The next day, Jacob swore to put more effort into the Eve housing plan, as they had started calling it at some point the night before. So the first thing on the list was to scope out the rest of the forest to see if there was anything to work with which could make things easier.

To his complete lack of surprise, he hadn’t found anything after a few hours of searching the woods. He wasn’t too disappointed, he wasn’t expecting to find anything. He just didn’t want to feel stupid if he found something after building a place for Eve to stay.

“So now what?” he asked himself as he sat on a fallen tree. “Maybe I can find a way to ask Ellie and Ryan for help… But how do I do that without revealing Eve’s existence?”

He pondered the question for a bit before the sound of approaching footsteps snapped him out of it. He turned around and watched as a familiar four-eyed face approached.

“Oh, hey, Eve,” he greeted as one of her tails rose up to wave at him. His smile faltered as she suddenly shook her leg and stumbled to the ground. As he looked closer, he could make out the color red around her shoulder.

“Eve!” he yelled as he ran forward to inspect her shoulder. “What happened to you?”

On Eve’s shoulder was what looked like bullet hole, with torn flesh and oozing blood. Jacob steadied her and inspected the wound, sucking in air as he winced at the damage.

“You got shot? After I specifically told you to do anything but not get shot?” he said as she looked away, still finding time to be embarrassed despite the situation.

“Come on, I have a first-aid kit at home,” he explained as he tried his best to get her on her feet and led her back towards his new house. Good thing both of his parents were out at the moment.

He tried his best to not react too much to the sounds of pain Eve made as they walked, the wound oozing and spilling blood down her leg. After the third pained whine, he knew he had to do something to distract her from the pain.

Not being able to think of anything else, he started humming the same song from the night the two had meet.

Unlike the last time, Eve didn’t sound annoyed at the humming. Instead she had closed all of her eyes and let out a similar hum.

Jacob carefully led her through the forest as the sounds of their humming filled the air. It was an old song, he knew that much. A low ballad made by a group who normally sung harder rock songs. It had been a favorite of his parents, and he had the melody stuck in his head, even if he couldn’t remember the name or the words.

From the sound of it, she was in the same boat as him.

The two kept their impromptu music show going until they made it back to his house.

“Okay, wait out here for a sec,” he carefully set her on the porch. He rushed in though the back door and dashed to the kitchen, grabbing some paper towels.

If he was going to keep Eve secret, he couldn’t afford to have to explain away a giant blood trail on the carpet.

“Let’s try to clean it up a bit,” he told her as he came back out. Her eyes glared when she spotted the paper towels in his hand, as if demanding to know where the promised first-aid kit was.

A quick explanation about the blood later, and Eve was leaning over to allow him to clean off as much blood as he could.

“That should do for now… But I feel like we’re going to need more,” Eve’s tails split apart and moved toward the ground. Once they were almost there, they started moving up and down, all at different paces. The tips of the tails hit the ground for a second before coming back up.

The first thing he thought of was rain drops hitting the ground. From there his brain went to other forms of falling water, which led too…

“You want to clean your wound in the shower?” he asked Eve, who gave an enthusiastic nod.

Jacob led her through the door and into the bathroom, starting the shower up as she got in.

She winced in pain as the cold water flowed past the wound as she steadied herself. She glanced back at it and shivered, like she was getting ready for something unpleasant.

“Whoa,” Jacob said as small tendrils started growing around the wound before they dug into it. Eve started shaking in pain as they dug around the wound, before slowly pulling themselves out.

There was a sudden pop, and a crushed metal ball clattered onto the bath. Jacob smiled as the tendrils sunk back into the skin and Eve let out a sigh of relief.

“How does it feel?” He asked as she collapsed onto the tub and presented him with the bullet hole. “That bad, huh?”

She just nodded as he got up and grabbed the first-aid kit from the wall next to him. He popped it open and got to work.

By the time he was done, her wound was dry, disinfected, and covered in bandages.

“You should be okay now,” he closed the box and set it aside. “But maybe you should take it easy for a while? Just in case you open it again.”

She gave him a quick nod before going back to drying herself off with a towel. Once that was done, she passed it to Jacob who set it to wash.

