Call of the Heart // Paul Lahote

Preface

Elizabeth Scott was elegant, she moved gracefully, as if the wind carried her. Her skin was slightly paler than the others on the reservation, but as the sunlight touched it, she seemed to glow, as if she was her own star in the galaxy of La Push. Her dark brown hair accentuated her features as she moved swiftly around the reserve, smiling at the kids that were giggling and running around carefree. To most people on the reservation, she was an enigma, even though she always spoke her mind, not many knew what was going on inside her head or the true meaning behind the words that she spoke.

She relished in the possibility that no one would ever be able to figure her out, a mystery to everyone around her, but she knew one day someone would come along who knew her better than she knew herself, someone who could speak her thoughts before she'd even thought of them herself. She knew this, because she'd seen it happen before many times. She saw it in Sue and Harry Clearwater, who looked at each other as if one put the stars in the sky and the other made the world go 'round. More recently, she'd seen it in Sam Uley and his fiancée, Emily Young, seemingly being pulled towards each other like gravity, like they were each other's center of the world.

The Quileutes liked to describe it as an imprint, based on the legends and stories of old, telling the tale of the magic that runs in the Quileutes' blood, making them spirit warriors who could turn into wolves when the magic matured so they could defend their tribes. The stories also told of soulmates, the elders called them imprints. Elizabeth liked to tell herself it was a call of the heart, that one day, every person in the world would find the one person that was exactly right for them, she trusted that when they did, the heart would call out for this person, tying them together in an unbreakable bond, connected by faith.

It was because of this, that Elizabeth hadn't bothered with becoming anything more than friends with the boys in her life, and they respected her for it. They would never try to push her on the subject, knowing the answer they would receive would be vague and dismissing.

One day, her heart called out to her as she made eye contact with a boy who could turn into a grey wolf, a shapeshifter of old. And she was glad she had trusted her heart to lead her to the person she was meant to be with.