and looked away, but I was surprised she understood that I wasn't just drawing her because I was weird.
"We're all scared of it." She said suddenly, and I looked up to find her beside my last few sketches, all had been my most recent nightmares. "The fire." She explained. "It's instinctual, we don't like that or confined spaces... Which would explain the nets you keep dreaming about."
"Well, good to know why I have the nightmares." I muttered... "Doesn't exactly help me sleep does it?"
She raised an eyebrow. "You really thought I haven't figured out a solution by now?" She skipped over and threw herself down on my bed backwards, rolling around on the covers, and nuzzling against my pillows.
I frowned at her. "Maddy... What are you doing?"
"Scent marking." She answered and crawled under the covers, she sat down and wrapped the duvet around herself. "Pass me my bag." I sat on the edge of the bed and did as she asked. She opened it, pulling out another pillow and hitting me with it. "Sniff that." She laughed.
I lifted it up to my nose and sniffed, still feeling ridiculous. "It smells like you... Your hair."
"That's because it's mine." She grinned, looking very proud of her plan. "The theory is, if you sleep with that, we can trick your brain into thinking there's another wolf here with you... Protecting you, because that's what you do in a pack, you protect each other." She picked up one of my pillows and hugged it to her. "I'm gonna sleep with this one, that way when my scent wears off we can swap them."
I thought that through, as weird as it sounded, it was actually pretty genius. "Will that work?" I asked.
She shrugged. "Guess we'll find out." She lifted herself up on her knees and flung the pillow at me, but I lifted my arm to block it. She sighed and sat back on her legs "Why won't you let yourself have fun?"
"I don't know how." I mumbled, I hadn't had friends before... Was Maddy a friend?
"Just stop trying not to! Rhydian, we're still cubs." She hit me with the pillow again, bouncing on her knees. "Live a little."
"I'm not a cub." I muttered. She growled at me and pushed the pillow against my face, tackling me to the bed.
"Oh sorry, I forgot." She sniggered. "You're a lone wolf, aren't ya?"
"Maddy! Cut it out." I shoved at the pillow, trying to push her off me. She got an evil glint in her eyes then and her hand reached for my sides, I squirmed and tried to shift away from her. "Maddy, stop it."
"You're ticklish!" She laughed.
"Maddy! Seriously!" I gasped, trying to grab her hands. "Mads!"
"Oh, you're using me nickname now are ya?" She teased and continued to tickle me. "I guess anything's better than smelly girl."
I sniggered. "You brought that on yourself. 'You smell like my parents.'" I scoffed "Very human."
She pause in her tickling and snorted. "Yeah, not my best opening line."
"...You're crazy." I laughed. She grabbed the pillow and shoved it at me, so I snatched up the other and flung it at her... As ridiculous as we were being, I couldn't help but laugh with her as we tussled.
Maddy's POV.
I pounced on Rhydian and shoved the pillow against his chest, and he threw another at me, laughing. I was determined to teach him how to play, how to be a teenager, since he didn't seem to know how... He didn't seem to know how to interact with people, period.
After that first day, he'd gone back to ignoring me, acting like we'd never even met. I had to practically move him over to a table with me, Tom and Shan, like physically carry his dinner, bag and sketchbook over to our lunch table before he'd sit with us. Even then he wouldn't talk to them, he got nervous whenever one of us tried to make conversation, and we were lucky to get more than a few syllables out of him all dinner time.
That's why he'd surprised me with the amount he'd told me today, the things he'd said upset me. What he must have gone through already... Being moved around all the time, people not believing him, living in constant fear of being kicked out... He was right, another pack was unlikely to accept him if he ended up in another wolf's territory... Mam and dad would have driven him away themselves if they'd caught his scent first... I'd had to force them to listen to my explanation as it was.
I wanted him to stay, me parents had even warmed up to him a little, I think it was more pity at this stage though... I did feel sorry for him, but that wasn't why I wanted him to stay, it was nice having another person my age I could be myself around, but I did have to question, what with his track record in foster homes, whether he'd stick around for very long...
I knew there was a teenager in there somewhere, I'd seen it, if you pushed him enough he let his guard down, just like he was now. That first day I'd ran after him in the woods, after a few minutes he'd been smiling, enjoying himself, what had been a pursuit had turned into a game of chase within seconds.
