Finally Free- A Novel

Chapter Seven

I stared at Karen, with a look of shock and disbelief. "School?" I made out, closing my jaw long enough to talk. She nodded, and sighed. "You guys need some proper education. You can't get that from reading novels and watching tv." She pointed out. She must have noticed I was reading some of her old crime novels. "But....what about our wings?" Chai called out, and Karen looked at her. "Well, you've hidden them from me this long. It won't be any trouble at school. I'm sending you to a public school, after all. No uniforms." Gritting my teeth, I got up ridigly from the table. The wooden chair moved backward across the tile floor, making an ungodly screech as it went. My head bowed, I walked to the open, glass back doors.

Running out into the grass, I leapt into the air, and snapped out my wings. With a strong downstroke , I was up in the air, and flying toward my favorite oak tree, where I would sit and think, or watch the sun fall behind the mountains. I streaked toward it, wind tugging at my hair, making it whip behind me in tangly brown tendrils. Making it to the tree, I slowed, and tapped my feet down on the branch, closing my wings and sitting. My feet hung over the edge, the brown, unzipped military boots dangling in free space. Leaves rustled above me, and a few orange leaves fluttered to the ground around me. Autumn was coming, and it would be cold. The leaves would fall from the trees. And school would start. School. My hand clenched on the treebark at the word. I hated it. She was trying to control us, just as they had done at the lab. I sighed, sitting there in my own personal silence to think. The leaves rustled, and a few orange and red leaves fell again, and I understood. We had to go. Otherwise, the pack wouldn't have people skills, they wouldn't learn that not everyone is bad. And they would learn as well. She was only trying to help.

Before I could get up to fly back, I heard the farmiliar rustle of wings in the wind, and looked up. A dark figure darted past me, not seeing me. The tree wasn't known by my pack, and I intended to keep it that way. Whenever I would sit in the branches, I would come back and tell them I was out flying, looking for another good place to hike, or that I was by the waterfall. That's probably where the dark figure of Falon was headed. I shook my head, and leapt out in front of me, above a grassy clearing. Snapping out my wings again, I took two strong downstroaks, and shot into the sky.

I darted east, the rush of water sounding not far off. I landed on the huge gray rock that hung over the waterfall, the one we always jumped off of. I could see Falon walking on the pebbly shore below, and decided to scare him. Folding my wings and tucking them into the pockets in my back, I shifted into wolf form. Quietly, I slunk across the gray rock, leaping silently across the water, to the one not far off from the upper shore. Just making it, I started down the steep decline of rocks that led down the side of the waterfall, and was blocked from the shore by several young aspens and birches.

Making it to the bottom, I looked down. This was the hard part. My paws glided across the pebbles, careful not to knock them against one another. When I made it to the last clump of reeds, I took off, running at him full speed. Quickly, I leaped at him, bringing him down onto the pebbles, which clattered out of the way.

I laughed, and rolled off, before he could swat at my ears. Shaking my fur out, I didnt notice he had shifted as well, and was running at me. I felt the impact before I could dodge out of the way. He knocked into my shoulder, sending me flying into the water. "Ah!" I yelped, landing with a splash in the icy water. I paddled to the rock on the bank, and he trotted over, offering a paw over the side to help me out.I smirked, and took it, bracing my back paws on the part of rock underwater, and pulling him over my head, and into the water as well.

I heard the satisfying splash, and leapt out, onto the pebbles, shaking the water from my brown coat. His black head emerged from the clear water, with a gasp. Blue eyes glared at me, watching me fall gracelessly into a pile of fuzzy, wet laughter. He ended up laughing as well, which lightened the mood. "Thanks." I said, and he nodded, shaking out his black fur, purposely next to me. "Really?!" I growled, and he laughed. "Race you." With that, we took off into the forest, paws flying, back toward the house.