As soon as Ash got inside her dorm room, she dropped her book bag on the floor, tossed off her overcoat, stepped out of her leather school shoes, and flopped face down on her bed. She didn't even bother to change out of her uniform.
Celia looked on from the doorway. She shrugged and quietly picked up her friend's discarded book bag, setting it on the floor beside Ash's study table. She balled up the crumpled coat and set it on top of Ash's book bag. Then, she put away both of their shoes, nudging aside Ash's strewn pair with her socked feet, and put her own book bag on her own study table, just beside Ash's.
Celia quietly changed into a pink velour Adidas Originals tracksuit and put on a pair of pure white Adidas trainers with gold accents. She knew that some of the students made fun of her for being noveau riche and ragged on her alleged lack of good taste, so she made it a point to double down on her flashy street-style aesthetic at school. She knew what she liked and her friends already liked her just the way she was: she had no intention of changing to impress strangers.
It didn't matter how rich the other families were, Celia wasn't intimidated by them. She understood that wealth and influence were deeply intertwined, but she held no admiration for people who were born into wealth and didn't have to work to keep it. She acknowledged wealth, but respected merit above all.
After she had dressed, she bent down closer to Ash who still had her face half-buried in the pillow.
"You'll hurt your back sleeping like that," she said softly to Ash. "Roll over like a good dog!" she joked.
Ash replied with a deep guttural growl that seemed to reverberate from deep in her throat. Her posture stayed exactly the same, defiant in its stiffness.
"Woah. That's new. I didn't know you could do that! Good girl!" Celia laughed, impressed with her friend's impression of a growling dog. Ash was really great at playing along with her gags, but Celia had never heard her make that sound before.
Celia swung a towel over her shoulder and headed to the door.
"I'll see you later, okay? Bye!" she said. And then she closed the door behind her and locked it.
****
Ash fell into a deep sleep. She dreamed that she was in the woods. The sun was beginning to set and the trees cast long shadows on the undergrowth. She put her nose in the air and sniffed. She could smell the scent of frost-covered leaves in the air, the dirt, and various other musky odors. One particular scent stood out to her and she followed her nose to where it led.
Perhaps she was crawling in the dream, because her view was quite close to the ground. But she didn't feel uncomfortable being on all fours, so she kept crawling forward. She was surprisingly nimble despite being on her hands and knees and she had no trouble moving through the woods. In fact, she felt lighter.
She crawled toward the source of the musky smell. The smell belonged to a young deer. Ash spotted it a few feet away and crouched behind a frost covered bush. The deer was foraging, chewing away at soft weeds. It nibbled away at a berry bush. Ash was very careful not to make a sound as she observed the deer.
Not finding any more berries on one side of the bush, the deer came around to the front, hoping to find more to eat. Ash watched as its rump came into her view, hind legs twitching as it pulled out more berries from the bottom of the bush. In her mind, she saw a vision of Hunter, tearing the tender meat from the chicken bone with his white teeth. She saw his blue eyes staring deep into hers. And then she saw his pink tongue lick his red sauce-stained lips from corner to corner.
Ash didn't even blink. She rose from behind the frost covered bush, and ran at the deer.
****
Celia walked back to the dorm building after an hour of running laps. She'd been gone from the dorm for a little more than a couple of hours, just killing time before dinner. Isabelle had jogged a couple of laps with her before leaving for her fencing class. They had agreed to meet for dinner at the cafeteria when Izzy was done.
The lights were off inside the room. Celia carefully took off her shoes, and set them on the floor, careful not to make any noise. The room was quiet.
[Ash is probably still asleep] Celia thought. She flipped the light switch on.
Ash's blanket hung halfway down her bed. One of her pillows was on the floor.
Celia peered into Ash's bunk.
[Huh?]
Ash wasn't there.
