Any Dream Will Do | Hale - TVD/TO/TW [2]

1 | In Your Head

Birds chirp around the tall trees as a little girl races through the forest. The calluses on the bottoms of her bare feet snap every twig that she comes across as she pants; a soft childish smile lights up her face with her arms swinging around her. Sunlight beams down on her, yet she dodges the brightness in favor of the shadows.

As her blonde braid trails behind in the wind, she cannot help but laugh as she hears the familiar rip of her dress. She pauses, finds the broken seam, and tears it to allow more legroom in the dress. She begins to run again; her mission clear in her mind despite the fun she has.

Voices draw her to the nearest clearing. It is the most familiar one to her as only yesterday she had been lying there under the stars. It is just far enough away from the village where no one can hear what children might be up to; it is just far enough away so no one can hear the screams of an innocent child begging for forgiveness from a merciless monster.

She stops behind a particularly large oak, laying her fingers on the bark. Her smile drops as she narrows her eyes at the group of people before her.

"Where are we?" One of them asks. Dragging her eyes along his body, she deems him harmless: nothing worse than a puppy.

"A forest?" His friend replies.

The strawberry-blonde girl rolls her eyes. As the child looks at her, she feels a strange tug. "Really, Stiles?"

The girl mouths the name, its syllables foreign on her tongue.

"Oh, come on," the boy says. "We have to find some humor after what we just saw."

The brunette girl standing beside him narrows her eyes at her surroundings. The child presses herself firmly against the tree, barely missing the girl's gaze. "I don't like this place," the brunette whispers. "It smells like blood."

The child tenses as she peaks out from behind the tree again. Her eyes find the small shrub growing at the foot of a smaller birch tree; it's leaves still stained red.

"Malia, you can't go around saying that," the sarcastic one groans. "It creeps people out."

"She's right," the other boy says.

"Maybe we should talk about something else?" The raven-haired girl asks as she shifts her weight between her feet.

As the teens continue to bicker, the child finds her eyes moving to two men standing off to the side. The first one, standing beside the brunette, is already looking around for ways of escaping his current predicament; the second one looks lost.

The child frowns at the look of complete sorrow filling his green-eyes. Using only a small bit of effort, she opens her palm and mutters a spell; the warm air surrounding her starts to blow in his direction.

The man picks up his face as the air flows around him. The look of loss changes as he lets his eyes fall closed for a blissful second of calamity. When he opens them again, he notices something that makes him frown.

It is then that the child realizes her mistake. With a short gasp, she presses her back against the tree; the sound of impending footsteps causes her heart beat to increase.

A sudden sense of calm washes over the girl as the green-eyed man rounds the tree. "Hello," he says, furrowing his eyebrows.

"Hello," she responds quietly. She can feel her jaw tighten as she looks at him.

He glances back at the others before he kneels down. "It's ok," he says. "You don't have to be scared."

The words cause her to relax, but she does not let go of the tree behind her. "I'm not supposed to talk to strangers," she says as she looks back at the trails she left. "I should go."