Alora

Prelude and Chapter One

PRELUDE 

Smoke furled from his tunneled mouth as he perched hungrily in the trees, the branches bending underneath his metal claws. The light from his one eye scanned over the situation quickly. He dimmed it before he could be noticed. She couldn't know that he was here.

His mouth nearly dripped oil from the lust. This was it. The past three years, the past three hundred years, he had been waiting, plotting and planning, carefully drawing out each moment. This would be the hunt to end them all. In minutes, the last Anmortal would be his.

She was too predictable. It was ridiculous to think that she would imagine that the boy would listen to her, but that would only give him more time to make his move. There! That was it...she had crashed through the window. He had her right where he wanted her.

Leaping down from the trees, he used the large bulk of his body to bring down the wall of the cabin and cause the entire house to crumble inward. He heard the screams of the boy and the terrified howls of his prize. With ecstasy he smiled, opening his mouth wide and scooping up the cowering female below. She nearly slipped away, knowing of his plans, but he crunched his jaws down upon her leg and heard the satisfying, tantalizing snap of the bone. His mouth savored, but he denied himself. Human flesh never tasted half as sweet as Anmortal, and if he wanted the Anmortal, he needed the human.

He was heading towards the lake and pillaging through the forest before his little darling could even stop to breathe. She would follow. If she loved the boy, and he knew that she did, she would give chase.

He wouldn't need force. She would give herself to him willingly.

CHAPTER ONE: THE PLACE WHERE SHE LIVED 

The Anmortal lived in the woods, a forest that was made of tall majestic pines and birch trees whose bark that glowed white in the dark. Kingly oaks thrummed deep mahogany in the light, with leaves of more value than diamonds. When the trees bloomed in spring, they were greener and more precious than emeralds in the summer, with more colors than a rainbow in the fall. At these trees roots sprouted lady's slippers and chrysanthemums, green shoots and mushroom sprouts. This woodland rolled over the earth in hills and slept by a large lake, which back in the old times was made of liquid sapphire but now was simply a dulled turquoise.

The Anmortal was a female, and she had lived there longer than perhaps time itself could remember. Her name was Alora, and she was the most beautiful creature that the land had ever seen. Her knee-length hair was the rich brown color of the forest owls, cascading past her waist like the waterfalls that lied in secret beyond the trees. Her skin had the color of snow on an early morning's sunrise, while her cheekbones were raised and elegant. The Anmortal's lips shone of pale rose, her legs as long and graceful as the deer that danced nearby. She wore a white deerskin dress, and jewelry made of shells and stones that she had collected from the lake. Her eyes shone the color the lake once had been, shining sapphire, with a ring of emerald around her black pupils. She could have passed for a young woman, though no creature ever mistook her for one, or no human either, if they looked properly.

Even though she had lived for a very long time, the Anmortal remained at the age of sixteen. And, like all Anmortals, she was set in a certain way. In the spring and the summer, Alora lived as a girl. Then as soon as the last leaf fell and the first snow fluttered to the ground, she would go into a deep sleep to wake up as a pearly pelted she-wolf, her white coat flashing with the extravagance of clouds, on her back two large and graceful swan wings. She would fly high above the land that the humans called Michigan's Upper Peninsula, but that the Anmortals had refused to name, for the land was so achingly beautiful that if you allowed yourself to fall too far in love, you would end up breaking your heart.

Although there were no fellow Anmortals around and no humans populated the place for miles, Alora wasn't lonely. She had the company of her horse, Tanglemane, to keep her happy and safe in the warm months. When winter came, Tanglemane would run off with the deer and come back once Alora had transformed into a girl again. During the winter, Alora wandered alone. She had no family. Her parents, also Anmortals, had flown off together in a winter very long ago. They did not come back. Her younger brother Agathi had stayed until he had reached his own particular Anmortal age of twenty-one and would age no more. He left, lumbering into the snows with his great shaggy paws to catch whitefish and fight other bears. In the way of the Anmortals, he did not come back either once he had left. Alora missed them, but she did not want them to return. Anmortals always lived alone or with mates. They did not desire company, and so Alora was never lonely.

Time didn't exist for Alora. She would walk through the forest barefoot in the spring and flowers would sprout up where she had stepped. In summer she rode like lightning through the tall trees on Tanglemane, and he would scare off badgers and wolverines that ventured too close. In autumn she would arise from beds of newly fallen leaves, and go to the lakeshore and inhale in its fresh scent. She would stand in the sand and the waves would crash around her like magic, making her feel alive.

Winter, however, was her favorite. She would glide along the tips of pines, howling her way to the half moon as the essence of clouds, cold and dignified, floated down and made a cloak upon her back as if crowning her queen. She would dance in the rain and scream to the thunder, proclaiming her love to the Sanctifier, the one who was in the earth, who owned her soul and would take it back one day when the world finally turned to stone and Anmortals were no more.

She was free. Nothing mattered more to Alora than her freedom. She never wanted anything more.

But her rule could not last forever. The world that she knew changed forever once the boy came.