Winter Wonderland

Falling

Naiche

Naiche would like to blame the books. He spent most of his time reading the books he borrowed from Citali. Every couple days he would go to her house and share either a coffee or a meal and a conversation over what he had read and return to his cabin to read the new books he had borrowed from her vast selection. After a sedentary couple of days, he had started forcing himself, at night when he knew Citali was sleeping, to practice with his swords. He would dance with the wind, blades flashing in the night as he kicked up snow and remembered the long ago lessons from the friend who had gifted him the two blades.

Soaked with sweat, he would wash down, now from a pot of water he warmed on the fire as the lake was frozen over. And then he would read until it was time to train once more or go visit Citali. But in the week that he had been doing that, he could not make himself go hunt. He was pushing his luck, he could feel the hunger clawing at him and had stayed away an extra day as he fought for the self control to turn back into the woods.

But he could not do it.

The battle got so fierce that the sheer thought of drinking deer blood filled him with a nausea that was nearly as strong as the rage that came with it. Trying to distract himself, Naiche put his two swords on his back and tried to force himself into the woods. He fully intended to turn toward the wilderness in hopes that his hunger would take control when he stumbled across a deer, though part of him was ever fearful of stumbling across a hapless human when he was at his weakest.

So much interaction with and around humans had begun to wear at his resolve against drinking human blood, though he knew that the moment he caved he would signal his presence to the world. There had been people hunting him even though he had long ago let them think he was dead, for so long that he had no idea who it was who might still be out there looking.

With a frustrated sigh, he turned his mind to his surroundings, noting how deep the snow had become, even within the forest itself. Though the world was moving closer and closer into the months of winter.

It had snowed again recently, though he had not yet heard the snow machine of Citali's.

And as if the mere thought of her made him seek her out, Naiche realized he was walking into view of her cabin. He could smell woodsmoke and hear her doing something outside. A quick glance around the yard gave no hint as to wear she was, leaving him to follow the noise through the woods until he reached the part of her yard where her tractor was stored.

Before he found her, a scent caught his attention and he glanced around, frowning at the familiarity of it. He could not recognize the smell, which was faded and several hours old, from the night before. It had an alien-yet almost human smell that he knew he had smelled before. A glance around through the snow showed no tracks other than a couple squirrels, but something had been there in the woods around Citali's house.

He tracked the scent, casually listening to the sound of her doing something somewhere near the tractor. Naiche frowned when he realized whatever it was had been circling the cabin that night, though it had steered clear of his property.

A memory itched in the back of his mind, but he could not recall what it was that he was sensing.

Something supernatural that made his own skin crawl.

The trail disappeared into the woods across the road, fading with the change of the winds, and when Naiche turned around to return to Citali's place, he realized the scent was completely gone. How many times had this happened, with him sitting inside or coming over later in the day? With no tracks in the snow, he had no way of telling how long this had been happening.