Factors of Change

Chapter 6

A.N. : This chapter contains a scene with some explicit consensual sexual content. Readers’ discretion is advised.

Chapter 6       

As the night turned into morning light, I awoke, went back inside the house and showered. Completely refreshed, I changed clothes, trading my jeans and t-shirt for a blue and white summer dress, and left my dark hair loose to air-dry and curl over my shoulders. Then I called out to William. The sun had barely been up when I decided it was time to leave.

I stood by the car as William packed our meagre belongings, and turned to look back at the lake. It really was beautiful at this early hour—the trees in the morning light reflected into its surface like a mirror, the perfectly smooth surface only briefly broken here and there by the brief splash of a trout feeding on a hatching fly. The forest had come alive around us with a myriad of birds singing as the night turned to morning, and I thought to myself that dawn was a highly underrated time of the day. I promised myself not to miss out on it so much in the future, and to get up early as much as I could, each time I returned, to simply sit down and appreciate it.

“Couldn’t we just stay for the day?” William asked as he unceremoniously dropped my bag in the trunk next to his, interrupting my peaceful thoughts. He yawned widely and shut the trunk, a grumpy glint in his eyes. “It’s Friday. Everyone will be here this evening. You might as well wait for him here, and we could take some more time to sleep.”

“I don’t want to wait, William,” I answered him. “I’ve waited long enough.”

“You do know you still have a couple hundred years to go and be with him, right?” he insisted, although I could tell he didn’t quite mean it. “You’re not cutting it close in any way by waiting a few more hours.”

I laughed and walked over to the passenger side, and got into the car. My mind raced, though; I still could not wrap my mind around the idea of being able to live for so many years. I watched as he got in and started the engine. “How old actually are you, William?” I asked.

He grinned. “How old do you think?”

“I was never good at guessing,” I said, watching him carefully. He had been born a Were, which meant that he had grown at a regular pace until he got into his early twenties, as humans do, but then his aging had slowed down considerably. It would take several dozen years for him to age as much as a human would in five years. His face bore no obvious sign of aging, but he had also lost the last remnants of boyishness a man in his early twenties would still have. His features were bold and manly, but he was in terrific shape, and I would have guessed him to be anywhere between 30 and 40. “I have no idea,” I conceded. “A hundred? Hundred and twenty?”

He laughed, surprised. “You’re good. That’s actually pretty close!” he said in a chuckle. “A hundred and thirteen. I was born right after the turn of the century.” He glanced at me quickly before looking back at the road. “I’m not going to guess your age. It’s not a polite thing to discuss with a lady.”

I let out a dry laugh as I crossed my legs. “That’s as well. I didn’t age the same way as you all did. Lost a few dozen years.”

“True that,” he agreed. “How old were you when you were turned, though?”

“Twenty-four,” I said, and turned my head to look outside the window. We had just driven off the dirt road that led to the lake and back onto the small, sinewy highway that would lead us through the low mountains and back to Montreal. I shook my head. “But I don’t want to discuss that, either,” I said softly, and he didn’t insist.

We lapsed into a silence that dragged on uncomfortably as the miles went by. William grew restless as we got closer to the city. As we drove through the suburbs, we were caught up in the early morning traffic. I groaned out loud—I had forgotten that it was Friday, and a work day for most people—and William also let out a deep sigh as we slowed down to an almost complete stop in what now looked more like a parking lot than a highway. “Couldn’t we wait a few hours before we left?” he teased, following the car in front of us at a snail’s cruising speed. “No, no, of course not. We had to make sure we’d get here right in time for the very worst of the morning rush hour.”