When Lara got home, it was almost black outside, and the temperature had dropped significantly. Her parents rushed over to her from the kitchen table, and started hugging her. Taylor was right behind them.
"Next time you go off like that, tell us first. We thought something had-had….." Her mother said, choking back tears. Lara looked apologetically at them and hugged them back, gave them a kiss on the cheek and signed that she was going to bed. Taylor looked sullenly at her as Lara went to the bathroom and brushed her teeth. When she had changed and sat in the dark on her bed, Taylor came in and sat down beside her.
"I've heard a lot about your friend." She teased.
Lara's eyes flickered annoyance, so Taylor smiled, and lay down beside Lara.
"I'd stay away from him if I were you. He's supposed to be a nut job."
"I haven't gotten near him, and I don't even know him." Lara signed angrily.
"To some extent you know him, maybe more than you think you do, seeing as you've clicked with him. I've seen him watching you whenever you walk by, or when you play violin at night. And I've also seen you watch him. I'd seriously stay away from him, though, he does seem pretty creepy. He can only mean trouble." Taylor was grinning ear to ear with amusement as she got under her sister's skin. Lara looked at her in annoyance and rolled over, her back facing Taylor.
"Who were you with today?" Lara signed. Taylor laughed.
"A few people. They seemed nice enough, but I wasn't really interested in them."
Lara rolled around quickly and rolled her eyes in an exaggerated manner. Taylor smiled.
"OK, maybe I enjoyed the company of at least ONE of them."
"You should stay away from him, I've heard a lot of weird things about him, he seems pretty creepy." Lara signed jokingly. Taylor laughed.
"Oh, shut up." She squealed, then hit Lara with a pillow. Lara felt relieved that Taylor was so giggly. Her sister had been slightly sullen for the past few weeks at the prospect of leaving the town she had been growing up in for a town she knew nothing about.
The next day, Lara went out to the woods again, this time to the lighter part, where the energy was weaker, and the animals were more abundant. She was walking along a stream when she heard a gurgle. It was not the kind of gurgle from a stream, it was the kind of gurgle that came from a drowning animal. Lara quickened her pace towards the sound, until she found a writhing potato sack tied to the bottom of the stream. Reaching down, she pulled it out of the water, and then put it on land. She got a sharp stone and began to hack away at the rope until it was thin enough for her to pull it apart by hand. She yanked on it and hung it at a forty degree angle, so the creatures could come out without falling too quickly. Three puppies no larger than her hand came tumbling out on top of her. Only one of them was moving. The other two had their eyes wide open, and were still. Lara desperately did a CPR maneuver she had learned to use on humans, but five minutes later, they were still. Lara burned their bodies and asked for them to be taken back, and then she scooped up the other one, which was shivering and whimpering from the cold and shock. When taking a moment to look at it, Lara noticed that it was the smallest of the three, and had a longer, slinkier tail. She (As it turned out to be) was a snowy white colour, and what little hair it had was very thin. Lara smiled as she cradled it in her arms.
Lara came walking home ten minutes before dinner with a small, thin puppy in her arms, and a look of determination on her face. Marching straight to her room, she grabbed a blanket and started to dry off the squiggling white mass. Picking it up, she went to the kitchen and decided to show her find to her parents. Knowing that no way she tried to present her to them, it would all have the same response, so she walked up to her mother, who was doing the dishes, and shoved the puppy about half a foot under her nose. Her mother jumped away from it and gave Lara a dark scowl.
"Don't shove that in my face young lady. Who on earth gave it to you?"
Lara shrugged and groped around for a scrap of paper and pencil.
I found it. She scribbled. It was drowning.
"Mmm. Well, we'll see what your father says to this when he gets home. No final decisions just yet."
Lara was keeping the dog if she had to hide it under her bed for a month and feed it scraps. If she was a dog, she'd prefer that to death in a stream. Lara curtly nodded her head and took one of the cabbages her mother was washing and began to scrub it off with only a hint of impatience. Lara's mother just frowned.