Welcome, visitor.

Go away. A melancholy xweetok, sitting curled up in a neat little ball on a stump glares at you with pale eyes. The light of the moon reflects off them and makes them look white. When you don't move, she turns her head and does her best to ignore you.

Go. Away. she growls, not looking back at you. You don't move an inch, entranced by the cool mist of the night, the sweet aroma that seems to come from the air, despite there being no flowers, watching her back rise and fall gently as she breathes, shining with luminosity. What do you want? she demands.

I'm lost. I- I was hoping you could show me the way out of the woods, you say, feeling that this is not one of the friendlier creatures in the woods that you could have run into.

For the longest time, she appears to have payed no attention to what you have said, still staying curled up in the tight ball as before. You are on the brink of giving up to find your way out on your own when she pulls herself up and shakes herself off. Follow me, she says, and trots off at a brisk pace without even watching to see if you are following.

She ignores all attempts at conversation as you try to follow her. In fact, she slips between the trees like a ghost, so you have trouble chasing her. You are just about to blunder off into the dark forest when a short amused cough sounds behind you, and you whip around and catch a flash of white before she disappears off into the forest again.

Soon, you reach the end of the forest, where the fields begin. She nods and turns to leave. Wait! you cry. I don't know the way from here!

I'm sure you'll find it, she whispered, and her voice, unhindered by annoyance, is like sleek liquid silver. I can't leave the Forest.

You reach to thank her, but she disappears like a wisp of mist, so wholly gone that you wonder whether she was just a dream.

I am a smallish albino xweetok, raised to be a lady, but spoiled completely by Wood and my older sisters. When I was young, I had loved to laugh, loved to tease my brother/father Woodcut about his crush on my pretty schoolteacher, loved to sit in the flowery meadow and watch the going-ons in the Forest.

Then the Terror came. It ruined the countryside, burned it to the ground. The Terror, an enchanted fire, started by a rogue fire faerie, a malicious dark faerie, or perhaps grown all on its own, fed on the fear and despair that it inspired in those who were besieged by it.

The night the Forest burned, I apparently proved I had more strength and courage than anyone thought was possible when I pulled my wooden brother from the fire. I believed they were safe as the the sun began to rise, knowing that the Terror dared not burn in the face of the sun.

The Terror, determined not to let its prey escape, fought to catch us, and burned Woodcut to ash. The sight of my brother and father burning was enough to change me forever, and I ran away into the Forest without a second thought.

I lives there still, not knowing what happened to the rest of my family, in the memory of an old friend, an old lupe whom I had often considered a figment of my imagination.

Moonlight Silence Aloneness

Interruptions Big Animals Bright Daylight

Why, you may ask, do I only sometimes have wings?

The answer to that, of course, is that I only sometimes need them, but that is probably not the answer you are looking for.

I was born with the rare ability to summon and dismiss my wings as needed, but I did not know this until I had her thirteenth birthday, when they made their first appearance (it's quite a tale, you shall have to hear it sometime). My wings always take the same feathered form, pure white, but sometimes pale blue in the sun, taller than my body and twice as wide when spread.

I was never very good with them, always a bit awkward in the sky, never quite fitting in with the other faerie xweetoks who ruled the skies over the Forest. They always popped out at the most inconvenient times, during class, in the carriage, or while taking a bath. Most other faerie xweetoks have dragonfly wings. My angel wings, as Reau called them, were a standout. They stood out, and they made me stand out. And my clumsiness in the sky didn't make this a good thing.

Generally, I try to ignore my wings.

″Oh, help me," whimpered the small xweetok to no one in particular, "I've fallen and I can't get up."

″Tha's for sure. How in tha' world did ya wedge ya'self between too trees lyin' down?" The xweetok jumped at the low voice, twisted her head as far as it would go, and when she didn't see anyone, she began to cry.

″Don' start cryin' now. Tha' light's fadin', and I wouldn' want to be makin' noise in the forest at night. Not with them creepers about." The voice didn't sound particularly sympathetic, and the xweetok shook her head and did her best to muffle her sobs and pull herself up, but only scratched her face with the branches of the overhanging trees and made more racket.

″Then help me!" she snapped finally.

″Ya' shoulda asked. Lie still." A thin, feminine muzzle came into view above her, making her question whether her rescuer was male or female.

With a jerk and a grunt and much displacement of foliage, the lupe pulled her up. "Ya' 'kay now?" he asked, for it was clear he rescuer was a he. She nodded fervently, her tears drying, staring transfixed at him.

He was old, that much was clear. His frame was large and long, but hollow, much like one who has seen better, fuller days. He indeed had a long, thin muzzle, that was not feminine, but a result of malnourishment. His fur was scrimpy and scrawny and dirty, so you could barely see the faded pale blue underneath. But his most distinguishing features were definitely his tail, paws and ears.

