Ten Years Ago
The thing about being eight years old is that you believe in forever.
You believe your parents will always come home. You believe summer will last until you're ready for it to end. You believe the boy crying next to you on the dock will always be there to cry with.
I believed all of those things the summer before everything changed.
"It's not fair," Elias sobbed, his face blotchy and red, snot running into his mouth in a way that should have been gross but just made me sad. "Why did it have to be my kite?"
We were sitting on the edge of Hollowpine Lake, our bare feet dangling in water that was still too cold for swimming but perfect for sitting. His kite—a cheap plastic thing shaped like a dragon that his dad bought him at the gas station—hung tangled in a pine tree about thirty feet up, completely unreachable.
"We can get another one," I said, even though I knew that wasn't the point.
"It won't be the same." He wiped his nose on his arm, leaving a silvery trail. "That one was special. Dad said—" His voice hitched. "Dad said it would fly higher than any kite ever if I believed hard enough."
I was quiet for a moment, watching the kite twist in the breeze. Even from here, I could see the colors bleeding off Elias—blue sadness, deep and honest, and underneath it a thin thread of red anger at the universe for being unfair.
I'd been seeing the colors for about a year at that point. They'd started the day after my seventh birthday, like someone flipped a switch in my brain. At first, I thought I was going crazy. Then I thought everyone could see them and just didn't talk about it. Finally, I realized it was just me—just this weird thing I could do that made people's feelings visible.
Elara said it was a gift. My mom said it was an overactive imagination. Uncle Pete said it meant I was "paying attention to the world better than most folks." I hadn't decided who was right yet.
"I'll get it down," I announced, standing up.
Elias looked at me with watery eyes. "How?"
"I'll climb the tree."
"Red, you can't—that's really high—"
"I climb trees all the time at Grandma's." This was true. Elara's property had the best climbing trees in the entire world, sturdy and low-branched and forgiving of mistakes. "It'll be easy."
It was not easy.
The pine was nothing like Elara's friendly maples and oaks. The bark was rough and sticky with sap, the branches spaced too far apart for my short legs. But I was stubborn—already, at eight years old, I was the kind of person who said things and then had to follow through or die trying.
I made it about fifteen feet up before I looked down and realized I'd made a terrible mistake.
"Red?" Elias's voice was small and scared. "Maybe you should come down."
"I'm fine," I lied, clinging to the trunk like a cat who'd climbed too high and forgotten how gravity worked.
The kite was another ten feet up. So close. I could almost reach it if I just stretched a little further—
My foot slipped.
For one terrible moment, I was airborne, the lake and sky switching places, my stomach in my throat and Elias screaming my name and the ground rushing up to meet me—
Then something caught me.
Not hands—I would have remembered hands. Not a branch—there was nothing there to catch on. Just this impossible shift in momentum, like the air itself had suddenly decided to be solid, cradling me for a heartbeat before lowering me down with a gentleness that defied physics.
I hit the ground on my back, and it should have hurt. Should have knocked the wind out of me, maybe broken ribs, definitely left bruises. Instead, it felt like landing on a mattress—a firm oof of impact, but nothing sharp, nothing cruel.
I lay there gasping, more from shock than pain, staring up at the kite still mocking me from its perch.
What just happened?
"RED!" Elias was next to me in seconds, his hands hovering over me like he wanted to help but didn't know how. "Are you okay? Should I get my mom? Do you think you broke anything? Oh God, oh God—"
"I'm fine," I wheezed, and I was—that was the strangest part. I should be hurt. I knew I should be hurt. I did a mental inventory: arms, legs, back, neck. Everything worked. No pain beyond a dull ache that was already fading.
"That was so scary." His voice was shaking. "You could have died. You could have broken your neck and died and it would have been my fault for caring about a stupid kite—"
"It's not stupid." I sat up slowly, testing my limbs, half-expecting delayed pain to kick in. Nothing. "Your dad gave it to you. That makes it special."
But my mind was elsewhere, scanning the area around us. The woods were quiet—too quiet, like they'd been holding their breath and had just now decided to breathe again. And there, just at the edge of the tree line, I saw movement.
A flash of dark coat. The suggestion of a man's silhouette, there and gone so fast I could have imagined it.
Uncle Pete?
But that didn't make sense. Uncle Pete lived in town, and Mom had said he was working today. Besides, if he'd been here, if he'd somehow caught me, why wouldn't he come out and check if I was okay?
"It's just a kite." Elias was still spiraling, crying now—scared-crying, not sad-crying. "You're more important than a kite."
Something warm bloomed in my chest at that, distracting me from the mystery. I looked at him, at the way his colors were all tangled up—blue and red and a soft gold that I was learning meant love, the kind that wasn't romantic but wasn't less real.
"We're friends," I said simply. "Friends help each other. Even with stupid stuff."