Hunter had noticed the change in the color of Ash's ears as he passed by the girls that morning, just before class. He had been genuinely amused by Celia's accidental insult of her friend's mental capacity (Celia had accidentally called Ash "retarded" earlier that day) but he felt a little guilty that Ash had been embarrassed by it. He had no doubt that Ash was smart. And it wasn't because she was a scholar: the SBA scholarship's only conditions were that she didn't violate any of the Academy's rules and that she pass all of her classes.Despite that minimum standard, Ash had made the effort to perform well in school. She maintained her academic standing in the upper 10 percent of their level every year since she started at Saint Blaise's Academy. While she didn't exactly top the class, she always ranked third or fourth at every term and received minor commendations at the end of every school year.Hunter admired Ash's tenacity. She didn't have the advantage of exclusi
Hunter bounded swiftly into the woods. He had been aching to shift since lunch time: he had felt the surge of animal energy coursing through his veins and the wolf's hunger had been clawing away at his insides. He needed to channel his urges into a hunt, otherwise, he would have gone crazy.When he was far enough away from the fence, he chose a safe spot under a tree. The half moon was cradled in the tree's branches as he looked up: he deemed it a good sign.He let go of his human mind and began to shift. His spine lengthened and his muscles grew to accommodate the increase in his height. From his human frame of nearly 6 feet tall, he grew larger to an impressive 8 feet from his head to his new hind legs. His bones shifted all over his body and his muscles and tissues expanded to cover them, all the while his organs moved, resizing and reorganizing inside him. As the surface of his body increased, his leather costume was swallowed into the expanding mass of his new ski
Hunter took stock of the tattered uniform in front of him. He knew from the scent who it belonged to, but it didn't really give him much to go on.Thinking was hard. It was especially hard when the aroma of a fresh kill was still wafting in the air and the enticing scent of a possible mate was within immediate mating vicinity.Hunter left the pile of tatters and returned to the deer carcass. He ate the leg that Ash had dropped, fed on the entrails, and tore apart the deer's front legs. When he had finished with his meal, it looked like a pack of wolves had descended on the poor deer. He would leave the rest for the scavengers to find.If a forest ranger were to pass by, the carcass would just be another hard piece of evidence for predation in action: another prey animal succumbing to a carnivore, just another day in the wild with Mother Nature.He turned his attention back to Ash, eager to sniff at the new werewolf up close.When he found her, she
"You know, I saw you at lunch today, and---"Hunter cut himself off mid-sentence: he noticed Ash's eyelids were twitching. It looked like she was about to come to.[Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit,] he thought, panic rising in his chest.She was still haphazardly dressed and propped up on his knee. He would have wanted to put a modest distance between their bodies (making room for the Holy Spirit, as the teachers called it) especially considering her state of undress, but that would have meant putting her back on the cold ground.He settled for cradling her shoulders: it seemed like a reassuring thing to do for her (human contact after passing out and all that) but more importantly for him, he could at least keep her from slapping his face the moment she opened her eyes."Heeeey, Boots. Wassup?" he said.[Wassup? Where the hell did that come from? That sounded so lame!] he thought to himself, cringing inwardly.Ash slowly open
[The following is Ash's interpretation of what happened on the night of her first transformation]Tonight, I was in the woods with the Prince of the Forest. The palace was cold and the deer that drew my carriage ran away because his stomach hurt. I think he ate too many blueberries.The Prince arrived after dinner when they had taken all the food away. The fairies were playing a song when he asked me to dance with him, but the music wasn't right so I asked him to wait until it changed.The Prince gave me his tunic to wear because he had chosen me as his betrothed. I was very happy. I had never been chosen before. Then he asked me if I knew my way home so we could tell my parents of our engagement. But I couldn't tell the Prince that my parents were gone. It would have made him very sad, and I did not want to see him sad.I was only sad that we never got to dance.I picked up my garters from where I dropped them: if human things
Ash woke up the next morning chilled to the bone and with a splitting headache. Her night had been heavy with mixed up dreams that made no sense: the dreams just seemed to jump from one to the other, each one more fantastical than the last. She didn't remember leaving the room to eat, but for some reason, she wasn't hungry.She remembered falling into her bed right after school the day before, and between then and now, she did not remember ever having taken her clothes off. So she was definitely surprised at waking up naked under her thick blanket."Aaaah!" Ash shrieked loudly."Well, look who's awake."Celia had been standing over her friend for the last 15 minutes, just waiting for her to open her eyes. She had her arms crossed over her chest and was staring menacingly into the bottom bunk where Ash was sleeping."Are you gonna tell me where you were last night or do I have to torture it out of you? I'm in a very torturing mood this morning, so y
At the pool, Hunter sat on the bench watching the others finish the last relay for the day. He had been benched by the coach for finishing dead last in the second race. Usually he would be neck and neck with Luka or Anwar, the best swimmers on the team, but today he was barely keeping up with the group.When training was over, Luka and Anwar came up to him on the bench. Luka put a wet arm around his buddy's shoulder and nearly knocked him sideways off the slippery plastic bench."Swimming a little heavy today, weren't you?" Anwar asked without looking at Hunter. He was concentrating on stretching his arms over his head."How does a man from the desert swim so fast anyway?" Luka interjected, smiling at Anwar mischievously, dark gray eyes twinkling."How can I not? It's so hot out there that I cannot help but take to the water. I would rather drown than melt." His caramel skin glistened as he rubbed water off his toned arms. Standing next to the two paler b
On the second night of the fever, Ash dreamed about the Forest. Unlike the first time where she was physically in the woods behind the school, this particular visit happened purely in her mind. She never left her bed.In Ash's mind, however, there was no difference: she truly believed that she was in the Forest, and so there she was. For her, the hallucination felt real.[[Ash's Delirium: Night 2]]I have returned to the Forest, but the fairies were not there to greet me. I wanted to see the Prince again, but I couldn't seem to find him. I asked the fireflies where his Highness was, but they flitted about, lighting my path without pointing me in any particular direction.I realized that I made a mistake the last time I was here: I did not ask the Prince his name nor did I tell him mine. Cinderella made this mistake, and her prince had to search the entire kingdom for her. At least she left him a shoe to find her with. I took everything with