I felt her behind me.

She was way faster than me, and as far stories went, I knew she probably saw in the dark.

The police officers...

I couldn't think about them. I had to focus.

I was running through a thick forest, but the moon was full, and at least I saw perfectly in the dark now that my eyes had gotten used to it.

So, her most likely night vision was no advantage to her. I grinned at the thought.

But she was faster. Definitely stronger and with more endurance, as I had witnessed firsthand when I tried to get her off me. Maybe she also had super hearing. Or super smell.

I really hoped she didn't have super smell, or I was pretty toast.

No way I could hide my sce...

A flowing sound made me stop a second.

With this temperature? It had to be a pretty big stream not to be frozen.

I ran towards it.

I could hide my scent and sound.

Ray, this is fucking dumb. Maybe she doesn't have super hearing or super smell, don't do that.

I was going to do it, whatever the sanity left in me said.

I saw the stream, almost a river at that point. It was flowing heavily.

I took the pelt off, raising it over my head, and jumped in the freezing water. Only knee-high, fortunately, but the current was strong. I decided against following the current down immediately. That was obviously too easy. That's what she would think. This was where I lived or died.

So, I began climbing, trying not to think about my feet, which were probably going to fall off very soon, or at least they felt like it.

I tried my very best, but when the pain in my feet began to fade into nothingness, I knew I had to get out of the water. Maybe I only climbed ten meters, maybe a hundred, my mind was hazy, focused only on survival. I got out and put the pelt back on. Its heating properties had to be phenomenal because my trembling immediately calmed down.

My feet though...

MOVE

I couldn't think about it. I had to move; pelt voice was right.

I ran. I fell, got up, then ran. I tumbled in a ravine, got back up, ran again. Over and over, in a seemingly endless loop.

Everything around me looked the same, trees, snow.

No road, no humans, nothing but white and dark.

I ran until I couldn't anymore.

Then I walked. Until I couldn't.

Then I began crawling.

SAFE

It wasn't, not yet. She was near... she was...

NO. WAKE UP. SHELTER.

Yeah...shelter...tree...hole...

REST

I woke up.

“AAAAARGHH.” I shouted immediately in pain. The feeling in my feet had come back. Thousand of little daggers were piercing my flesh repeatedly. At least that's how it felt.

I looked at the dim light inside my shelter. I had found a dead tree, still rooted in place, but with enough space underneath to create a little alcove. How I had managed that, I didn't remember, but I had crawled myself inside the pelt, closing it off completely.

It was almost warm inside.

That pelt had saved my life, even if we didn't consider its helpful voice. That could obviously just be me losing my mind at an alarming speed.

I looked at it a bit more carefully. It seemed wolfish, but honestly, I never saw an animal pelt in real life before, what's more, it was way too big to be a wolf, so maybe a bear? It felt canine to me though. Maybe it was from Alaska? I knew northern wolves could be big.

WOLF

“Good, thank you for the information.” I said out loud.

Hey, I was crazy, but my crazy had saved my life, no reason not to thank it.

NOT CRAZY

“That's what all crazy people say.”

To that, I heard... a laugh? It was strange, almost...feminine in nature?

“Yup, I've definitely lost my marbles.”

No answer that time.

“Well, what now. Lost in the middle of the woods of Washington, with no idea where I am...”

Wait, that was not true.

I had seen the sea.

If I go to the sea, I will find civilization, a road, anything, I can be sure of that. Problem: I went the opposite way and ran for I don't know how long. And from Miranda's...I shouldn't call her that, it's not her real name and I don't know if It deserves a name. From the vampire's house, I could see the sea, but it was not close. So, it'll take me hours, maybe more than a day to get to it. Still, it's my best option. I could find a road before that if I was lucky. Or a bear.

Happy thoughts. Happy thoughts. Bears were hibernating, I was good. Yeah, happy thoughts, thanks Marie for the tip.

I can't stay here anyway. I need to move, find help.

FOOD. WATER. SHELTER.

Really pelt voice. That's your opinion? Water is a good idea but food? I'm not staying here that long; a human body would freeze to death before we find a squirrel. And even then, the only way we have to kill him would be to throw our frozen toes at it and hope it chokes on it.

UNDERSTOOD

Understood? What do you mean, understood? Hello?

I waited a bit but nothing new came.

Maybe I shouldn't go looking for tips from a magical wolf pelt.

I had a plan.

Find the stream, follow it down this time.

Always go down. Once it was flat, I hoped I would have already found the stream so I could continue following it.

Then to the sea.

Then a road.

Then mission complete.

Reward is a warm bath. Hot soup. Hot chocolate with marshmallows.

