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bandfannnn · 4 years

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This is a working title story (please help me make a title??)

So, this is something I've been working on for a while, and would just like to know what any one thinks?

All opinions and feedback are welcome, I will literally take anything to help make this better

Chapter One

Run. Run. Run. All she could do was run. It was never ending. The road continued as far as she could see. But wait. It wasn’t a road. It was a forest path. A never ending, muddy forest path. She hated mud. It got in her nails and was hard to get out. But. She didn’t hate the mud. She was running through the mud, and it wasn’t bothering her. In fact, she rather liked it. She liked the feeling of digging her nails into the mud and surging herself forward with each dig. Going faster with each dig, closer to the end of the path. Though she found that she didn’t want the path to end, she was enjoying the running, the feeling of freedom. She loved the feeling of the wind through her hair, whipping it out behind her and around her face. Wait. Some one was following her. He was there. Right behind her. So close she could hear his breathing. Feel every breath on her shoulder. Now he was beside her. She waited. Waited for him to run into her. For him to push her off the path and onto the ground. For the attack to come. But it never came. He just stayed running at her side. He had edged closer but was not touching her. It was strange. She looked to her left. And almost faltered in her running. Because running next to her was not a young man. It was not even human. Running next to her, was the most handsome grey wolf she’d ever seen. But how. There weren’t any grey wolves in this part of the states. Then she noticed something strange. She was looking directly at the wolf, right into his eyes, and he into hers. She wasn’t craning her neck down, nor he up. She looked down at her feet and saw that they weren’t feet at all. They were paws. Snow white paws. Suddenly the path ended. The end of the path was a lake. A lake so still it could have been a giant mirror some one had laid down. She walked to the edge and looked down at her reflection. Staring back at her was not the face of a human, it was not her human face she saw, but the face of stunning wolf. She looked closer at the reflection. Something was off about the face looking back at her. It took her a while to see what was wrong. Then she saw it. It was the eyes. They weren’t a wolfs eyes. They were blue. The brightest blue you’d ever seen in someone’s eyes. They were her own eyes. Her human eyes. The young male wolf was still with her, he’d stopped a little further back than she had. Like he was letting her take in her reflection, as though she was seeing what she was for the first time. Because she was. She’d never seen herself before. At least, not in the form of a wolf before. She turned and looked at the young wolf. She wondered who he was, wanted to know all about him. She knew though. She knew exactly who this was. It was him. It was her neighbour. He lived a few floors down from her in their apartment block. But he was more than that. He was beautiful. His coat was the same as hers. They had the same markings, in the same places. She thought his fur was a little darker than hers though. She supposed that was a male thing. It was his eyes. That’s how she knew it was him. She recognised them. They were green. The colour of the forest canopy above when the sun shines through the leaves. They were his human eyes. Something on his left arm caught her eye. It was a lighter patch of fur. In the shape of a paw. She couldn’t put her finger on it, but she knew she’d seen that mark some where before. For all she tried, she couldn’t figure it out.

* * *

She jolted awake, startled by the dream. Did her dream mean something? Was it going to help her find answers? As she thought about it though, her dream was slipping away. It always did this. Slipped away right as she was trying to find answers. Or at least trying to think of questions she needed answers to. She glanced towards the window, the sun hadn’t even risen yet, but by the time it does come up, the dream would be gone. And she would be unable to recall a single detail.

Amara lived on her own, as she had from the age of eighteen. She trusted no one, had no family unless you counted her best friend, and had no ties to anything. But that’s what happens when you grow up in the system. She’d been to more schools than she could count on her two hands, been through almost as many foster families, and twice as many friends, if you could even call them that. They were all just a means to an end.

Her life was full of more questions than she had answers for. She questioned why none of her foster families wanted her, why none of her so-called friends stuck around, why every one she tried to get close to just left without a word. It was as though she was just driving people away. Or was she cursed? Was she doomed to never be able to settle down? No where ever seemed like home. As soon as she tried to settle in anywhere, things never felt right, or everything went wrong somehow. The people she did manage to get even slightly close to felt wrong, it felt like she was trying to replace something she never even had. Her family. But even that word , family, felt wrong in her mind, and never came to her lips, she never wanted to say it about the people she met, because no one ever felt like family. Even her foster families, she never called them family, just foster homes. Maybe this was why she could never stay with them, because she never called them family, because she never felt right with them and they knew that. There was only one thing she could do.

Since she’d turned sixteen, she’d been trying to track down her real family, or anything she could find out about them. It had been difficult, she had to take every sliver of information with a pinch of salt and follow it up. A lot of it had been rubbish, almost 90% of it was as useful as wet paper for kindling. But the other 10%? That 10% was what she counted on and what made her keep hold of hope. She craved so much for it all to be true and that finding her family would be the next event to hit her. But every lead, even the good ones, led to a dead end. And each end was as frustrating as the last, if not more so.