As it was, this pillow fight was having the same effect. He was still a bit tense, but I knew that was just because he didn't like being touched too much, he was going to have to get used to it though, wolves were very affectionate creatures. I don't think being touched scared him exactly, I just got the impression that a lot of the time he didn't understand why I did it, comforting gestures, putting you hand on his arm or near his hand, even just playfully nudging his shoulder got you weird looks before he'd shy away... This was another thing I was determined to put right.
There were a lot of things he still needed to learn. Using his nose was one of them, his senses were just as developed as mine, if not more since he was fully Wolfblood, but he didn't use them the way a wolf should, he hadn't sniffed me or mam and dad when we first met, and that was one of the first wolf behaviours you learnt as a cub, it was important.
Someone cleared their throat from the door and Rhydian sat up like a shot, pushing me away. Michelle leaned against the doorframe, smiling at Rhydian in particular. "Is Maddy staying for dinner?" She laughed.
You could practically see the shutters come down again. "If that's okay with you." He murmured, he obviously still wasn't comfortable here. "I don't know if Maddy's mum has cooked for her though." He looked over at me, giving me the chance to get out of a vegetarian dinner probably, and I rolled her eyes at him.
"I'd love to stay." I reassured, sitting up to rest my back against the head board beside him.
Michelle had turned her head to peer at the sketches by the door, Rhydian caught that and tensed, she just looked curious, but I remembered what Rhydian had said about how his sketches were of what went on in his head, even though I might understand them, others might not. "Mrs Vaughn..." He cautioned and she cleared her throat before making her way down stairs.
I frowned "... Why don't you call her by her first name?" I asked once she was out of earshot. "I mean, you've lived here what? Three, four weeks?"
"I don't call any of them by their first names, ever." He muttered. "I never will."
"Why?" I felt comfortable asking, since he'd told me a lot about his past today, but apparently I was wrong to assume.
"Because if I start calling her by her first name, soon enough she'll want to be called mum." He snapped. "The last foster parent I called mum, she kicked me out anyway... At least this way, she just wants to be called Michelle..." I frowned and looked away, I'd never thought about it like that, I was always so assured in my parent's love, but I could see why Rhydian sometimes worried, I'd learnt this afternoon that his parents were a touchy subject.
Mam and dad really did think he hadn't been abandoned. Rhydian hadn't told me that he'd been found in the woods, but when I told mam and dad that he'd been in foster care since two years old, they remembered the story on the news. 'Child abandoned in the wild' and put two and two together. The bond between a mother and its cub was too strong for Rhydian's mum to have just left him...
He sighed and lay back down on the bed "...I'm sorry." He said quickly. That was another thing he did, he was always quick to lose his temper, but he'd apologise as soon as he realised he'd gotten out of hand.
Rhydian wasn't like other kids, and that wasn't necessarily a bad thing, he just thought differently to anyone I'd met before. If I took the time to figure out how he saw the world, I was sure I could get him to relax around me, I needed to, because he couldn't cope with this on his own...
First things first though, he needed a good nights sleep. He was ratty and irritable like this, but he had an excuse, heaven knows when he last slept through the night... I lay down beside him, shoulder to shoulder. "Things'll get better." I told him quietly. "Less confusing and frightening... Me, me mam and dad... We're here to help in anyway we can, you just need to ask, alright?"
He nodded slightly but didn't say anything, his eyes were running over the sketches on his walls and his fingers were tapping together restlessly, like he wanted to sketch. He was quiet through dinner and for the rest of the evening, nodding off every once and a while as it got closer to night time. By the time mam came to pick me up all I got was a mumbled 'bye, see you tomorrow' at the door, and I just had to hope that I hadn't done more harm than good by getting him to open up.
It worried me even more when he wasn't in registration when the bell rang the next morning. Tom and Shannon asked me where he was and all I could do was shrug. I thought for a second that I'd scared him off, but just as Jefferies started the register he came through the door.
"You're late." Jefferies stated the obvious and Rhydian rolled his eyes.
"My alarm didn't go off this morning." He answered simply. "Sorry, sir."
