Page 8 of Into The Green

The sun had just started rising, casting the woods in a strange orange glow when I felt her swirling emotions strong enough to choke on. I turned back, releasing her hand. "Okay. We'll stop so you can take a rest for a while. I will go find us something to eat," I said, not wanting to waste the time, but knowing we'd be useless if we didn't have something in our systems to keep us going. "You stay here," I said, turning away, then turning back and, more firmly, repeating, "Stay. Here."

--

Cece

I watched him leave, then looked around the woods, not seeing a clearing anywhere, not seeing an end to the canopy of trees. There were no buildings, no clearings suggesting campsites. No nothing. Even if I decided to be done with Jasper's surly ass, I had no idea how long we had been walking, where we were, how far from civilization we were. With my luck - and awful sense of direction - I'd end up dead of dehydration before I even got halfway back to town.

I sat down and nervously tapped my sore feet on the ground as I waited. Time passed. More of it than I thought should have, but then again, I couldn't be sure how much without my cell. It was crazy how dependent I had become on that stupid pocket computer for everything: time, weather, directions. I was just a sitting duck without it.

Nervous, and with nowhere to direct that energy, I started counting slowly to sixty over and over and etching a line in the dirt on the forest floor each time I got there. I had twenty marks drawn when I first heard it. It was far off at first, just a twinkling sound on the breeze. It wasn't a sound I could place. It wasn't footsteps or rustling leaves. But it was sweet, sing-songy. I stood, figuring Jasper wouldn't be pissed if I wandered around just a few feet to try to place the sound, and followed it to where it started getting louder.

As it did, I felt the burden of fear and worry slowly start to slip away, replaced with a light, happy feeling, with heat, with a strange dizzy sensation. As I got closer, the sound got clearer, and I could finally place it as some sort of wind instrument- a flute or clarinet, something familiar, but not.

I kept following the sound, clueless to how much land I had covered as the notes seemed to vibrate through my skin and then settle inside, filling me up.

The woods parted to a small, intimate clearing.

The sound was loud then, almost deafening, blocking out all the other quiet sounds of the forest, entering through my ears then moving through my whole body until every inch felt buzzing, then exiting through my toes. Over and over again.

And then I saw it.

The source of the music.

The small, thinking, rational part of my brain that wasn't completely consumed by the music forced me to plant my feet, to stop moving forward, to stop being beckoned forward.

I needed to turn around. I needed to find Jasper. I needed to run.

Because something was seriously wrong with me.

Because what I saw in the center of the clearing was a man. Sort-of. He had a man's head and chest, the skin glistening slightly with sweat. His long light brown hair flowed carelessly down his back. His strong, muscular arms were raised, one at ninety-degrees, one at forty-five, holding a light wood flute, his nimble fingers moving slowly, creating the hypnotic sound that tingled through my skin, my nerves, my bloodstream.

That wasn't what was wrong.

What was wrong was that just below his ribcage, his body was covered in hair. No. Not hair, fur. He was furry. And he had four legs with hooves and, Jesus Christ, a tail. A tail.

My hands went up to my face, rubbing at my eyes, trying to clear them, trying to believe it was just a hallucination from not eating, from dehydration, from not sleeping. But when my hands fell, he was still there.

His head tilted slightly as if aware of my presence and I caught the sight of two small horns poking out of his forehead as the song turned lower, more melancholy. And I swear it called me forward.

It called me forward, and my feet started moving without me telling them to.

I forced my arms to throw out, to grab the limbs of the trees as I moved past them, to try to hold on. But the part of my mind that was still working properly started to hum with the sound of the song as well, started to fall into the spell of it.

My body felt flushed, warm, unusual. Sensitive. Every inch of skin felt sensitive, felt receptive. The wind blew, and it shivered across me, making me ache for more. My breathing went shallow as a deep, intense throbbing started between my thighs, making me crave touch, making me want nothing more than to slip my hands up my skirt and into my panties to relieve the ache. My dress felt itchy as my feet kept moving me weightlessly toward the music and I reached up to start sliding the straps from my shoulders, needing it off, needing to feel the air on my bare skin, needing uninterrupted access to my body.

I looked at my beautiful musician, needing him to touch me, needing his eyes to lift to mine, needing it like I needed to breathe, like I needed to feel fingers slide up my suddenly slick cleft and relieve the torment.

My hand held my dress around my waist as the other reached out, close enough to touch. My palm landed on his back, feeling the smooth fur and stroking downward over it, then leaning forward and resting the side of my cheek against it, feeling it tickle over my exposed breasts. I tilted my head up as the song stopped, and I knew. I knew I was finally going to get what I needed.

He was going to look at me.

--

Jasper

I made my way slowly back toward the clearing, enjoying the solitude, relieved to have a break from the assault of her thoughts and feelings on my system. She was a constant ball of nervous energy, of fear, frustration, irritation, and mistrust. It seemed that every single second of her life, she was freaking out about something internally. It must have been fucking exhausting to live like that. Hell, I had just been around her for a couple hours, and I felt drained.

I moved back into the small clearing where I had left Cece, my shirt pulled up to create a small basket for the blueberries and mushrooms I had managed to find, and didn't see her. I didn't freak at first, figuring she had maybe wandered off to pee or something. I put the food down on a stump beside her weird marks on the ground, moving to sit down.