Now, at the age of twenty, she’d hit more dead ends than she cared to admit, but for some reason she felt as though she were closer than ever to finding the truth about her family, about the strange mark in the crease of her elbow.

The mark, that many people would have her believe was just a birthmark, was strange. It looked like a paw print and was located right in the middle of her elbow, right on the crease. And though most people said it was a birthmark, it hadn’t always been there. Her arm was completely empty until her sixteenth birthday. She woke up on that dreaded day and there it was, tiny first but after a week of it expanding it stopped and then stayed exactly as it is now. It wasn’t until a few weeks after that when she started looking into birthmarks and found some leads into possible answers. Which had led her to where she is now, where she has been for the last seven months.

Where she was right at this moment was standing in her rooftop apartment, staring down at the street below, at all the cars whizzing by. She was lucky to have gotten the apartment really, she just promised the manager that she wasn’t one of those typical party girls with groups around every night and he gave her it. She had barely any money, had never had a steady job with any real kind of income. All she could really say she has, were the clothes on her back, the duffel bag with a few other clothing pieces, and her phone. No bank account, she preferred to be paid in cash, it was untraceable. She had no social media, she didn’t like the idea that people could find everything about you from just one page, and even find you if they really wanted. She liked the freedom of being free. She watched people go by, with their faces in their phones, and she hated it. They were missing out on what was around them. Like that lady that got splashed by a car going through a puddle, because she had her face in her phone and couldn’t see. Like the guy that was sat reading the paper and eating a waffle one morning, and the bird that just flew so swiftly passed him and stole the waffle, right from his hand. Sure, he hadn’t had his face in a phone, but every one around him did, and they missed everything.

The entire world seemed like it was in such a rush, not stopping or slowing to look around or to breathe. Sometimes she envied people around her; they had what they needed or ever wanted or were at least close to getting what they wanted. She only ever seemed to get farther away from what she wanted. The answers that she needed so. Looking down at all the cars only made her feel further away from everything, not just her answers. She knew that was not the case, she was sure that she was almost in grasping distance of all her answers, that all the answers to every question she’d had since her sixteenth birthday was just around the corner, but getting to that corner was proving harder than she’d like.

She stayed like that for a few moments more and then, looking at the clock, went to grab her coat and shoes. She had another lead from some creep she’d met in a bar a few days ago after they had exchanged a few emails and agreed to meet. She wasn’t giving it much hope, but a lead was a lead. And she needed as many as she could get right now. On her way down the stairs, she passed him again, the hot stranger. They nodded acknowledgement on passing, as they always did, but that was it. She still didn’t know his name, didn’t know which apartment he was in, but she knew it was on the floor below hers. But she knew better than to ask his name, she knew that if she tried to get close, he would end up leaving, as they always did. Better to just keep it this way, not knowing him, but still getting to see him.

He’d moved in a couple of weeks after she had, she remembered seeing him on the day he was moving in. the first time they saw each other felt as though some one was electrocuting her, and she’d seen it in him as well, the way his eyes widened, and he’d stared at her. It had felt as though an eternity had gone by as they stood there and stared at one another while this feeling crackled between them. But it had been only a few seconds and then it vanished, and he turned away from her, making a show of picking up one of the boxes that one of the movers had just brought in. she didn’t see him again for another two and a half weeks, she kept count of the days, wanting to just catch another glimpse of him. The next time she saw him was while she was getting her mail, he’d apparently come down to do the same. And it continued this way every day. It was always at the same time, in the same way. At first, he hadn’t acknowledged at all that she was there until a couple of months or so after the first time, he glanced in her direction, without making eye contact at all, even now, and just nodded once.

As she passed him, she felt a faint trace of the static that she’d felt when she first saw him, but in a moment it was gone, he was gone. Literally, like he’d just disappeared. Amara looked around for him, but he was nowhere. She just added it to list of things that were odd about him. On the list also was the fact that he always had a pocky box in his hand and a pocky sticking out of his mouth, he always wore a beanie of some sort, and she sometimes saws him without shoes or socks. She had to admit, the no shoes or socks thing was the weirdest thing on her little list. Mostly because she’d seen him without either of these things when he’d come in from outside, from the street into the building. She couldn’t understand why a person would go out with nothing on their feet. It was just another thing she would have to ask him about if they ever had a conversation.

She put her iPod on, forgot about the encounter and set off.

Please let me know if you’ve enjoyed reading, and if you think I should change anything. Any and all comments will be greatly appreciated.

#fantasy #fantasy writing #fantasy story #story #literature #fantasy literature #first chapter #storybook

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