"Sit." Jefferies told him shortly, without looking up, I figured teachers must get sick of going through the same script every morning.
I expected Rhydian to sit in his usual seat near the back of the classroom, but he surprised me by jumping over my desk and sitting in the chair beside me instead, he was smirking at some private thought and I narrowed my eyes at him. "Don't you find it funny?" He chuckled "We're wolves." He whispered. "Like the original dogs, and he's telling us to 'sit.'" I snorted, and he lowered his head closer to my level. "I'm sorry if that's offensive in Wolfblood terms, but I find it funny."
I laughed quietly, I'd never seen him this talkative, in fact I'd never known him even to initiate a conversation before. "How did you sleep?" I asked.
"Like a dog." He sniggered.
"Oh my.." I shook my head and bit my lip to keep from laughing. "Stop it."
He laughed at me, eyes finally meeting mine. "Jokes aside, I slept great Mads, better than I have in... Well, as long as I can remember. Thank you." I smiled up at him, this explained his good mood. "I don't usually set an alarm, since most of the time I wake up in the middle of the night anyway... This morning, Mr Vaughn was practically banging my door down at eight o'clock, because I'd slept in. That's why I'm late."
I leaned against his shoulder, trying to convey... I don't know, congratulations maybe? He seemed to understand though since he leaned back against me in reply.
"Rhydian Morris." Jefferies called.
Rhydian rolled his eyes. "Yes sir." He turned back to me and continued talking. "Is it really necessary for him to say my name in that ridiculous Welsh accent?"
I scoffed. "Is it even possible to say your name without the accent, your name is Welsh."
He paused, pondering that. "...Yeah..." He admitted finally. "But he still says it weird." I laughed and he laughed with me, mischievous glint in his eyes. "I wonder how he'd react if I actually answered him in Welsh?"
I sniggered. "You don't even know Welsh."
He raised an eyebrow in challenge and grinned at me. "lleuad, coed, cig... Fy nams yw Rhydian, Rwy'n ddwy flwydd oed." He rattled off, and I stared at him wide eyed.
"What's all that mean?"
He laughed. "Moon, trees, meat... They're the few words I remember anyway, didn't make much sense up until now." He smirked and I scoffed. "And then. 'My name is Rhydian and I'm two years old.' That's what I told the social worker when they found me."
I shook my head in amusement. "And you say you're not Welsh."
He shrugged. "I don't know how to say 'Yes Sir.' But I'd learn it just to see the look on his face."
I laughed, a little louder than I'd planned to, since imagining Jefferies face was just too funny.
"Maddy Smith." Mr Jefferie's called.
"Yes sir." I answered between giggles.
He eyed me strangely before looking back down at the register. "Something funny you'd like to share with the rest of the class Madeline?"
"Your full name's Madeline?" Rhydian sniggered.
I elbowed him roughly and tried to keep a straight face. "No, Sir."
"Quieten down then please." Jefferies said evenly, and continue to call names.
"What else would Maddy be short for?" I asked Rhydian once he'd finished and the class chatter covered our conversation. "And at least my name isn't Rhydian!"
He laughed loud enough that Tom and Shannon turned to look at him in confusion. "You're in a good mood this morning." Shannon said slowly.
He shrugged. "It has been known to happen." He smirked
I scoffed. "Who knew you actually had a sense of humour!"
He laughed quietly, turning back to me. "Don't sound so surprised. There's a lot you don't know about me Madeleine."
I narrowed my eyes at him. "Do not call me Madeline, it's what me mam calls us when am in trouble."
His eyebrows furrowed. "You know I don't have a clue what you're saying when you go all Geordie on me."
Tom and Shannon laughed, and I frowned. "You don't understand my accent?" I asked in disbelief.
"Most of the time? No." He admitted. "It usually takes me a few seconds to decipher it. You and your mum."
"We've known each other nearly two weeks and you're just telling me this now?!" He rolled his eyes and I laughed. "If you think that's Geordie, you should hear me Grandad speak." Tom and Shannon laughed with me, they'd met my Grandad so they knew exactly what I meant. "'I'm gannin doon the toon, mind watchin the bairns for us pet?'" I imitated him, much to Rhydian's confusion.
"Is that even English?!"
