Once Upon a Midnight: Wanted

Chapter Three

The following night Aeryn once again waited until everyone was asleep to sneak out of the house. She took the same path she'd taken the night before, minus the panic and running. Though it took a little while to figure out where she was going since the night before she'd been running blindly.

It wasn't long before she heard rustling in the grass behind her, and then an excited squeal.

"Oh my goodness you actually came!"

Aeryn turned to see the Shifter standing on the tips of her toes, her tail wagging excitedly. "Uh, yeah. Here I am."

Raleigh bounced once, her hair, which was in a ponytail, bounced with the action, leaving Aeryn to question whether this girl was actually real, and then skipped over to grab Aeryn's hand. "C'mon!"

"C'mon? C'mon where?" Aeryn asked, even as she was being pulled in a general direction.

Raleigh let go of Aeryn's hand, spinning to look at the girl with a grin. "I wanna explore. I've never been further than like ten feet from the Wall." Without waiting for a response she turned and began running. "C'mon."

Aeryn let out a sigh before running after Raleigh. "Slow down! I can't run as fast as you!"

At that Raleigh turned, still moving backwards. "Nobody can. I'm the fastest in my whole family." It amazed Aeryn to see that Raleigh had not tripped once, despite still moving at an impressive speed and not seeing what it was that was behind her.

Once Aeryn managed to catch up, Raleigh turned back around, running a bit slower to keep pace with the other girl.

"Raleigh." Aeryn said after they'd been running a while. "Where are we going?"

"Hm? Oh...that's a good question."

Aeryn slowed to a stop, waiting for Raleigh to do the same before placing her hands on her hips. She took a deep breath, pushing her hair out of her face. "You don't know? We've been running for this long and you have no idea where we're going?"

"I told you I've never been this far in the forest. I don't know where anything is."

When Raleigh began running again Aeryn groaned and began running after the Shifter.

---

"Raleigh?"

"Hm?"

"Tell me what the City is like."

Raleigh rolled onto her stomach, looking up at Aeryn, who was seated next to her, legs tucked under her body. They were sitting in a small clearing they'd found one night, completely abandoned.

It was gorgeous, hard to believe nobody knew about it, though Aeryn suspected it was because of how deep into the forest it was. Nobody ever ventured too far away from the village. She was glad though, it gave her a place where she could hide for a little bit, and it was very peaceful. It was surrounded by the tree making it easy to miss if you didn't know what to look for. The clearing was very small, only a few feet across, so it made for a cozy place to relax. There wasn't much there, the field was littered with flowers and there was a fallen log on one side that they sometimes sat on when the ground was too wet from rain.

It was there they met every night.

"Why don't we talk about something interesting, like how I beat Raphael in a race yesterday?" Raphael being Raleigh's older brother. Her beating him in races wasn't anything new, she claimed to be the fastest runner in her family. Aeryn didn't doubt it, from what she'd seen of Raleigh. Besides, she had to be fast in order to sneak out of the City every night without being caught.