The pair walked out into the living room and both collapsed onto the couch. They rested for a second before Jacob turned his head to Eve and asked her a question which had been on his mind.

“By the way, what exactly happened to you?”

She just looked back at him before tilting her head to the side in confusion.

“The bullet, Eve. How did you get shot?” he asked as she brought up two of her tails before bending them upwards and making a pushing motion. “Wait for a bit?” he guessed.

From the way her tails collapsed and the monster herself curled up, he had a feeling he’d guessed correctly.

“Alright then, rest first,” he reached for the TV remote and started channel surfing.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

He still hadn’t found anything several minutes later when Eve nudged his arm. He looked down at her four waiting eyes. He muted the TV, leaving it on some daytime telenovela, before setting the controller down.

A quick trip to the kitchen later to pick them up, and he walked back with pen and paper. He handed the pen over to Eve, who took it with her tails, her dexterity with the things having improved.

He set the papers on the small table next to the couch where he had placed the remote. Eve moved forward, putting herself close enough to use it as a makeshift writing desk.

“You’re getting better,” he said as she wrote just a little faster this time. Her letters were still a bit rough, but she was getting there.

She fished writing soon enough and then placed one of her tails on top paper before sliding it over.

“I was shot by a hunter,” He read aloud before looking at her and passing back the paper. “Did he get a good look at you?”

She shook her head before writing something else down. Instead of waiting for Eve to slide it over, he leaned forward and read the note as she wrote it.

“He thought he shot a bear,” he read before letting out a sigh of relief. “Well, that’s one bullet…” He paused as he noticed the still fresh bandages on her shoulder. “Oh, sorry.”

She just chuckled before slightly pushing his shoulder with one of her tails. He smiled at the gesture, grateful he hadn’t offended her with the phrase.

“So, anything else happen?” he asked, more for the sake of completeness then actually expecting her to say anything.

As she started writing, and then kept writing, and then kept writing a bit more, the pit in his stomach grew as well.

This time, he waited for Eve to slide the paper to him.

“Hunter talking to a guy in suit. Suit asked if he’d seen any strange animals. Tried to listen in when hunter heard me. Hunter screamed bear. Hunter shot me.”

Jacob blinked after reading through the note.

“There’s a guy in a suit walking around town looking for a ‘weird animal’?” He said aloud as he stared off into the distance. “This… this could be a problem.”

Eve gave him a quick nod before laying her head on the couch.

“Why would there be someone in a suit walking around the…” he mumbled to himself as a memory from a few days ago wormed itself into his head.

A memory of a boy in a cabin telling him about men in suits driving into town on black vans. Men who drove in right after the night when ‘fireworks’ lit the sky and Eve changed into whatever she was now.

Whoever this guy was, he was looking for Eve, that much was clear. As he mulled it over, he could only see a single course of action.

“Eve, we have to find you a place to hide,” he said to the monster as she tilted her head to the side in confusion.

A quick explanation later, and the pair were walking through the woods in search of a place for her to hide.

“I’m sure there have to be a few places I didn’t check last time,” Jacob told her as they walked deeper into the woods. “Are you sure you haven’t seen anything which would work?”

Eve shook her head as her rabbit ears drooped to the side. Feeling the low mood, he figured he had to do something.

“So who do you think the guy in a suit was?” he asked, trying to distract her a bit. “Maybe he was a secret agent from the CIA or something.”

She shook her head before stopping in front of Jacob. She took one of her tails and made a circle in the ground. Inside the circle she wrote ‘FBI’ and outside of it she wrote ‘CIA’. The intent was pretty clear.

“CIA only works outside the country?” he asked which got him a simple nod from Eve. “So guess it can’t be them then.”

He glanced upwards, thinking about who else the guy could be, when he noticed something a bit… familiar.

“We’ve been here before,” he suddenly said before leading her forward.

The two came to a stop in front of a certain small cliff. He could still see the spot where the two of them had landed after falling off the edge.

“This is where we met,” he walked towards the cliff and started moving his hand over the rock. It was weirdly smooth, and the presence of the hill by itself was weird. “You know, if you got rid of all the trees around, this entire forest would turn into a flat plain. This one hill is the one exception.”