He was in the same mood for the rest of the day
Hyper.
Don't get me wrong he still wasn't Mr sociable, not with anyone but me and occasionally Tom and Shan, but he was defiantly more playful today, rested and relaxed, he wasn't shying away from contact the way he had been yesterday.
It was just us two during lunch break, Shan had headed down to the library to do homework and Tom was playing football with Jimi and his mates, so we headed up to the darkroom.
He sat himself down in the corner seat and looked up at me expectantly. "Random, weird Wolfblood facts. Go."
I laughed, sitting myself down in the computer chair. "You sure it won't freak you out?"
He shrugged. "It would probably freak me out more if I was to just find them out by myself though, wouldn't it ... I'm fine Mads, honest."
I spun myself around on the desk chair and watched the room spin. "We can hear another wolf's howl from up to six miles away... We're born deaf and blind but with I keen sense of smell... Our wolf eyes are blue, like wolf cubs, sometimes up until the first change, which is probably why no one ever found out what you are, since your eyes are blue anyway. Mine used to turn from brown to blue up until I was around eight, then they started going yellow."
He frowned in confusion. "Strange, but okay."
"That big sciency company, Segolia..." He nodded in recognition. "It's actually run by Wolfbloods... Emm... Wolfblood's mate for life... Oh, super weird one, a female Wolfblood is only actually pregnant for six months."
"Six?!"
I nodded. "Wolves are pregnant for three, humans for nine. So Wolfbloods are in the middle, they also follow the same breeding pattern, they can only conceive a cub between the months of January to March, that's why all our birthdays are around about July, August time."
"July or August?" He laughed
"... Yeah." I said slowly, not understanding what he found funny.
"When social services found me they said that they couldn't even find a record of my birth, no birth certificate or medical records, nothing." He explained. "So they literally just had to give me a date of birth... 21st of April 1998, exactly two years before I was found..." He was laughing now, not a reaction I was expecting considering the topic. "That means I must have lied to them about being two. I was at least three months off."
I rolled my eyes and laughed with him before coming to a realisation. "21st?... That's next week isn't it? Saturday? We should organise a movie night or something, me, you, Tom and Shan..."
"No." He said quickly. "I urhh... I don't celebrate it... Being taken into care." He shrugged. "Seems like a weird thing to celebrate... And it's not really my birthday, is it?"
I rubbed at the back of my neck, not wanting to say much more incase I said something wrong, I didn't want to ruin his good mood. "Come round for dinner then... Not a fake birthday thing, just for dinner... We can have a 'Congratulations! You've survived twelve years of idiot social workers and stupid foster parents.' Party."
It was a risky statement but it paid off, he gave me that rare lopsided smirk. "A 'Congratulations! Only three years of hell left!' Party" He supplied.
"This is gonna be a pretty long fake birthday banner." I scoffed. "I'll make you a card and everything."
"Okay." He laughed and nodded gently. "I'll come to yours." I gave myself a mental high five since it was the first time he'd agreed to come over without the bribery of meat. He reached out and spun the desk chair so fast that I squealed and clung to the back rest.
By the time the home time bell rang he was practically bouncing with pent up energy, he was up and out the class room door only seconds after the teacher dismissed us
Tom and I were supposed to be doing homework at Shan's tonight, getting ready for our exams next week, but there was one more thing I needed to do. I was already packing my stuff, in the hope I'd be able to catch up with Rhydian. "Hey Shan, me mam's just text us, she says she needs me home, I'll call you, go over the homework on the phone, yeah?"
"Oh... Okay." She said hesitantly, glancing up at Tom
I smiled apologetically. "I've got to go." I told them, and shouldered my bag, running out through the corridor and across the football field towards the woods.
I tracked him, sniffing the air and following his scent through the trees until it disappeared, I frowned, at a loss as to where he went, since the scent didn't fade out, it just vanished.
There was a laugh and the rustle of leaves and branches, then all of a sudden his face was less that a foot away from mine. I squealed, not expecting him to appear in the trees, and batted his chest in fright. He held up his hands in defence, but was laughing. "That catches you out every time, don't you think to look above eye level, smelly girl?" He was hanging upside down, his legs hooked over a low branch.
