Rell and The Rose

Ch. 2, The Girl In the Forest

Bastien

Cat tossed her long, dark hair over her shoulder, where it caught and reflected the light of the bonfire. A few of the senior girls danced to the newest Taylor Swift song, playing from a speaker connected to someone's phone. Even so, the crackle of the flames and the upbeat, bouncing music wasn't enough to mask that deep, resentful silence of the forest beyond.

The moon was nearly full tonight, casting a cold light on the blazing bonfire, drunk high schoolers, and odd collection of cars tucked beneath the trees: all dirty from the trip down the windy dirt road that led from the highway and into the forest. Ever since students had started disappearing, the school and adults had mounted a new campaign to try and keep everyone out of the forest at night: basically the only thing that could have guaranteed we partied here.

Everyone had their reasons for being out in the forest at night.

Myself included.

Tonight, Cat's reason was clearly to try and make me jealous. Leo Traton kept touching her waist as she danced up against up, and nodded at everything she said. Poor idiot actually thought she was flirting with him because she liked him, and not to show every single person that she was oh-so-over me. But that was my fault, my mistake, and the tight ball of guilt in my stomach wasn't near as strong as the knowledge that Cat was safer as far from me as possible.

"Hey man, sorry about you and Cat."

I blinked, looking away from the flames, and to Carter Fretun, a beer clenched in his outstretched hand. Was he trying to give it to me? His eyes were glazed, his voice too loud, some sort of yellow stain on his half-popped collared shirt. The beer started to veer to the left, and I grabbed it on reflex rather than an actual need to drink.

So much for my new dangerous, loner persona. Apparently it doesn't work on drunk people.

Carter settled heavily onto the mossy log beside me and I leaned away from the stench of his breath. Tina strolled over from where a group of cheerleaders were chatting and giggling, taking Carter's presence at my side as an invitation. As she came closer, her smile growing like a wolf, I wished I would have let the beer spill. Unlike Carter, Tina's eyes were sharp and dead-center.

"Hi, Bastien," she lowered her eyelashes, then batted them up, and I suddenly felt exhausted with this entire façade. Her black shirt was so daringly cut, and her jeans so ripped, I wondered how she could leave the warmth of the fire without freezing in the autumn chill. Across the fire I could feel Cat both watching and not watching me.

I wasn't even sure why Cat cared. I'd caught her making out with my teammate. Despite that, I didn't blame her. Or him. Cat was perceptive. Most people thought she was just the typical hot girl, but those long lashes and wide eyes saw everything. Too much. She knew I was hiding things from her. Which was exactly why we couldn't be together.

Even if I didn't trust them all to be out here all alone.

"Wanna go for a walk, Bastien?" Tina's hands landed on my shoulders, and I tried not to recoil. "Maybe I could show you..." Tina trailed off as I suddenly stood up, dwarfing her easily. My height had gotten me a starting position on the basketball team as a freshman. Which made it all the worse when I quit.

"Hold my beer?" I said to Tina. Her too-red lips curved up, but I pushed by her. In just a few steps, I left the crackle and warmth of the fire behind, entering a darker world. The branches curler in above me, the scents of sweat and cotton and perfume abruptly swept away by a cold autumn breeze and replaced by pine and earth and rot.

A few more steps and the sound of music and crackle of the fire were replaced by the creak and moan of trees, and the freeze rattling the last few leaves climbing to branches. The darkness of the forest enveloped me, a cold and sinister hug that was nevertheless familiar.

The forest was dangerous, deadly, even, but it didn't lie to you. It wouldn't betray you. Not like humans did. And somehow I couldn't stand to be around them another moment. I walked without knowing where I was going, letting my breath even out, my heart finding the same rhythm as the same deep swaying and creaking of the trees.

Finally, I saw the highway head, lit from the moon like a silver river. It was a deep scar forever marring the landscape, the trees and brush forever trying to close the wound. I'd been down this highway hundreds of times with my mother, before she'd become bed-ridden. Something about it felt different tonight. I was about to turn back when a truck roared by—

And I saw her.

Most people would have recoiled, but I'd spent too long in the forest. I was like a wolf startled; I settled into the stillness of a winter night.

There, across the highway, was a girl. She hadn't been there a moment ago, but now, impossibly she stood watching me.

She was tall, and even frozen, watching me, there was something wild about her, like she might burst into movement at any moment. She stood tall, straight backed, staring at me. A mane of golden hair hung around her head. Behind her the trees of the forest were thicker, darker... and somehow— though I couldn't see how— untouched by moonlight.

On her shoulder was some sort of shape. It moved, and I suddenly realized it was an animal. It looked to be the size of a cat, yet when it turned... I wondered...

Did it have wings?

The rational part of my brain tried to find some other explanation: I'd only had a single sip of beer. Had Carter slipped something in it? But the other part of me was stuck on some insane loop, staring at the wild, beautiful girl.

Just when I thought maybe she wasn't real, she lifted a hand, taking a step forward.

Don't, I wanted to say. She was almost in the road.

She took another step forward, and I heard a car coming, roaring down the highway..

It's going to hit her!

I stepped forward again, terror racing through me, but I was too far away. "MOVE!" I yelled as the truck roared closer. She didn't move. I sprung forward onto the pavement, but I was too late, the truck roared by, swerving and honking angrily at me as it did.

I stood blinking when it passed. In the distance the red lights of the truck receded.

The girl was gone.

What the hell?

I stood in the middle of the road for several minutes until Carter ran up the path.

"Bastien! Bastien!"

I was too preoccupied to note the panic in his blood-shot eyes. "What?" I said, finally spinning back to him, thoroughly annoyed that he'd found me.

"I was out, in, in the trees and found— ," his voice cut off, and he bent over his knees, gagging and retching right there on the edge of pavement.

"What?" I said do him, annoyed now, and turning back to the trees. But the girl was well and truly gone.

Carter finally found his voice again, his eyes blurry, barely able to stand. He's drunk out of his mind. Great. "We found a Shadowglen jacket... you don't think?"

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