The Fox and The Forest (EDITING)

Seedling(0.9)

✘ ✘ ✘ ✘ ✘

Kate was relieved to part with the nervous atmosphere that banded around Tom's planetary body.

Relief aside, the hunger she felt was now gnawing at her insides like a rat chewing through metal. Before, the blistering heat of the sand on her smooth untouched feet was enough to distract her but the cooler lake air now only heightened her need for food.

As the girl walked, paths meandered this way and that. Their curves flowed the same routes as when Kate and Jasmine had scurried along them at only 13 years of age.

To Kate, the moon was an empty bucket hung from the pointed pin of a star. The moon had poured out its contents long ago. Now there was nothing left.

Windermere was almost entirely encased by radioactive lakes. The seclusion of the town meant that it was hard to walk out of the guard's trigger happy gaze. At first, the only time Kate, Tom, Flynn and Jasmine would really see each other was at school but only small conversation was permitted between students that wasn't under moderation. So they organised in secret to meet in the rickety old Boathouse- a place where they could hang out without constant monitoring.

Kate and her mother - Charlotte, stayed in a house a few miles from the oxygen conversion kiosk, the most appropriate location to access pure air and the lake markets.

She intended to tell her mother all about the real forest she had seen and the Forest Facility. Of how horrific it had been. So she would pity and spoil her. Kate craved the attention like a warm meal.

Kate would tell her mother everything... Except about her side effects. Which she still wanted to believe was some sort of trick Tom had been playing on her.

Everyone has good senses- Kate told herself, recalling how easy it had been for her to trace Tom's scent.

I just know how to use them.

*

As she turned the corner she saw a warm glow emanating from the eyes of a house, its blinds hung halfway down the windows, like the stage between awareness and sleep.

"Home," she whispered.

Kate's first sight of her mother was through the left window. Her mother was staring through it, pensively, with pen in hand.

She's been drawing on the walls again, Kate presumed, since paper was not accessible. Like elder skin, the tree bark had withered along with its maker.

Kate smiled. She could hear Buddy Holly playing happily through the walls. She ran to the door and knocked excitedly.

Mum hasn't changed a bit.

"I'll only be a moment!" Charlotte called from inside and Kate rocked back and forth on the balls of her feet eagerly.

Then the door clicked open and Kate leapt towards her mother, grabbing her tightly in case she dissolved under her touch.

"I'm home," said Kate shakily.

"Kate?" Her mother gasped and lifted up her daughter's face so that she could get a better look at her. "Same eyes," the woman noted, whilst her own began to glisten. "Same hair." She tousled her daughter's long ginger mess of hair and Kate laughed lightly. "Oh and of course! Same cute little nose." She squeezed her daughter tightly, encasing Kate in the motherly grooves her arms.

"You're home! My little one is home," Charlotte announced, closing the clotted cream door behind them.

Incredibly happy, Kate didn't realise the furtive glances her mother sent out into the night.