"It's not stupid," he said.
"I know."
I glanced back at the tree line one more time. Nothing. No movement. No colors bleeding from the shadows. Maybe I'd imagined it. Maybe the fall had rattled my brain more than I thought.
Or maybe something—someone—had been watching. Had been there to catch me when I fell.
The thought sent a chill down my spine that had nothing to do with the cold lake water.
A voice called from up the path: "Scarlett! Elias! Come on, lunch is ready!"
Jen.
She appeared a moment later, all gangly limbs and wild dark hair, carrying a basket that was definitely heavier than she could comfortably manage. Jennifer Park, my best friend since kindergarten, the only other person in the world who didn't make fun of me for spending summers at my weird grandmother's cottage in the woods.
"What are you guys doing?" She set the basket down with a theatrical groan. "My mom packed enough sandwiches to feed an army. I told her it was just us three but she was like 'growing children need sustenance, Jennifer' and—" She stopped, taking in Elias's tears and my grass-stained clothes. "What happened?"
"Red fell out of a tree trying to get my kite," Elias said miserably.
"Why didn't you just wait for the wind to blow it down?"
We stared at her.
"The wind always blows things down eventually," she said, like this was obvious. "You just have to be patient."
I looked up at the kite. As if on cue, a gust of wind hit the tree, and the dragon kite tumbled down, landing in a perfect pristine pile at our feet.
Elias stared at it. Then at Jen. Then he started laughing—the kind of relieved, slightly hysterical laughing that comes after crying.
"See?" Jen sat down next to us and started unpacking sandwiches. "Patience. Also, Red, you have pine sap in your hair. Grandma Elara's going to kill you."
"She'll help me get it out," I said confidently. "She knows how to fix everything."
That was true that summer. Elara did know how to fix everything—scraped knees, broken hearts, impossible tangles. Her cottage was our headquarters, the place we'd run to when Jen's mom was being overbearing or Elias's dad was traveling for work or my parents were fighting again.
We ate sandwiches and planned our next adventure—something involving the old cemetery and a dare that Jen insisted she wasn't scared of but definitely was. The kite sat between us, slightly worse for wear but whole.
"Thanks for trying," Elias said to me quietly while Jen was distracted by a butterfly.
"Always," I said.
And I meant it.
But later, when I was back at Elara's cottage trying to wash pine sap out of my hair, I couldn't shake the feeling that someone had been watching at the lake. That the impossible gentleness of my fall hadn't been luck or physics—it had been intention.
"Grandma?" I asked while she worked conditioner through my tangled hair. "Does Uncle Pete ever come out to the lake?"
Elara's hands paused for just a fraction of a second. "Sometimes. Why?"
"I thought I saw someone in the woods today. After I fell."
"And you're not hurt?" Her voice was carefully neutral. "Not even a bruise?"
I shook my head. "That's the weird part. I should be hurt. I fell really far."
Elara was quiet for a long moment, her fingers working through my hair with practiced gentleness. When she finally spoke, her voice was soft. "Sometimes the woods take care of their own, baby. Especially the ones who are brave enough to climb high."
It wasn't really an answer, but it felt true anyway.
Nine Years Ago
The summer I turned nine, my parents started fighting more.
Not the normal kind of fighting—the kind where they disagreed about money or whose turn it was to do dishes and then made up later with whispered apologies and closed bedroom doors. This was different. Colder. The kind of fighting that happened in silences and turned backs.
I spent more time at Elara's that summer than at home.
"They're just stressed," Grandma said one afternoon while we shelled peas on the porch. "Adult problems. Nothing for you to worry about."
But I did worry. I worried in the way the colors showed me—my mom's blue getting deeper every day, my dad's red burning hotter. Their emotional doubles started appearing more often, pacing around the apartment like caged animals.
Elias noticed, because Elias always noticed when I was sad.
"Want to go to the fort?" he asked one afternoon when he found me sitting alone by the lake, throwing rocks at nothing.
The fort was our masterpiece—a ramshackle structure we'd built in the woods behind Elara's cottage using scavenged wood and determination. It leaked when it rained and had spiders in the corners, but it was ours.
"Sure," I said, not because I wanted to go but because Elias was trying and that deserved something.
Jen met us there, carrying a backpack full of snacks she'd "borrowed" from her mom's pantry. We sat in our fort and ate chips and tried to pretend everything was normal.
"My parents are getting divorced," I said suddenly, the words falling out before I could stop them.
Silence.
Then Jen: "Are you sure?"
"Pretty sure. They keep talking about lawyers and custody and who gets the house." I picked at the label on my juice box. "Dad wants to move back to Seattle. Mom wants to stay here."
"What do you want?" Elias asked.
I hadn't thought about that. It seemed like such an adult question—what do you want, Scarlett, as if my wanting had any weight in decisions that were already being made.
