Chapter Text
The hardest part about being twelve is when you grow out of your old shoes because they’re too small and suddenly the new ones are too big and I’m not talking about shoes. My mom was twelve once but she seems to have forgotten it. I think once I tried to ask her about how to do this whole twelve-year-old thing and she told me I’m too young to be thinking about things like that. So now, I’m left with nothing at all to think about. My mom would like me to fill my thoughts with my grades, but I worry so much over them that I’ve grown desensitised to it at this point. There’s only so much stress a person can handle until he just doesn’t care anymore.
“Why are you always so quiet, Cousin Patroclus?” One of my many cousins interrupts my thoughts by asking the same stupid question that I’m so sick of hearing. I’m so sick of these people. We’ve all been living in this big house by a big lake and a big forest because we have a big family to all get together. It’s our whole grandparents’ family, because we all need to see all of us or whatever. It’s too much for me. I just want it to be over.
I glare at her and hope it scares her off. I don’t want any of her dumb questions. It’s none of her business why I’m so quiet, she should just respect my decision to be so. Nobody here respects me.
She waits for me to answer only a little longer until directing her attention to something actually interesting. My other cousins linger around me, however. They throw comments at me like how I hardly had any dinner and how that will deprive me of the strength needed to massacre them all in a killer match of hopscotch or whatever game it is they want me to play. I don’t like games. I’ve outgrown them.
The sun has hardly gone down when they bring out dessert and it’s apple pie and I don’t like apple pie. They didn’t consider me when making the dessert, I know that much for certain. But it’s fine- all the other kids rush over to partake of the pie and I’m left all alone, perfect for escaping.
I sneak out the back door- it’s closer to the forest, which is where I want to go. I love forests- they’re all natural. I’ve never been civilisation’s biggest fan. The forest has always called to me, and who am I not to answer?
The forest is silver-blue where the moonlight hits it, black where it’s a nice warm brown during the daytime. I slink between the tree trunks, looking around for nothing in particular. There are no rules here, out in the forest. It’s still new to me, I’ve only been here a few days, but I know the forest welcomes me. It breathes a sigh of relief in tandem with me as I’m finally free.
The dirt is soft under my tennis shoes, the path hardly trodden and still wet from old rainfall. The grass only starts where no one walks, and it grows high. Almost as high as me, and that’s saying a lot with the new growth I gained over the summer. Nature grows, it never stops.
I hum a song and examine the mossy trees, the carvings of lovers in the bark “A+C”, “O+P”, with hearts around them. There are times where the path has been overgrown by grass and bright flowers, washed out by the moonlight, that only grows stronger now. The night brings peace, coolness, but it also brings a sense of fear. I’m only a little agitated as I continue walking the path, observing my surroundings. I’m not terribly far out, I can return easily, should something… happen.
I’m only a little bit scared as the shadows grow and the trees seem to squeeze denser. Just a little bit. Not a lot. I’m breathing hard and checking my surroundings, less for the thrill of it and more to assure myself that there’s nothing there, hiding.
The forest gets darker and darker still, until I’m plunged into darkness. I look wildly around, whimpering and clutching my shirt, only to find that above me, a cloud has covered the brilliant moon, dimming it to a faint glow in the sky.
The clouds are thick and heavy, and I’m more surprised than I should be when I feel something cold and wet land on my cheek; a drop of water. It’s just a few minutes later that I feel another on my shoulder, another on my nose, another on my finger, and then there are more and more and it’s pouring down on me. The soil under my feet is so much more unreliable; I lift my feet and my shoes have to be tugged from the mud that the ground devolves into.
I think I shriek as I start speed-walking, then jogging, then running. The mud flies under my feet and stains my jeans, but I’m almost certain that there’s something- maybe the night itself- chasing me, and it somehow caused this rain to distract me, scare me further.
The forest shrieks with me.
I think I’m insane at first, hearing the heaving laughter of the trees around me, the creaks and the giggles of the leaves. It’s the rain, pattering on the plants, I tell myself. It’s my own feet, squelching against the mud. But then, I come to a full halt, too distracted by this new thing to remember to be scared, and I can definitely hear laughter. Deep breath in, deep breath out, then a holler that shakes until the laugher loses air. A wheeze, then he laughs again.
I should be more scared than I am as I follow the sound, not trying to conceal itself at all. The rain has soaked me through, and it still comes down, and yet I don’t find my vision impaired by it. I see it clear as day, the path lit by moonlight that found its way between the dark clouds.
And it’s even more well-lit when I reach the point where the trees stop, at least in this small circle where there’s only grass. Rocks sit atop the grass, mostly small, save for the large, flat rock, dead centre of the clearing. It’s on this rock that the laugher sits, his shoulders rising and falling as he heaves in breath, and cries out again. Animals surround him, seemingly unbothered by the rain. A bunny, shielded by his hunched figure, sits on his lap. Birds watch him from under the shade of the trees, though some braver, bigger animals rub against him and sit by his side, comforting him.
From where I stand, I might’ve been able to see his face, if it weren’t for the long, fabric-straight, curtain of hair that falls over the boy’s shoulder like water, gleaming white under the generous light the moon provides, sneaking out from behind the rain clouds. He’s hunched over, but where his dark clothes end, skin doused in freckles begins. They’re bright as stars against his skin, generously applied.
But aside from all of these lovely attributes of the boy, the small boy, there’s the most marvelous thing of all. From his back, sneaking out from a slit in his shirt, wings as thin and delicate as a butterfly’s sprout. They’re thin enough to let the light shine through, illuminating the veins spread like a leaf throughout the wing. They’re gorgeous, though painted black-and-white by the night’s veil.
The boy stops laughing with a sniff and a wipe of a hand across his face, and it’s only then that I realise he hadn’t been laughing at all, instead sobbing like it were a song. He turns to me, his hair gliding like silk across his shoulders, catching on the ridges. His face is bright with freckles as well, making his big eyes all the more eye-catching. He stares at me a moment, sniffs, then gestures to the animals to leave.
He gets up from the rock, his… dress? silky and flowing around him, light as air. He stares at me a moment, standing there, before taking a step towards me, a hand tentatively held out.
I, on instinct, take a step back, and this frightens the boy. His wings flutter and he turns around, dashes off, quick as a normal human boy. A normal human boy who really loves to run.
The rain is cold and I, too. I look around, searching for anything to help me out.
“Help?” I call out, after getting impatient with the searching
My mother waits until morning, after I had wandered back to the big house, filled with all our relatives, to berate me on how stupid and dumb and foolish I was to go out in the forest at night and I should never, never ever, never ever ever ever never! go to the forest alone at night. All the while, she decorates my face with kisses, and I imagine the forest boy maybe got his freckles from all the times his mom kissed his face, worried sick after he had spent the night in the woods. Or maybe he lives in the woods, and his woodland mother treats the city like my city mother treats the woods.
“You got that, little Patroclus? You’re not going out into the woods at night again, ‘kay? You don’t want to worry Mama, now do you?” She’s holding my face and talking to me like I’m some baby.
I nod my head and murmur a “yes Mama”, all the while planning on how to sneak out, back into the forest, again. Now I know for certain there’s something interesting going on there, something much more interesting than my family.