I am aware this should've been finished in December (yikes), but I'm still pushing through. Roughly four chapters left, and I'm going for it.
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SNOW COVERED everything else but the roads. I was the one who salted and shoved up the path from my house until the peering between the trees. Now I biked, snugged to every inch of skin with thick clothes.
Snow had stopped this morning to let way for work. Orion was still sleeping, curled in his wolf form, by the edge of my bed again. I watched as the days came, rinsed and repeated, this time with Orion adjusting to his wolf form a little more each day. He looked less weary and bone-tired whenever he shifted back, his cheeks slowly losing its hallowed out look to make way for a normal, smiling young man. One that better fit him.
When I noticed the snow had stopped sometime last night, I brought up the subject up.
"I might have work tomorrow. I'll make sure smells are around the house, but you can make more yourself - it's easy to just burn off fruits than anything. But if anything does happen - go up on my hideaway and run from the branches. I'm sure you can leap far if they've surrounded the house. You have no obligation to say goodbye to me."
I said this all in passing, a likely scenario I had devised in my head as part of a just in case. So many things could go wrong and so many things need planning. Even if you don't wish for them, life hardly bowed to your desires.
Because he was in his wolf form, he had merely stared before a soft whine came out of his snout. And a rumble deep in his body that vibrated in close proximity. In wolf form, I was so comfortable being beside him, running my fingers through his hair smelling of smokey pine and burnt roses, that I didn't notice our proximities at all.
Even he closed his eyes, napping after a full plate, calm as afternoon trees.
"I'm just saying," I continued. "Protect yourself. I'll say you were just a wayward wolf trying to find food and was scouring my house. I was out, getting firewood. I can lie. But they will not listen to you or reason. They're into the mindset of guilty until proven innocent."
His body rumbled again before he shifted closer, resting his head closer to the pillow over my lap.
That was last night. I left him this morning asleep, more instructions written out for blocking out his scent, easy recipes and how to warm up the cookies, and a final note and a map on the forest. The map was issued given to everyone else in our town - all the traps for the people to avoid. All traps he had to avoid if he meant to escape.
