A/N: Yes, my dear readers, I have changed the title. Please enjoy the very beginning of this mysterious bond of love…one that is unbreakable and everlasting.

"Out of the nothingness of sleep,
The slow dreams of Eternity,
There was a thunder on the deep:
I came, because you called to me."

- Rupert Brooke

…

Prologue

Christine

It was deep within the moors of France, those ancient fields of golden touch where she felt the budding of a child's first love. It was a strange and sweet song mingled with gentle wind, the cries of birds that swarmed above her, and the mossy earth that never faltered beneath her.

Naught but a child, she was born of the earth, of the grasses that stretched as far and wide as her eyes could reach. Each morning the forest would call to her in her sleep, bending its power to reach her where she lay on her straw filled mattress.

Christine always awoke as the magenta of the sun fell through the wooden boards on her window; she could feel the whispering of the grass within the thrums of her heartbeat.

Her bedroom was miserably small, with only enough space for her mattress and a crudely constructed nightstand that held a single wax candle. Yet she wanted for nothing – she was always well fed by her loving mother and father, and the forest was her very own kingdom…

And she was its wild spirited queen.

It was there, within her forest that she began to understand what it felt like to be fully alive; to have every fiber of one's being sing out to whomever might be listening; Angels that might have circled, or even God, who might have smiled.

And in the air, there was always music that surrounded her. Always, there had been music; a symphony that nature created, a melody that bled into the deep of her soul as she ran barefoot through the woods, dancing between rocks and weeds…and the spirit of the earth lived within her, whispering her name on the dawning of each new day.

Christine…Christine!

Every morning, whether it be winter or autumn, summer or spring, this dauntless little girl chased down the wind across open fields, seeking the perfect threshold to enter her kingdom of forest. She handpicked little bits of rosemary and ruby poppies, tying each stem to the other with a calculating simplicity. One crown was for herself, to perch upon long chestnut curls that were as unruly as a storm cloud – and the other crown was for her mother, Valerie. Christine believed her mother to be part angel, part human; for her beauty was tender like a rose in bloom, and her hair fell softly over slender shoulders in waves that never seemed to end. But the best part of her mother's presence was her serene and everlasting kindness, and the gentle way she would listen to Christine; whether it was Christine's made-up stories, or tending to a bruise she had sprouted from climbing prickly tree trunks. Her mother was always there in front of their small wooden home, waiting patiently for her wayward daughter to return.

Valerie

As her young daughter celebrated her twelfth year, Valerie began to worry about Christine's obsessive enamor with the fields and forest of the moors. Oftentimes, she fretted that her daughter would grow up too wild – too unbridled to ever be a part of the structured society that lay beyond the hills of rural France. In the evenings she listened to her beloved, Gustave, telling Christine stories of the world; some from his adventures as a hunter, but most were of make-believe; of mythical creatures, cursed princes, and castles that had towers so high, they scraped the gates of Heaven.

But by far the most powerful story – and the one that seemed to allure young Christine the most, was Gustave's tale of the she-wolf; a massive silver beast he had hunted that past winter.

She knew her daughter adored Gustave – and Christine kept the thick fur pelt of the wolf upon her mattress, hoarding it like a king would snare gold. She would lay upon the gray of the pelt during summer, when the air of the homely shack was stagnant with humidity – for the pelt served as a mossy cushion for her small and gangly frame. And when the winter rolled in, killing the leaves upon every tree; leaving them naked and weeping with branches scratching like foul rats against the white sky…Valerie watched keenly from the doorway as Christine snuggled inside the great pelt, smiling as she sailed into sleep.

Valerie always strayed in the doorway a moment longer, admiring her daughter as she slept soundly. "My dear, she has your adventurous spirit," she would whisper to Gustave, who held her in a warm embrace from behind.

"Yes, my love," he always replied, inhaling deeply, "it seems as though she does."

Gustave

He knew the power and majesty of the story; it was transcendent and mystical, only when it came from the lips of the one who had slit her throat in the night. He, the hunter, who had pulled her pelt from her bones, deep within the dark and cold heart of the woods.

Christine begged him to tell it every now and again, and each time he would tell it exactly the same – but he was beginning to notice that although the words were the same, his feelings were not…they could not remain the same.

For he could never deny his sweet daughter anything that she asked for, but he was starting to loath the memorized words that he recited to her – he was beginning to feel a chaotic darkness awaken in him – and each time the story bled from his lips, the feeling grew stronger.

Gustave did not realize that perhaps there had been a moment of choice within the freezing weeds where he had knelt; a moment that was etched into his mind that he could not erase. For he could have freed the wolf, he could have let her go.

Back in that moment, he could not have comprehended that one tiny sliver of life, one small crack in a mirror could turn into shards…

And truthfully, he wished he had known that one choice could echo into eternity.