"I want to stay with Grandma," I said finally. "Forever."
"You can't live with your grandma forever," Jen said practically. "I mean, you can visit, but—"
"Why not?" I was getting worked up now, my voice rising. "She has space. She doesn't fight. She doesn't make me choose between Seattle and here. She lets me be me."
"Because parents are supposed to take care of kids," Jen said gently. "That's how it works."
"Well, it's working badly."
Elias had been quiet through all of this, his colors cycling through shades of blue sympathy and gold protectiveness. Now he reached over and took my hand—not romantic, just... present.
"Whatever happens," he said seriously, "we'll still be friends. Even if you move to Seattle. We'll write letters. And visit. And when we're grown-ups, we'll live near each other again."
"Promise?" My voice was small.
"Promise."
Jen put her hand on top of ours. "Triple promise. You're stuck with us, Red. Forever."
It was the kind of promise kids make—absolute and impossible and completely sincere. We believed it with everything we had.
The fort smelled like pine and chips and friendship. Outside, the woods did what woods do—grew and breathed and kept secrets. Inside, we were invincible.
For a little while longer.
Eight Years Ago
The accident happened in October.
I remember because the leaves were changing, and my mom had been excited about driving up to see the fall colors. Dad was going to come too—a family trip, an attempt to prove they could still be a family even though the divorce papers were filed.
I was supposed to go with them. I'd begged all week.
But the night before, I got sick—some kind of stomach bug that had me throwing up every hour. Elara insisted I stay with her while my parents went on their "romantic weekend away." Mom kissed my forehead and promised to bring me back the prettiest red leaf she could find.
She never got the chance.
The police said it was an animal attack. A pack of wolves had come out of nowhere on a rural highway, attacking the car while it was stopped. Dad tried to fight them off. Mom tried to run. Neither of them made it.
I learned about it from Elara's face when she got the phone call.
She didn't cry right away. She just went very still, very quiet, her colors draining to a flat gray I'd never seen before. Then she hung up, walked to the couch where I was watching cartoons, and pulled me into her arms.
"Baby," she said softly. "Something happened."
I knew before she said it. Some part of me had known since she answered the phone, maybe even before that. The colors around the house had been wrong all morning—black pooling in corners, silver threading through the air like warnings I didn't know how to read.
"They're dead," I said. Not a question.
Elara held me tighter. "Yes."
I didn't cry. Not then. I just sat there in her arms, feeling the world rearrange itself into before and after, into the girl who had parents and the girl who didn't.
The crying came later. Days of it. Weeks.
Elias cried with me.
He showed up at Elara's cottage the day after the funeral—his mom had driven him, probably told him to be brief and respectful. Instead, he took one look at me sitting on the porch steps and burst into tears.
"I'm sorry," he sobbed, sitting down next to me. "I'm so, so sorry. It's not fair. They were good people and it's not fair and I hate it."
And somehow, his crying helped. Because at least someone else was feeling it too, feeling the wrongness and injustice of it. Everyone else had been so careful around me, so quiet and adult. Elias just felt it with me.
We sat on those steps for hours, crying until we couldn't anymore, until our faces hurt and our eyes were swollen and the sun went down.
Jen came by later with cookies her mom had made. We ate them even though they tasted like nothing, even though eating felt wrong when my parents couldn't eat anymore.
"We're still here," she said firmly. "Me and Elias. We're not going anywhere."
Another promise. Another absolute certainty.
I wanted to believe her.
Seven Years Ago
Living with Elara full-time was different than visiting for summers.
The cottage became my whole world—my bedroom with the iron bed frame, the kitchen where she taught me to cook, the woods that whispered secrets I was starting to understand. Elara enrolled me in the local school, where everyone knew I was "that poor girl whose parents died" but Jen and Elias wouldn't let anyone treat me differently.
We were a unit: Red, Jen, and E-Cryis (the nickname had stuck, much to Elias's dismay).
Jen was the practical one, always with a plan and a backup plan and snacks in her backpack. Elias was the emotional one, wearing his heart on his sleeve and crying at movies and hurt animals and injustice. I was the weird one, the girl who saw colors and talked to her grandmother about forests that talked back.
We fit together perfectly.
"Truth or dare," Jen announced one afternoon when we were sprawled in the fort, bored and twelve and convinced we were very grown up.
"Truth," I said, because I wasn't stupid enough to take a dare from Jennifer Park.
"Do you ever see colors around dead things?"
The question surprised me. We didn't talk about my color-vision much—it was just accepted, like Elias's crying or Jen's need to organize everything.
"No," I said slowly. "Dead things don't have emotions. Just... absence. Like a hole where the colors should be."
"What about ghosts?"
"I don't know. I've never seen a ghost."
"What about your parents?" Elias asked quietly. "Do you ever see them?"
