Snow Dyed Red

Chapter Two

Authors Note: I forgot to do this on the first chapter, but I’d like to thank mla031 for inspiring me to write again if it weren’t for him I wouldn’t have started this book. Thank you.

Chapter Two

Ryan knocks on the door and talks to the teacher while I get a better look inside the room. There’s maybe twenty students there, all female except for one guy. “I thought Nymph’s were only female,” I comment.

Unexpectedly the teacher responds, “He’s no ordinary Nymph, but your right our race is mostly female. We need males to continue growing.” She grabs my hand and pulls both of us into the room. The girls get up and surround us. One starts to play with my hair, and even though there’s a large difference in length they do the same with Ryan’s. “I’m so glad you’re interested in us,” The teacher says, and despite her calm demeanor she’s clearly excited.

“Do you mind if we just sit in on your class. There are no human teachers so we have nothing to learn.”

She ushers us to seats in the middle of the room, “That’s fine. We would love to have you.” She smiles at us again and returns to the front of the room. Since it’s the first day she’s not talking about anything too serious, thought the discussion is far from what Ryan and I would have.

“As I was saying, because this school was made for all races, they can’t create a perfect environment for all of us. There are very few plants, or objects of nature in this building, and because of this it is likely you will lose energy quickly.” Several girls nodded in agreement. The Nymph teacher pulls out small pots out of her bag and starts to hand them out. “These should help for today, but I recommend you all bring your origin plant with you to school and make sure it’s with you at all times. Oh and it looks like we have some extras. Doesn’t that work out perfectly,” She says and hands over two of them to us.

“What is it?” I ask her. Right now it’s only a stem with a few buds, but it’s not mature enough to tell what kind of flower it is.

“It’s an orchid,” The sole boy in the class answers. He puts his hand out and I give him the flower. With a light tap on the bud the whole plant lights up in a light blue and fades back to normal. “It’s yours,” He says and hands it back to me.

“I’m Giselle. What’s your name?” I ask him as I take it back. It sits lighter in my hand, and in seconds I watch it bloom in front of me. The white petals peal themselves away from the center and settle into a delicate pattern.

“It’s nothing special,” He says when he sees my surprise; “My name is Nicollo Levine. It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance.

“That’s awfully formal.” I get in before the class is over and I must leave. “It’s nice meeting you too.”

At the end of the day I end up walking to the bus station alone. I rent an apartment nearby. The cost of the dorms is enormous and I barley have the money to pay for tuition that’s already marked down because of a scholarship.

I shiver as I wait for the next bus to come. It’s only the beginning of September. The weather shouldn’t be like this for another month. I tuck my orchid under my arm and check my phone to make sure I’m not going crazy. I can’t be the only person feeling this.

The temperature is already dropping, and it seems to have been doing so for a while now. Here I am stuck in a short sleeved shirt and shorts in what’s soon to be below zero temperatures.

Out of nowhere a sweat shirt is pulled over my head. I turn around to see that it’s Nicollo. “You looked cold,” He says completely ignoring his own now bare arms.

“You didn’t have to do that. The bus will be here soon any way,” I tell him, though in truth I feel much better now. “Where did you get this anyway? It wasn’t cold this morning.”

He sits down in the bench near the stop, “I saw you were cold so I stopped by the dorms to get it.”

“Let me get this straight, you happened to be walking by this very bus stop, to a point where you could see me but I couldn’t see you. Then you walked half a mile back to the dorms to get one sweatshirt to give to me, so that I wouldn’t be cold while waiting for a bus that’s already here,” I say just as the bus arrives. I wait to see if he realizes just how ridiculous this situation really is.

“I didn’t want to see you die.” He look straight into my eyes with a serious look in his.

“A little cold isn’t going to kill me, I’m not that weak.”

“But your human,” he says as his hands start to rub my neck, the only part that the hood doesn’t cover. His hands are warm to the touch and I shiver as they make contact.

For a moment I get distracted, but when my senses come back I notice something that shouldn’t be happening is. In the beginning of September, It’s snowing, and not a light dusting. This is the types of snow that causes car accidents. The type the gives students the day off from school. “What the hell is happening?” I ask Nicollo as I put out my pointer finger and a flake falls onto it. It melts into water and the droplet slides of my finger. Before he can respond I say, “I need to get home,” and I rush to get onto the bus before it leaves.

“Giselle, stay warm tomorrow,” he yells at me as the buss pulls away.

“I will,” I yell back.

In the short amount of time it takes to get home there’s already an inch of snow on the grown. As I step of the bus my foot makes a print in the fresh white blanket covering the road. At least they had enough sense to plow the highway. I walk over to my new home carefully so my footprints look neat. Tomorrow they will probably be all messed up but that doesn’t matter. I like the scene.

I walk up a short flight of stairs and unlock my apartment. It’s small, but there’s enough room to live comfortable. They kitchen while cramped works better than I could have imagined and the mattress is surprisingly comfortable, thought I don’t have any sheets on it yet so I’m sleeping on the couch again.

I drop my bag on the floor and turn on the heaters. It’s still too cold even in here to take Nicollo’s sweatshirt of. I sigh. I hadn’t been planning on using any heating or cooling system until absolutely necessary, but today’s weather is exactly that. This is just going to spike up the bills.

There’s a knock on my door. “Who is it,” I yell too lazy to get up.

“Amir,” says a sultry voice. I unfortunately have to get up to see who it is. Who would visit me at this time anyway? There’s no way that voice belongs to a mailman. I look through the little peep whole. It’s the vampire from this morning.

“What do you want?” I ask him with no intention of letting them anywhere near me.

“Let me in and you’ll find out.” He says with a sadistic smile on his face.

I’m about to walk away without answering when I see that the snow all around him has turned a light shade of pink. “Damn it, you expect me to let you in after you’ve just killed someone. Well you can’t come in I won’t let you.” He’s a vampire so he needs an invitation right? I try to convince myself.

I walk over to the windows to make sure they’re locked, but when I look out them all the snow is the same color as it was under Amir. “What the hell?” I say out loud. I run to the other windows and it’s all the same. There seems to be no sours of blood but all around my apartment and into the street the snow is died red, and fading to pink. “The snow is red.”

“How strange,” Amir says as he stands in front of the window I’m looking out, “It was much darker just seconds ago.” I take a moment to look closely at it and he’s right. The snow is fading back to white.

“You mean you didn’t cause this?”