Bright purple. Purple like they had been dyed. They stood out, shone against the rest of his dirty fur as glossy and unnaturally clean. Perhaps if surrounded by many of the less wild folks, his well groomed purple fur would have appeared less polished, but next to his faded dull blue fur, they positively gleamed.

His eyes were also purple, and the xweetok thought that perhaps twenty years earlier, they would have been bright and piercing as one often thought of enigmatic eyes, but now, twenty years later, they were clouded and pale and milky, much, she thought, like my own.

″Oh, thank you ever so much, sir," she simpered as well as she knew how. "I would have lain there forever if you had not found me."

″Hum. Well, I suppose I'll be goin'- what?

The xweetok wilted under his withering glare. ″I- um... Big forest... A bit dark..."

″An' ya' don' know the way home," he finished for her. "Huh. Well, good luck with tha'." He turned to leave.

″Please don't go! My home is just by the big meadow, but I don't know which way the meadow is. If you could just show me the way..." The xweetok peeked up from under her eyelashes.

The lupe stared at her for a long time. Finally, just as the xweetok was considering backing away slowly, he nodded. ″Folla' me." He turned with a swish of his tail.

And she followed.

As he trotted briskly through the trees, only stopping once in a while to see if the xweetok was following, she chatted as if they were good friends.

″My name's Ellie. I live in the meadow in the middle of the woods. Wood doesn't let me go into the forest a lot, but when he does, I usually get lost." She stopped and giggled at the thought, oblivious to the annoyance of the lupe. "Like now. But I usually don't get this lost."

″Tha's nice." The lupe didn't sound remotely amused. He continued at his hurried pace.

″So... What's your name?" Ellie tried again.

The lupe took a breath. "Hale. Come on, we must be goin'." He nearly sprinted away, leaving the small white xweetok looking confused among the foliage. She hastened to follow.

″Um, and, why- why are your ears and tail and feet, you know, purple?" she cried at him.

Hale stopped so suddenly Ellie nearly crashed headlong into him. "Do ya' know wha' red an' blue make?" He bared his teeth, and Ellie cowered.

″P-purple?" she squeaked.

″Yea. My fur is blue, blood is red. It can't be washed out." His ribs inflated like he was taking another deep breath.

Ellie looked up at him with her most innocent face- wide eyes, pouting mouth, slightly wilted ears. "Why do you have blood on you? How?"

″Wha' does it matter? A war! You ever seen war? No? I didn' think so. Why can't ya' leave me be?" Suddenly Hale's milky eyes seemed fiery, and the forest had gone silent at the sound of his raised voice. He snapped his thin jaws at her, and Ellie could indeed see him, many years ago, young and strong and proud, fighting.

Frightened, she saw he had been a terrifying combatant. His thin jaws could snap between pieces of armor to reach the weak, unprotected parts of the body. His paws were soaked in the blood of his enemies, as he sat down his tail was saturated. He stood on a pile of the bodies of his foes, and he licked the blood from his maw.

He howled to the moon, and as the vision faded, Ellie wasn't sure whether it was the vision or the real lupe before her she had heard.

″My frien'," he said, and his voice was soft, broken. "I killed my bes' frien'. I wanted to be a hero, an' I killed him. Ambition got in the way of sensible thought.

″I went home, an' the war was won, but I had lost. Everythin'. No one was left. No one 'oo mattered. I was stained by the killin' I did, and there was no one left 'oo loved me." A pearly tear trickled down his face.

″Oooh." Ellie's breath came out in a rushed whisper. "I understand. But you're wrong. I love you." The lupe stiffened, as she wrapped her arms around him, then relaxed.

″Thank ya'. Tha's a kindness." He looked down at the small child wrapped around him in a rush of affection. "Le's get ya' home, now."

He pulled away and began to lead her home.

Woodcut found a lost and confused white xweetok alone in the woods. Unable to tell him where she came from, he adopted her to raise as a daughter, though he often treated her more like a much younger sister. He liked to be highly protective of her, and often walked her to school, though Ellie always teased that was to see her schoolteacher Cara, not because he was worried about her.

Their right head is named Tia, and their left head is named Reau. Tia was always a surrogate mother to Ellie, she worried if she was cold, made sure she got enough to eat, and advised Woodcut about how to take care of the little girl. Reau was more like an aunt, a bit more distant, a bit less motherly, but a better cook.

Cara was Ellie's kind schoolteacher. Even though Ellie often had lapses in attention, Cara consistently offered help in tutoring and never lost her temper. She was very sweet with Ellie, and was her greatest role model when Ellie was a girl, though she never would say why she had grey fur.

At age six, when Ellie got lost and stuck in the woods, Hale was the one who rescued her. An old, tired lupe, he certainly didn't appreciate her chattering questions.

Makeables

Adopted

I suppose this goodbye. Please take one so you never forget what you've seen:

<a href="/~Elementry444"><img src="http://i1125.photobucket.com/albums/l584/yuan_family/Ellie-Link-1.png"></a>

Backgrounds from 49 Days.

Coding by rrooaarrrr.

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