"Why do you keep calling me that?" I muttered. I thought he'd stop now that we were friends, sort of...
He tilted his head to the side in confusion, which looked weird upside down. "I don't mean that you smell bad." He reassured. "I meant that you're always sniffing, and that you smelt weird, but not bad weird." He said quickly and leaned closer, towards my neck. To anyone that wasn't Wolfblood it would have looked bizarrely intimate, but I knew that he was just finally listening to his wolf instincts. "Can I?" He asked.
I laughed. "You don't need to ask, would you ask if you could shake someone's hand?" That was the way you had to think with wolf behaviour, a lot of it just came naturally.
"No." He admitted, pausing only slightly before leaning in to sniff my neck, I tilted my head to the side so he could get a better sample of my scent, I was glad he was finally using his nose, we still needed to work on it, but this was definitely a good start. After a few seconds he pulled back, frowning. "How come I smell more like your parents than you do?"
I smiled, glad he was finally acting like a wolf, even if he was hanging upside down like a bat. "I'm not fully Wolfblood yet, my DNA is more human than wolf, like a 75:25 split. I have the senses, the speed, but the most I can wolf out is the eyes, as you've seen. Your human and wolf DNA is more or less 50% each way."
He swung around on the branch and landed lithely on his feet. "When do you start transforming?"
I shrugged. "It's a hormonal thing, like puberty. Different Wolfblood's start turning at different times, there's no set date, it should be soon though." I told him, determined to answer his questions as best I could.
He frowned. "What do you do during full moons now then? Camp out with you're parents in the den?"
"No." I smirked. "I have the house to myself, I watch late night horror films and eat popcorn."
"You watch horror films, alone, at night?" He asked dubiously.
"Rhydian, we are the things of horror films, and to be honest, we're not that scary are we? Besides if monsters were to come and get me in the middle of the night, I have two guard dogs in the cellar." I shrugged, I didn't get why people were so spooked by horror films anyway.
He scoffed, swinging from the branches overhead as we walked towards home. "...It'll be cool, having another wolf to play with... I've pretty much spent the last two full moons panicking. Fur, black veins, yellow eyes, those I could deal with... Well, sort of. It was the tail that freaked me out." He sniggered. I smiled softly at him, he was even more talkative now, in the woods with just the two of us, so I must have done something right last night. "What?" He questioned my look.
I shrugged. "You just seem happier that's all, more relaxed." I pointed out.
"I feel it." He smiled back. "Talking about all this, and knowing you won't think I'm insane, getting answers from you... Answers I've wanted for heaven knows how long... Everything's starting to just click into place and make sense, and now I've had enough sleep to think straight... It's not as overwhelming anymore... It's more..." He trailed off, looking for the word
"Exciting." I supplied and he nodded in agreement.
"I feel like I can be more myself now, like being myself isn't a bad thing, I'm not a freak." He laughed. "I'm just not human, not entirely, and that's perfectly fine... Does that make sense?"
I nodded, glad he was finally coming to terms with what he was. "We just need to get you acting like a wolf." I laughed. "We're playing hide and seek."
"Wolves play hide and seek?" He smirked.
I ran and jumped on his back, and he shifted nervously for just a few seconds before settling. I covered his eyes carefully with one hand and placed the other beneath his nose. "Close your eyes, count to fifty, and find my scent. Track it." I urged, he hesitated slightly before sniffing at my hand and I gave him a few seconds before climbing back down.
"One... Two... Three... Four..." I waved my hand in front of his face to make sure he wasn't peeking. "Five.." He laughed, his eyes still closed. "Are you gonna go hide or not?"
I stuck my tongue out at him and glanced around briefly before shooting off to my left
I weaved in and out of the trees, counting in my head as I went, but was careful not to cross over my trail, since I didn't want to make it too difficult for him. Once I got to forty seconds I focused on finding a hiding spot...
Rhydian's POV
"Forty eight... Forty nine... Fifty." I paused trying to resist saying my next words, it might have been years since I'd played with other kids, but I remembered this game. I sighed, giving in "Coming! Ready or not!" I shouted, even though she might have been too far away to hear me by now.