But as a hunter, he had not believed in such things. Fate was for each and every man to take for himself, and therefore he swelled with pride as he snagged the pelt from her lifeless form. Gustave felt as if he, the hunter, now reigned over the forest with gruesome authority; that he was its commander, its master; its darkest and most obscene enemy.

But he, and only he, could roll the dice of his own fate, he who roamed the mossy depths of the earth. He could serve the brilliant master of destruction, he could control the lives around him with the moon colored blade of his knife. Perhaps his desperation to hold onto his imagined control was the reason that God would punish him…or was it his sheer arrogance that boasted of a mortal's finite power?

Night after night, Gustave sat beside his young daughter who was curled up in the smoke colored fur, waiting with wide eyes for him to re-tell the tale of his hunt – to speak of the unspeakable, the taboo of killing, of stealing a life away. And oh, what terrible scars it had left upon him…scars he was not quite ready to face; and therefore they festered and burned, with sutures that were born of hidden guilt and shame.

"Hush, Christine," Valerie would laugh softly from the doorway. "Settle down and let your father tell it!" Christine would snap her mouth shut with large blue eyes, pretending to lock her lips with an invisible key.

"The night was dark," Gustave began in a low voice, "And the sky lay void of stars. The moon had tucked herself away, she had hidden herself from me…yet I felt an unmistakable force pushing me into the depths of the forest. Something was calling to me, and I, against the harsh sting of the bitter wind, I…could I do nothing else but answer that voice?

"I plunged into the thick of the night, swallowed up by the darkness as if the forest were a great mouth, consuming me and all of my carefully crafted weaponry. And I was terrified, at first, Christine…ever so horrified. How might I ever find my way home? And even worse…how could I hunt the she-wolf in complete and utter blackness – cold and damp as I was, as if plunged into the center of the earth?

"And then, I saw her. It was she who sought me out, Christine…for her eyes glinted in the dark like the fires of Hell! And I was consumed, for a moment, by her awesome beauty…for her coat seemed to glow in the deep pitch of night like a star fallen down from heaven. And in that moment, I smelled smoke in the frigid air, as if her eyes truly were made of fire…and I wanted that fire. I wanted it for myself, to give to you, my sweet daughter…but nothing in this life comes for free.

"For a moment, and I shan't forget this moment for as long as I live…we were equals; one part dark, the other part light. Each of us held our balance within the world, and it seemed that if one of us were to die in that moment, the world would cease to exist…yet while she lived, I could not live…and while I lived, she would be hunted the rest of her days.

"But she I believe she understood, dear daughter…she knew of this balance. I could sense it, I could see it in her eyes."

"But Papa, why couldn't you let her go free? Then the balance would be the same…wouldn't it?" Christine wondered aloud, interrupting the glazed look in his eyes, startling him. He looked away from her, willing himself to push the sadness and humiliation away. He only did what he thought was right, hadn't he?

"The balance could not continue, because I, as the hunter, willed it not to be so. I chose to disrupt the balance. And with every choice we make in life, we sacrifice something else. I just wish I knew what it was that her spirit might take from me."

Christine's eyes had slowly slid shut, and she lay cradled within the pelt, dozing off in the small flicker of candlelight.

But if her eyes would have stayed open, she might have seen her Gustave's eyes change again – for he had left the room of his mind and drifted back to that vivid memory, of touching the bloodstained pelt with a frozen hand. It was finished.

She was gone…

"There is more," he whispered to his sleeping daughter, biting at his scabbed up lower lip. "You see, dear daughter, when I struck her down, she looked into my eyes one last time, and she stared straight into my soul. Suddenly I could see thousands of faces, of lives flashing before my very eyes – and around them lay a darkness, so deep and cold that I found I could look no longer.

"And then…her eyes dulled and were still. And I had done it, I had destroyed her, destroyed them, whomever they were…I had stolen her secrets away from this world by taking her life."

He fell silent as the words died from his lips. Gustave's eyes fell upon the shadows that the small candle cast upon the wall; demented forms and figures began to twist into monstrous beings, things that were between the in-between…yet when he shook his head and blinked, the shapes were gone, and he was alone again, sitting beside his daughter's mattress. His fingers that gripped the candlestick trembled, and he blew out the candle quietly, shifting the room into complete darkness.

He slowly made his way through the shadows of the house, stopping in the doorway of his bedroom to lean against its frame. He sighed deeply, distressed and confused. Perhaps Christine's words rang true; a child's innocent words held no bias. Perhaps he could have let the she-wolf live – and the balance could have remained intact.

But he had chosen, that emotionless winter night. His pride had surged, and his mortal arrogance had taken hold of his hands. He could not let her live, somehow…

But why?

Had he ended her life out of his own pride? Had he killed this ancient mistress of the woods for nothing but selfish and manmade spite?