With this image in mind, I got out of my hole. I didn't cry in pain when my feet touched the frozen snow, but I couldn't stop myself from tearing up.

I had done the boy scouts, forced by my parents. It would save my life as I don't think I could have formulated such a plan without the knowledge of the wild that I had.

I had broken my arm when I was at camp one year, but even then, I hadn't felt such pain.

I felt it all the way to my neck.

My neck?

I looked at what I expected to be a gruesome affair, which it was considering all the frozen blood on there, but the wound was nowhere to be seen. Neither my pierced cheek nor neck had any remnants of what had happened.

Yay, probably a vampire mumbo jumbo thingie.

A terrible thought invaded my mind.

Happy thoughts, happy thoughts I countered.

Hot chocolate, marshmallows.

Hot chocolate, marshmallows.

I walked, reciting my mantra without stopping.

How long had I been running for last night?

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

Where was this fucking stream?

I had just said fuck.

I never said fuck.

I didn't see why people had to be vulgar really.

Still, where was it?

WALK

Yeah, thanks captain obvious.

MY NAME IS IGLIS

Shit, I think Maria said something about people who name their hallucinations. I'm fucked.

I laughed internally, I said fuck again.

“I'm Ray.”

I couldn't feel my feet, it was nice to not feel pain, but the meaning of that lack of sensations was more than unsettling.

LEFT. SMELL IT.

Yeah smell the stream...how was I fucking supposed to smell the...

I did feel something though. So, I stopped, then went left.

After another eternity, I finally heard it.

My way out.

I heard water.

STOP, SHELTER.

What? Why? I finally found it why would I? Oh.

It was getting dark.

“Already? How?”

But the answer was simple, I had been running all night, I probably fell asleep the moment the sun had begun to rise.

I don't know how long I had slept, but clearly, most of my daylight was already gone when I had woken up.

It took all the remaining light that I had to find a hole where I could creep into. I had stopped to drink my fill in the river, but my new home was quite far away from it.

REST. I GUARD.

“Thanks Iglis...”

WE ARE ONE NOW, DO NOT THANK YOURSELF.

That had to be the longest thing she had said to me.

She? Well, Iglis sounded feminine.

Soon I would be flirting with my pelt friend.

Great.

DO NOT FLIRT WITH YOURSELF.

Why shouldn't I? I'm such a handsome, well spoken Don Juan.

YOU ARE RAY

Yup, that's me.

But I felt I was not really the same Ray as before. The whole day my wounds, or lack thereof, had hummed strange energy, the pelt at my back had been too warm for it not to be me hallucinating it. I knew I didn't have long before my body collapsed.

Still, I closed my eyes, thinking only about hot chocolate and marshmallows.

I woke up. A noise. Steps.

Was it her? Was it the monster?

I knew what I looked like, a kid hiding beneath his bedsheets, my father would have been furious. How I was nothing like my brother, how I should stop being such a feeble-minded, weak boy never to be a man.

I waited and waited, hearing my father shout in my mind all the while.

I got used to those words, but never to the comparing me to my brother. That always hurt.

Francis, had been more of a father, and a mother, than my parents combined. I had arrived way later in the family. My parents had the age to be my grandparents, and Francis was old enough to be my dad when I was born.

At first, my parents were truly happy to have me, a miracle for my mother almost over fifty at that point, but they were both at the top of their law firms and couldn't let that go. So, Francis was the one who took care of me. If he hated that, he never showed it. All my childhood, he was the one who prepared my meals, accompanied me to the bus stops, and dropped me at my friend’s houses. When I got older, I realized how much he was doing, and I asked him to stop driving me to my friends. At that point, I didn't really have many friends anyway.

My father became judge, and my mother took control over both firms, I barely even saw them on the weekends.

At that point Francis changed, he asked me to call him “Cis” which sounded exactly like sis so it was definitely weird. Still, I obliged, if my brother wanted something, I always tried my best to give it to him. He did the same for me after all.

I was too young, too uneducated on the matter to realize what was happening inside his mind. Marie would later tell me it had a name, gender dysphoria, or gender identity disorder. He felt he wasn't in the right body. That he should have been born a woman.

Maybe I was partly to blame, as he had developed his maternal side with me.

But I accepted him, however he wanted to dress, or be called.

As an adult, I still feel proud of that. I didn't judge him for his appearance, I didn't feel shame about him, even though I was an adolescent and appearances were central to everyone my age.

But my parents would never accept it. He was a genius, already destined to be the greatest lawyer of this generation, it seemed he even liked the job.

It was a job where appearances are everything.

You couldn't have a transvestite lawyer, that was unthinkable.

He hid from all, except me and a few of his close friends.