I sniffed the air the same way I'd seen Maddy do, and took a few steps forwards, confused when the scent faded a little, and when I took one step back it got stronger. I stood for a few seconds trying to figure the whole thing out, trying to focus my brain on nothing but her scent. That, I realised was becoming quite a reoccurring theme.
This morning, when I'd finally woken myself up, I'd found myself curled up by her pillow with my nose pressed against the fabric. My body was still heavy, and my brain still disorientated from deep sleep, it has taken me a minute to get over the disbelief, I couldn't even remember the last time I'd slept through the night! It had to be a pretty quick minute though since I was supposed to be in school in less than half an hour.
Mrs Vaughn gave me a lift in, thinking it would get me there quicker, I would have gotten there five minutes faster if I ran, but of course she didn't know that. A car ride obviously meant small talk on the drive there, but it didn't make me as nervous as it had all the times before, I wasn't as edgy on a full nights sleep. "You had us worried when we realised you were still in bed, we thought you'd just left for school early." She'd started.
I'd laughed. "Isn't that what a typical teenager is supposed to do? Refuse to get out of bed?"
She'd narrowed her eyes at me and reached out to press a hand to my forehead, checking my temperature, and looking even more confused when I didn't pull away. "Are you sure you're feeling alright?"
I'd smirked. "Am I really that bad? To the point where you think any good mood is the result of a fever?"
We'd both laughed at the ridiculousness of it and she pulled her hand away to place it back on the steering wheel. "...Maddy's a nice girl." She'd said a few moments later.
"Yeah, she's great." She'd completely wiped out my nightmares, that's how great she was.
"Talking to her's helped you sleep hasn't it?" I'd nodded, her scent had been a big factor, but still, just getting the chance to really talk to her, get to know her a little, had put me more at ease.
The Wolfblood stuff didn't seem as overwhelming, since I knew she'd answer any question I gave her as best she could... "She is nice to talk to." I'd admitted
"...Pretty too." I'd nodded absently. She was kinda nice to look at, and to sketch. Long brown hair and brown eyes, or yellow eyes, both were good. Wait! What?
"She's just my friend." I muttered, feeling my cheeks heat up and Mrs Vaughn had laughed at my embarrassment.
I shook my head as I thought back to that, I didn't fancy her, at least I don't think I did, I liked her as a friend, and you were allowed to think your friends were pretty, right?... I rolled my eyes at myself and focused on tracking her down. I was only about 100 metres from where the scent trail had started, swiftly realising that I was terrible at this whole scent tracking thing.
It took me nearly an hour to track the entire thing, and the longer I took the harder it got since her scent was fading. I had no choice to follow it though since I didn't even know which part of the woods I was in... I was lost.
When I finally reached something recognisable, I rolled my eyes and walked in. "You made me track you to your house?"
She was curled up on the sofa, head tilted back over the chair arm to look at me. "No, I hid for about half an hour then I got hungry."
"Maddy!..." I was about to complain that she'd left me stranded in an unfamiliar woods, and could of at least called me, but a scent caught my attention "Is that bacon?"
"Now you use your nose." She scoffed, and nodded "I made you a bacon sarnie, ready for your valiant return."
I frowned in confusion. "Sarnie?"
"Sandwich" She clarified, laughing. "After we work on your nose we'll move on to Geordie dialect."
"Ha. Ha." I looked around, trying to be subtle about it. "Where is me 'sarnie?'" I tried to imitate her, and she burst out laughing.
"That was the worst Geordie accent I've ever heard." She gasped and I shook my head at her, waiting for her to calm down. "I've hidden it." She said finally. "You have to sniff it out."
"Mads.." I whined, but she ignored my protest, eyes glinting with amusement.
"Go fetch, wolf boy." I tried to glare at her but failed, unable to keep the smirk off my face.
...Yeah, I guess Maddy was a pretty cool friend after all.
AN- And there we have it! Rhydian ended up a bit more hyper than in the show, but I guess so would anyone if you were suddenly more rested than you had been in years, obviously he calms down again, but that sense of humour definitely shows in 'Cry Wolf' and I was eager to show that side of him here. I can't see there being another part to this two-shot so let me know what you think!
Other than that i'll see you all when I get my next idea!
Please Review!
-EndlessMoonrise X