Chapter 3
Cleo POV
The woodlands were a swirl of yellow sunshine and leafy green. The ground was billowing up and down in little hills and small gullies. I could see the outline of Jackson's muscular back as he was walking a few steps ahead of me. The sunshine was making his brown hair look lighter than normal. He threw a quick glance over his shoulder, checking that I was still right behind him.
"All okay?" he smiled.
I nodded and continued to follow along behind him on the small footpath. From time to time, he would suggest a walk in the woods. He knew me so well, that he could sense when I needed some calm.
The small wooden bridge stretched across a particularly steep gully. It was connected to two trees on either side of the sharp drop and looked very rickety. Jackson stopped for a moment, looking across the landscape.
"So how do you feel about Jake being gone again?" his voice was gentle but I could hear a tone of wariness in it. It was as if he knew that this was a sensitive subject for me.
"I guess I'm happy for him. The research project is a big thing for him."
He's eyes searched my face, looking for any emotions that my reply may have hidden. "But you miss him?"
I could only nod as reply to his question. Jake had grown to become a close friend and having him absent from my everyday life unsettled me. I didn't like how much it affected me. Even though I was used to people coming in and out of my life, I wasn't used to caring about them.
Jackson left the subject, squeezing my hand for a moment and motioned for us to cross the wooden bridge. We had walked across it many times before, I could see Jackson's back a number of steps ahead of me when something shifted. It could simply have been a movement in the wind, but I felt a sensation creep across my skin. It was crawling across me in an instant, tugging at me, telling me that something bad was going to happen and in that moment I felt the wooden plank underneath my feet give way.
A number of things happened simultaneously, Jackson screamed something that my ears didn't recognise, I felt the wind whip my face as my fall took on speed and I felt my hands and feet grab on a branch.
"Are you okay?"
I closed my fists around the branch, the smell of the maple leaves was thick and sweet.
"Cleo?! Answer me! Are you alright?"
My legs felt strong and my soles of my shoes gripped firmly on the branch. I was crouched forward in an animal like position, perched high up on the branch of the maple tree.
"Yes, I think I'm fine..." my voice was steady and calm in a way that even surprised myself.
"God, you scared the life out of me!' Jackson was moving closer to the hole in the walking bridge and was pulling down his arms, ready to pull me back up.
I lifted my hands from their tight grip on the branch, surprised by the control I commanded. I felt Jackson's hands grip around my wrists and my body was quickly hoisted onto the bridge again. Jackson enveloped my body with his, pulling me into a hug that would protect me against anything in the world.
He broke it only to give me a sharp look, "How did you manage to catch hold of that branch when you were falling?"
"I don't know. It sort of just happened..."
It was strange how quickly I had gone from falling uncontrollably to landing safely in a tree.
"You're normally not that good with quick reflexes," Jackson pulled me close and lightly placed a kiss on my temple, "lucky that you were this time."
I rested my cheek on his chest and wondered why I had felt such security and control perched on that branch when I really should have been afraid.
~*~
The sheets clung to my body, sticky and damp from sweat as I pushed myself up on my elbows. I shook my head, in the darkness of the room, trying to shake away the last remnants of my nightmare still hovering in my mind. As the final waves of fear passed and I had convinced myself that the walls weren't closing in on me, something seemed to slip and slot into place. It was like my eyes instantly adjusted to the darkness, almost as if I had suddenly slipped on a pair of night goggles. Maybe it was just the release of the fear that made me aware that my eyes had already adjusted to the darkness?
I sat up and the room appeared to brighten. Even though the room was laid in darkness, the colours of my clothes on the chair appeared vivid and clear. The stone in the necklace resting on my desk seemed to sparkle at me. My head twitched to one side, as noises started to fill my ears. The sounds of the night, the wind in the trees, the owl hooting lowly on a branch and the sounds of bat wings swishing past the corner of the house all reached my ears. I shook my head again, now convinced that I still must be half asleep. There is no way that those sounds would ever be able to be heard so clearly. I swung my legs over the edge of the bed, they felt strong and flexible. The sensations of my bare feet against the floorboards surprised me. It was like I could feel the reaction of every single cell in my skin. The sensation was incredibly complex and astonishingly sharp at the same time.
All these revelations made me convinced that I still must be half asleep. I strode into the bathroom. The cold water from the tap gleamed as if it was reflecting sunlight and the dripping noise seemed louder and clearer than it had ever been before. I craned my head down and drank straight from the cold stream. As the water washed over my face and poured down my throat, each molecule of the liquid chilled my skin with pinpoint precision and the cold water trickling down my throat felt like nothing I'd ever experienced before. I was starting to grasp that something had changed, something had changed within me.