One day, pictures of him appeared on the internet.

It was a mistake; a tourist took a picture in one of the bars he went to and he was on it.

I was at school; I didn't realize a thing at the time.

I was simply surprised to not see him come pick me up at the bus stop.

After that, what was a dysfunctional family stopped being a family at all.

I woke up. When did I doze off? The memory had been a dream.

The forest was silent, some snow falling from the trees was all I could hear.

And even though it was still dark, the sky was blue, showing the signs of the rising sun.

Safe? I asked inside my head.

Safe

The voice was softer, gentler now. I could hear it was feminine, even though slightly rough, savage.

I got out.

Something felt weird. I didn't really know what. Did some of the trees fall over during the night, and some of the snow gotten dark in color? Also, it seemed everything got...shorter? Not by much, but I felt slightly taller. I couldn't stop to inspect myself, if I stood without moving for too long, I would freeze, even though right now I wasn't as cold as before.

I began running towards the mountain, but then stopped.

I wanted out of the mountain, where was I going?

I smelled something I realized. Something appetizing.

I had no time for that. I had to find help.

Hot chocolate and marshmallows.

Yes, that's it.

Hot chocolate and marshmallows.

It wasn't hard to find the stream again.

After a while, I even found my footprints in the snow, showing where I had gotten out two nights before.

I took some distance with the stream, just to be safe, while making sure I could still see it.

It took only a few seconds of running until I found another pair of tracks, me and another humanoid, going towards the stream.

This is where I had gotten in, and where I had managed to lose the vampire.

No snow had fallen, and there had been no wind, the footprints were unmissable.

I didn't think long about the idea of following them back to her house.

If she was still there, I was dead.

It was the day though? Could she move during the day?

The thought made me stop.

My mind was... weird. Confused. I consider myself sharp, most of the time. The law firm had even considered me as good as my brother, and my parents had pushed me towards law for the same reason, even though they would never have admitted the same as the firm.

So why was I getting so distracted by the noises and the smells?

There were a lot, sure, and I didn't remember feeling that many when I was in the boy scouts, but I was older, and with adrenaline pumping through my veins constantly.

Nothing strange there.

Concentrate.

The library, I finally realized.

I sometimes saw her during the day in the library.

She can go outside during the day.

Why was that myth about vampires and sunlight not true, it would have made everything much easier, I lamented.

I need to move

My feet and hands began to move, Iglis was right, staying here of all places wasn't smart.

Of course I am right. Ray is smart.

I tried to say thanks out loud, but only a weird noise came out of my mouth. Seems like my vocal cords were getting frozen too.

So I ran.

I didn't think I would make it to the sea before nightfall, but I did.

As soon as I heard the waves, I also heard a car.

I hate cars, I hate pollution and everything that creates it.

But right now, and then, that noise was the most beautiful noise I could have ever heard.

I ran towards it, but it must've been further away than I thought because it took me at least ten minutes to finally emerge from the forest to step on asphalt.

The car was long gone of course, but now, it was only a matter of time.

I was saved.

Am I not needed anymore?

Iglis sounded almost...anxious. Sad even.

No, I don't need you anymore, I said mentally, but you know what, you saved me, at least three times, so I'm keeping you, even if it's making me a crazy person for the rest of my life.

You would give yourself to me...forever?

I laughed. Strange sounds got out of my mouth. I hoped it would fix itself soon, or the next car would think I'm a crazy pervert hitchhiker who makes dog noises.

I thought we said no flirting together... I say you stay with me forever. You may have been killed by that vampire monster, and that's unfair, so I'll keep you for how long you want. Tell you what, I'll even wear you sometimes.

Always

Erm, that would make me look like a fur enthusiast, I don't really like the idea of having a dead animal on my back.

I am not dead. The vampire could not kill me. I have been searching.

For what?

Please don't say you. Please don't say you.

Us.

You motherf...

I heard a car and stopped talking to myself for a moment, trying to look for the headlights of the car, it was almost fully night, so I thought I would be able to see them.

We need to be human.

Igris interrupted my vain search of headlights, the car was still too far away.

I hope I am. Am I still human? I didn't become a vampire, did I?

I asked it the question I had feared to ask myself before.

The closing wound. The fact that I wasn't dead yet.

You are no vampire. You are me. I am you.

Cool.

Do we have a deal?

About us being together? Sure, you're pretty much me from the start anyway no?

We were, we are, we will be. From now on we shall be Gray.

Wait I didn't agree to a name chan...

I couldn't finish my sentence. My head had started pounding like crazy. I felt sick everywhere. I immediately lost all strength in my arms and legs and fell to the ground.

Unimaginable pain coursed through my back and I screamed in pure agony.