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8 - Summon

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A/N:

*CHRISTMAS SPECIAL*

Before this chapter begins, I'd like to greet everyone a Merry Christmas!

Here I have a special POV, that will take us back to the Grimlakes and how they see Snow form the outside in. I hope you like it.

And, I'll be writing as often as I can but due to health issues, I'll probably be posting two chapters a week instead of every other day. I hope you understand.

Here it goes. :)

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CELESTE

The forest was a maze of melting snow and fog.

The gray of the soil lay in contrast against the white stacks of solid ice surrounding each tree trunk. Celeste dug her boot against a hefty coat of winter long snow. Her fingers, now damp and cold, marked where the white surface touched the leather. Winter has left them as the frost touched the soles of her foot.

Celeste never liked the cold. She had to drag herself out of bed into the woods miles away from the comfort of a fire lit home. But as she dragged her boot against the damp woodland floor, a familiar calm enveloped her.

Her lip twitched forming a smirk on her lips as stood amidst the fleeing Winter. She pulled down the cloak from where her flushed nose and cracked lips hid. She stood up to her feet and inhaled the scent of pine and stagnant forest water. It made her insides warm as solid thumps knocked on her chest.

Celeste knew what the passing of Winter meant.

She walked passed the frozen roots of the century old cypress and grazed its trunk with her fingers. Light peeled against her lashes as flecks of sun blinded her. She squinted her eyes smiling against the warm ray of the sun.

Her knee rested on the stone studded river bed letting the frozen top crackle against her weight. She cupped a good amount of crystal water the kind her callused hands would allow and sipped the cold liquid. She could almost feel spheres of ice touch her nose. She flinched to the unexpected kisses of ice planted on her skin where the frozen liquid touched.

Spring has come and so was the Reaping.

She finished the remaining icy water on her hands before she whisked them dry. Still damp and dripping wet, Celeste's fingers grabbed on to her bow hanging on the satchel she brought, its leather straps straddled against a tree branch. She propped the weapon on her shoulder, grabbed the arrows made of elm lying on a tree trunk and marched home.

There was no time to waste, she and her sisters have to search for a buck to hunt.

Every year, she'd look forward to the end of Winter only to be preoccupied in the preparations for the break of spring marked in an annual celebration called the Reaping. Each pack is allowed a full day to hunt the woods within the premises of their territory. For the Grimlakes, the region spanned the Gray Woods up to the bank of Lake Caelum. In the case of her household the Reaping meant a competitive sport of who can hunt the heaviest whitetail deer. With only a few of them participating including her sisters, they were open to hunt multiple fowls each and the woods would still be full of them. The Reaping, however, differed from a pack with a greater number of household.

Celeste once joined a Reaping with the Cornans where victors of the game were the contender who could hunt a chosen prey the fastest. Days prior to the competition, a buck is sought, marked, and is set free back into the woods as the Reaping commences. The participants were only given the breed and the scent of the chosen fowl. Then, they'd hunt it down.