I pulled myself up straight and stared into the mirror. Searching my face for any clues of what was going on, as if my body knew more about what was happening than my mind did. My gaze met my own eyes in the mirror, a bright grey ring of colour had laid itself around my pupils. It was shining brightly in a clear steel. As I looked back into my own eyes, perplexed, the steel ring started to spread. In jagged motions it crept all the way out and within a moment my eyes had been taken over by steel. My body felt warm and strong, my muscles were tense and almost vibrating in anticipation beneath me. So I did the only thing I could think of doing, I gave in to my body and its instincts abandoning any ambition of making sense of what was happening.
My feet turned on their heels and my legs started me off in a quick run. It was like my mind was locked into a body functioning under its own will. As my body lunged forward and dived out of my bedroom window, my mind was screaming in panic. As soon as the horror struck thought that I would die had flown through my head, my legs had landed softly on the grass and I was sitting hunched down.
I sprinted into the woods, throwing myself forward much like an athlete sprinting down the track. The woods seemed alive with sounds, smells and colours. The brightness and clarity of each leaf in the trees whizzed by me as I ran quickly and silently through the woods. My eyes were scanning my surroundings, as my body was moving underneath me. They would zoom in on small details, the dewdrop falling off a leaf, the eyes of an owl in the distance. As I saw those eyes, the eyes of the owl gleaming far off in the distance something shifted again.
My eyes scanned to the left and I could see a much bigger pair of animals eyes moving towards me, the edges of the yellow eyes were blurred as the animal they belonged to was hurtling itself across the woods. I could feel each hair on my neck rise up, my feet moved soundlessly backwards until my back brushed against the bark on a giant pine tree. Even if the animal was still far away, I could hear the thudding of paws against the soft ground and they were speeding up much like the beats of my own heart. Without even being able to react, I felt my fingers grip on to the stem of the tree. I caught a glance of the thick claws that had replaced my soft rounded nails as my hands quickly scaled the tree.
Perched on a branch, deep in the middle section of the tree, I focused on slowing down my breathing. My eyes seemed to dim and the bright colours of the woods slowly faded away. I looked down at my fingers, barely able to make them out in the darkness. The rounded fingertips I was used to where there, like the claws I had just glimpsed had been a figment of my imagination. Something was moving on the ground, in my peripheral view. I couldn't see it as clearly since my eyes were suddenly struggling with the surrounding darkness. The animal moved around on the ground, sniffing at the place I had stood before my body had made me scale the tree. The moon broke through the clouds and casted its pale light on the scene beneath my tree. My unbelieving eyes spotted a large wolf. The body of the animal was larger than what I would have expected and its fur was a mixture of grey and brown. I gasped in surprise and my heart clambered in my chest. The majestic creature lifted its giant head and its eyes met mine. They gleamed yellow in the darkness as they fixated in on me. Before the thought "He has spotted me" even managed to form, the wolf started to shake. Its body was going through some kind of episode of muscle spams. The fur seemed to melt away in an instant and as the body changed form, the fur was replaced by human skin. My mind felt like it was exploding with improbability. This could not be happening, everything that had happened since I woke up must surely be a sick nightmare.
I stared down from my branch in the pine tree, down into a pair of human eyes. A pair of human eyes that I knew very well. Jackson.
"Cleo, I know this seems strange. I... I didn't mean to scare you. You can come down now, it's okay."
I didn't move a muscle.
"Come on Cleo, please come down and talk to me!" his voice was pleading.
I could feel my muscles vibrating inside me once more. In an instance it was like someone had flicked on the lights, the bight colours of the woods had reappeared and I could feel the claws slowly protruding from my fingertips. Before I could make any decisions, my body had reacted for me. I swiftly jumped down from the branch, knocking Jackson down to the ground as I landed. Before he could even get to his feet, I had already sprinted away. The woods blurred past as the distance increased between him and me while the world suddenly turned to complete darkness.
~*~
"Bleep! Bleep! Bleep!" the noise from my alarm clock struck me like a hammer across the head.
I turned over and slammed my hand down on it, silencing it a bit too forcefully. What a strange dream I had last night, all my senses were super sharp and my fingers had claws on them. Weird. I rolled over again when a second memory surfaced. Jackson was a wolf in the forest and I ran away from him? What a strange dream.
I was still puzzling over how strange that dream had been as I crawled out of bed. When my feet hit the floorboards, two realisations hit me instantly. Firstly, the increased sensitivity my feet had experienced in the dream was still there. Secondly, my feet were dirty with small patches of soil tainting them. My hands shook as I started at my feet and I felt my mind go blank with shock.
Author's Note: Thank you so much for reading! I hope you enjoyed this chapter, even if it was a bit slow. But things will start to get more interesting in the next one :)
What do you think is going on with Cleo? Also - are you surprised about Jackson?
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Song: Kwabs - Gecko (Overdrive) (Oliver Heldens X Becky Hill Cover)