Run Away With Me

Chapter 43: Deer Seer.

I appreciate Monra's concern even after he has passed, but no matter the reason, I am not going to the Cenderbee's or my own childhood home. Maybe someday, but that day is not today, or tomorrow, or in the near future.

I fold the letter neatly and slide it into the plastic map, clipping the end so it closes.

The streets are busy this time of day, people scurrying to and fro as they go on about their day. Jamaica muttered some time ago how impossible it is to him that these people are acting as if the cold doesn't exist.

I wanted to tell him that it gets worst as the months June, July and August approach, but I didn't want to ruin his dreams. Yet Nao did that to him when he decided to walk to the Seer's house, since it would cost too much to take all of us by bus, even when we didn't have to pay for Yaya.

It's only a few kilometers, he said.

It's not even that cold, he said.

We've been walking for two hours already and that's beginning to become a problem, so I call bullshit to the first thing he claimed. The second one is kinda true, it's not even that cold, to me anyway, but for the remaining three...

Nao stole his scarf back from Jamaica, Jamaica then stole mine and Yaya has been whimpering for the last forty-five minutes. I try my best to keep her warm, but my body temperature isn't all that, so I gave her to Nao, who at first cringed because her tiny fingers were like 'stabs of icicles on my body'.

"It's not that far," Jamaica mocks, his lips quaking, "it's not that cold." This boy seems to have read my thoughts.

"Shut... up," Nao says, tugging at their interlocked hands. I also gave them my mittens, since I was the only one who actually thought of them. Now Nao wears one on his right hand and Jamaica on his left, with their free hands holding onto the other's for optimal warmth.

I breathe out the misty cloud, smiling as it disappears. I breathe in through my nose, since it's too cold to do so from my mouth, and release it in a big cloud of mist. It disperses. I chuckle, repeating the process.

I follow them with my thoughts hanging above my head, a silent whisper that holds too many information. I think about my family, of Fran and my parents. How would Fran be doing? He would've grown a lot. How old would he be?

Wow... he'll be twenty-five in July. If so, I guess he's about to inherit the title of Alpha. Or maybe he already did, if something happened to dad, but I can't imagine something like that happening, that man's too stubborn to die so fast.

How tall would Fran be then? Definitely taller than me. He was always taller than everybody, so much so that he joked about how his classmates began calling him Scarecrow, since he was also thin.

He laughed when he had told me that, but I knew it was no joke, so I tried to comfort by making up stories about how brave and heroic scarecrows went on and beat the bad guys, saving the day. And the next day, he came home with a tooth knocked out and a fresh bruise around his eye saying how no one messes with the Alpha pair's children.

I was proud, but I got to admit, he was a bit stupid. Stupidly kind. He couldn't hurt a fly even if that fly somehow managed to start a revolution to overthrow and kill him, the most he would do is capture the little guy, send him out and wait with a smile till he came back with another plan.

So when he came home showing of his war wounds, the whole household was shocked and dad was so proud that he almost began crying. If I had spent twelve years teaching that stupid boy how to fight, yet he still got bullied at school and then he finally came home a champion, I would've cried, too.