For he could never seem to rid himself of her spirit that clung to the darkness, living in the shadows behind the closed lids of his eyes.

Valerie

They had spent twelve precious years living in the moors, away from the harsh and cruel regiments of modern Parisian society. Valerie never wished to return to Paris, but somehow she knew her young daughter would someday become a woman, and that woman would want to see the world. Christine would someday no longer be content with the trees as her friends…she would want friends her own age, and perhaps might even ache to love another. If only she could shield her sacred Christine from the debauchery of the world – if she could sacrifice herself to keep her daughter safe, she would. But Valerie knew nothing was for certain within life. And nothing ever came for free.

But as the days stretched on, a strange occurrence began to repeat itself in the household, turning around in circles and twisting lies into the truth. Valerie could sense that something was changing within her husband – and if she were to match a moment to the feeling, she might say he had been different ever since he came home covered in snow the year before; with a bloodied wolf pelt slung over his shoulder. She did not believe her husband to ever feel sorry for an animal he had killed, for he had been hunting for most of his life. Yet, something was different about him…something hidden within the deep of his eyes.

Gustave seemed at first, simply troubled…he would stare out the window late at night, after Christine had been tucked into bed. Cleaning dishes at the sink, Valerie would watch him intently, and call out his name. He would flinch, breaking out of his spell quite abruptly, and plaster a smile upon his face. "Sorry, my dear, just daydreaming," he would say. And she believed him, at first. She believed the smiles and the shaking of his head. She believed that nothing had changed.

Until everything began to change.

Gustave

He continued hunting in the forest, but as each day passed, he became increasingly paranoid and fearful…He could not stop looking over his shoulder for a shadow that lurked behind him; and he could not sleep, for even within sleep, those yellow eyes were alive!

He had killed her…She was dead! And he held the proof, the evidence of her mortality…but the reasoning behind that proof seemed to materialize every time he looked at it. One night he fought the urge to rid the house of the cursed thing – but Christine had fallen so deeply in love with it, he could not bear to rip it from her precious grasp. He feared that he might be controlled by these nightmares, those seething yellow eyes forever…and he also feared the divine punishment, for the retribution that God, or Satan, or whomever might seek…for a sin that was too great to forgive.

And his nightmares worsened, choking the breath from his lungs. And finally, one night, under a thinly drawn full moon, one of his nightmares came to life. Had God and Satan rolled the dice upon this? Had they talked between themselves, gambling his fate with a jolting game of luck?

Or was this fate written upon his ribcage, a spear plunged into his side the moment he had shoved his knife through the thick of her neck…?

For Valerie, his beloved, collapsed onto the ground. She had been holding a clay jar of milk, walking over to the crude wooden table to set it for supper. The night had been silent, but its empty depths were soon filled with the crashing of a body, and the shatter of a thousand shards – were they pieces of glass, the mirror of his fragmented mind…or were they pieces of his heart? He did not know – he could not tell.

Gustave rushed quickly to her side, praying that she perhaps had slipped; but her skin was hot to the touch; a scorched prong of metal held in the palm of his hand.

"No," he whispered, unaware of his daughter's worried presence behind him. "Don't do this. She doesn't deserve to suffer…it was my sin! Mine," he began to sob miserably, pulling at his hair, detesting himself…

For his nightmare now walked and breathed…and from that fateful day on, Valerie began to wilt, a shivering mauve iris in the wake of winter's breath.

Christine

Her mother's sickness stretched past autumn and into the ruthless fangs of the first snowfall.

The mystique that had swam in the depths of her eyes had become dulled and glassy; the look of someone who could not see. Her body was skeletal and parched, with skin so paper thin that ruby veins could be seen running through her wrists, tiny rivers that flourished, trying to keep life in a woman that reeked of death.

Christine had stopped going into the forest, and instead spent every moment at her mother's bedside. She read stories aloud from the great leather book of tales, and when she ran out of stories, she made them up purely from her imagination. Christine also retold her mothers' stories of Paris – oh, how the dancers were like angels! How they would float and spring upwards, like blooms that worshipped the sun!

But with each passing day, her mother grew weaker and frailer. She was like a planted flower, once blessed with the growth of sweet light and wind, with a terrible master that moved it into a cellar. And within that cellar, nothing could grow…in darkness and all alone, the only thing a flower could do was die.

Christine noticed her father was mostly absent from her mother's room, while she stayed put. He would only go in when Christine would put herself to bed, snuggling into the wolf pelt for comfort. And when she would wake in the morning, she would find her father asleep on the floor, covered in dust, right beside her mother's bed.

One particular quiet winter's evening, Valerie smiled feebly at her daughter, resting a bony hand upon Christine's arm.

"Sweet child of the forest," her mother whispered, and her eyes began to well with tears. "Do not ever stop dreaming. Do not let the world take that from you. Always belong to nature, always remember the rush of the wind…and always remember my love for you."