Eve walked forward, running one of her tails over the rock. She couldn’t help but feel it was a little weird. Which was a lot coming from her.

“Hey, Eve, get over here. I think I found something,” she heard him call out. She turned and saw him standing next to a section of the cliff covered with a bush and some moss.

She trotted over to him and watched as he pushed some of it aside to reveal an empty space.

She walked forward into the cave, Jacob following after her. It was a small, round cavern which looked like it had been dug out from the hill. Despite the stone walls and floor, it looked strangely smooth. In fact, it was perfectly smooth.

“This is weird,” he muttered as he traced his finger over the stone. He was no cave expert, but he knew enough to know this was no natural cave. “Where did this come from?”

Eve made a barking sound to the effect of ‘I have no idea’ before running her tails on the smooth stone. After making a complete walk around the cave, she pulled back her tails and sat in the middle looking satisfied.

“You think this is it?” Jacob asked, getting a bark of agreement. “Well I guess it is easier than trying to make some place ourselves.”

Eve made a howling noise before trying to curl up on the floor. Her four eyes made a series of rapid blinks before huffing in annoyance.

“I guess it is missing some stuff,” he sat on the cold stone floor. “It’s still kind of early, we have time to get you some stuff to last you the night. And then tomorrow I can search around town for more stuff.”

Eve let out a bark of agreement before the pair got to their feet and left the cave behind.

“You think the guy in the suit will leave if we wait long enough?” Jacob wondered aloud as the pair approached his house. Eve just shrugged as she kept walking. “I mean, we don’t really have another choice, do we?”

She gave a sorrowful frown as her ears dangled limply. He didn’t want to think too much about why this guy could be hunting her.

So instead, he found himself thinking about what might have been the most boring topic he could have picked.

Interior design.

“So what kind of stuff do you want to grab for your cave?” he asked. What followed was a complicated series of charades before it was decided a pen and paper might work just a bit better for this conversation.

“I think we’ll have to wait until we get back to the house to…” Jacob was cut off as Eve’s tail shot out in front of him, blocking him from moving forward. He looked at as she put another one of her tails in front of her snout and made a ‘shushing’ noise.

Jacob kept still as Eve slinked carefully through the forest, her red eyes narrowing on something he couldn’t see.

He blinked, and she pounced forward. He heard the sound of something screaming for a split second as she vanished into bush.

When he walked forward past the leaves, the ground was stained red.

In Eve’s mouth was a still kicking rabbit in its last moments. While he always figured she’d taken to killing and eating wildlife like an animal, seeing it felt different. To her credit, she was looking away from him and just standing around, feeling as awkward as he did.

“Nice… catch,” he said awkwardly as she shifted from foot to foot. “I’ll just leave you to your meal. Let me know when you finish so we can keep going.”

He walked away, trying to not hear the sounds of ripping and tearing occurring right behind him.

He leaned back on a tree and waited for the sounds to stop. When they did, he heard Eve walking towards him. He glanced back and saw her as usual, no red marks or stains in sight.

“Huh, neat,” he remarked as she just smiled at him and kept walking.

Fortunately for the pair, they arrived at his house only a little bit later.

“Wait here,” he said as she stood aside to let him go through the hole in the fence. He emerged from the other side and found the house empty. The coast clear, he went back for Eve.

Jacob went in to the house as she sat on the patio, waiting for his return. After a minute or two, he came back out of the house with certain items in hand.

“Alright, Eve,” he set the pen and paper in front of her. She narrowed her eyes as she picked up the pen and got to writing. Once she was done, she passed the paper back to him to read.

She had a satisfied smirk on her face as he started reading through the list she made.

“Okay,” he said after getting through it. “I have no idea how we’re getting half the stuff on this list.”

Eve whined as she deflated, her ears hanging limply from her head.

“Hey, just because we can’t get stuff like a…” Jacob glanced back at the list, “widescreen TV, doesn’t mean we can’t grab some of the other stuff that’s on here.”

Her ears perked up, and soon the pair was running around his house, looking for stuff for the cave.

When Eve walked out later into the forest, it was with a bag full of blankets and towels for her cave.