Christine shook her head over and over, tears threatening to spill down her cheeks. "Maman, you will be all right…Papa has called upon the doctor, and he is going to come and fix everything…don't worry, it will be all right…you'll see! I promise."

But Valerie squeezed her arm gently, using all the strength she could muster. "Understand me, my darling Christine. I will die soon – sooner than I want to believe. I want to…to think that God has a purpose in all of this, in this complex of life. The only…thing…I can think of is you. And now, child…because I have seen you, I have loved you…I am fully complete."

Christine laid her head upon her mothers' bosom, crying into the sweat soaked nightgown that stuck to her mother's papery white flesh.

"I don't want you to leave," she wailed. "I don't want you to leave me all alone."

Her mother held a cloth to her mouth as she coughed, and when the fabric fell away from her fingers it was smothered in blood; the ugliest red rose that Christine had ever seen.

"Christine," her mother rasped, blinking slowly as she surveyed her daughter's tearstained face. "I shan't leave you alone. You will have a guardian angel to protect you. He is strong, and he is special, just like you…Do not be afraid…you must be brave, you…you must be…be strong. Promise me.

For I can see him, even now…"

All Christine found she could do was nod, tears slipping down her face like a soft summer rain.

"I promise, Maman. I promise."

The doctor never made it out to the moors, because Christine's mother passed soon after, in the midst of that very winter. Christine woke suddenly in the dead of the night covered in cold sweat, and she threw off the gray pelt hastily, crashing into the room where her mother had lain. But she stopped blindly in the doorway, for the woman in the bed was not her mother, but a blind, cold skeleton of a woman…a thin pile of flesh that was no longer breathing, whose fingers could no longer braid unruly curls, whose voice would never again sing…whose tender eyes would never love again.

For twelve years Christine possessed paradise within the palms of her small hands. Twelve years of the moors and the forest, twelve years of songs and braids and a mother's ripened love. But now, everything that once held splendor within her life had vanished. For her mother was gone, forever. And there was no guardian angel. There was only silence at night, when she could hear her father weeping faintly in the kitchen. And even though her feet begged her to run; to tear into the forest, to climb the tallest tree, to sing the songs that her mother had given…she could not, anymore.

And as winter melted into spring, her father became reclusive, impulsive, and soundless. He did not hunt for pelts anymore, but instead began to rid the house of his various animal pelts, selling them to passing merchants in exchange for loaves of bread and bottles of what he called, "tonic." He would now spend hours alone, drinking his tonic, with eyes that grew dull as he stared into the hearth. The little wooden house lost its sacred feeling…and Christine was frightened; for her father, her courageous and loving father began to fade into someone she did not recognize, anymore.

One day, during the first week of spring, she attempted to come sit with him near the hearth. The house was barren of pelts; it was void of music and happiness. She approached him carefully, and as she sat down beside him, he barely acknowledged her presence. In his hands he clutched a bottle of his precious tonic, and its obscene smell reached Christine's nose, making her shiver with nausea.

"Papa," she spoke quietly, breaking the silence; a shattering of a clay jar from her mother's dying hands. "Papa, will you read me a story? Or maybe just…tell one instead? Like…the one of the she-wolf?" Her eyes were hopeful as she waited for his response, placing a small hand on his shoulder. It was bony and cold to the touch.

At the mention of "she-wolf", her father spun around and grabbed her arms tightly. His eyes were stretched open freakishly, with dulled hazel color and bloodshot streams. "Forget you've ever heard of that name," he snapped at her, clenching his grip upon her arms. She winced at the pain, and was frightened at this being, this entity in front of her that was no longer her father.

"Forget all of it." He spoke it as a threat, releasing her arms as he turned away. And he drank deeply from his bottle, swallowing the seething liquid as his shoulders slumped; defeated. He was the shadow of her father – or perhaps, a ghost who had come to claim her father. But her father would never do that. He would never snap at her, or handle her in such a vicious and animalistic way. From the look in his eyes, she could have sworn she saw hatred.

Christine's insides crumbled as she turned away from him, glancing towards the door. And the forest seemed to silently scream now, calling her forth…a different willing mother to tend to her broken heart. Slowly, she inched to the door, and when she slipped out the crack and was hit with the faded plumes of spring, she was lost in her own abandon; the forest was her hiding place, now…her place to feel safe, to feel wanted, to feel free…and even, to feel loved.

And her legs began to move, sluggishly at first, but then suddenly she was running, flying! And she did not have wings, and she could not keep death at bay…but she ran, nonetheless. The moors welcomed her footsteps, and the forest seemed to scream out her name, over and over. And she ran with her heart pounding, thundering…

She ran, without once looking back.

…

A/N: Feedback, comments, emotions, and feelings of any kind are always highly appreciated. Thank you for reading!