I shook my head. "No. They're just... gone."
We were quiet for a moment.
"Truth or dare," I said to Elias, changing the subject.
"Dare." He sat up straighter, trying to be brave.
"I dare you to go one whole day without crying."
His face fell. "That's mean, Red."
"No, it's a challenge. I think you can do it."
"What if something sad happens?"
"Then you count to ten and breathe through it. Like Grandma taught me."
He considered this. "Okay. One day. But it has to be a boring day. No movies, no books, no thinking about sad things."
"Deal."
He made it until 4 PM the next day before a commercial about rescue dogs broke him. But he tried, and that mattered.
Six Years Ago
The summer we turned thirteen, Elias started changing.
Not dramatically—not overnight. But slowly, like he was growing into someone different. Taller. Quieter. His crying jags became less frequent, more controlled. He started working out with his dad, building muscle where there used to be lankiness.
"You're getting strong," Jen observed one day at the lake.
"Dad says I need to be able to protect myself." Elias flexed experimentally. "And protect people I care about."
"From what?" I asked.
He shrugged, but his colors said more—red determination, gold purpose. "Just... stuff. Bad stuff."
It was vague in the way that meant he knew more than he was saying.
Around that time, I started noticing things too. The way Elara would tense when certain sounds came from the woods. The way she'd check the locks more carefully, mutter her rules under her breath like prayers. The way she started teaching me things—how to read weather, how to talk to the forest politely, how to count to thirteen before making important decisions.
"Why thirteen?" I asked.
"Because twelve is safe and fourteen is too late," she said cryptically. "Thirteen is the choice."
I didn't understand then. I filed it away with all the other Elara-wisdom that would make sense later.
One night, I heard howling. Close enough that it woke me up, close enough that I could feel it in my chest. I crept to the window and saw her—Elara, standing on the porch in her nightgown, looking at something in the trees I couldn't see.
She was smiling.
Not scared. Not worried. Smiling, like she was greeting an old friend.
I never told anyone about that. Not Jen. Not Elias. It felt private, like I'd seen something I wasn't supposed to.
Five Years Ago
At fourteen, I was angry at everything.
Angry at my parents for dying. Angry at the universe for being unfair. Angry at myself for not being over it yet, for still having nightmares, for still seeing the black emptiness where they used to be.
I picked fights with Jen over nothing. I snapped at Elara when she asked about homework. I avoided Elias because his worried looks made me feel guilty for being a mess.
"You're being a brat," Jen said finally, after I'd canceled plans three times in a row.
"So?"
"So knock it off. We get it. Your life sucks. Mine sucks too—my parents are getting divorced now, by the way, thanks for asking. And Elias's dad is sick. But we show up for each other anyway. That's what friends do."
I stared at her. "Your parents are getting divorced?"
"Three months now. But you've been too busy being tragic to notice."
That stung because it was true.
I found Elias at the lake that evening, skipping stones. "Jen told me about your dad."
"Yeah." He didn't look at me. "Cancer. They're doing treatment, but..."
"I'm sorry. I should have—I didn't know."
"I didn't tell you. Didn't want to make things worse." He threw a stone that skipped seven times before sinking. "You've got enough to deal with."
"That's not how friendship works."
"I know." He smiled slightly. "Jen yelled at me too. She's very disappointed in both of us."
We sat there until dark, not talking much, just being present. It wasn't enough to fix anything, but it was something.
Four Years Ago
Elias's dad died in March.
The funeral was small, respectful. Elias didn't cry—not in public, anyway. He stood next to his mom with his jaw tight and his colors a mess of blue and red and gold all tangled together.
After, I found him behind the church, finally letting it out.
I sat next to him and didn't say anything. Just let him cry on my shoulder until he was empty.
"I couldn't protect him," he said finally, his voice wrecked. "I got stronger, I learned things, I tried so hard, and I couldn't protect him."
"It was cancer. You can't punch cancer."
"I know. But I should have been able to do something." He pulled back, wiping his face. "Your parents died because of wolves. My dad died because of cells that forgot how to behave. And both times I was completely useless."
"You're not useless."
"I am. I'm weak and I cry all the time and I can't save anyone." His colors flared red, angry and desperate. "But I'm going to change that. I'm going to get strong enough that next time something bad happens, I can actually help."
"Elias—"
"I'm serious, Red. I'm going to learn how to fight. How to protect people. How to be useful instead of just... emotional."
There was something in his voice that scared me—determination that looked like obsession, purpose that felt like running away.
"Don't change too much," I said quietly. "I like you emotional."
He smiled, but it didn't reach his eyes. "I'll try to save some of it for you."
Three Years Ago
Elias started disappearing.
Not completely—he still came around, still hung out with me and Jen. But there were gaps now. Weekends where he was "busy with family stuff." Evenings when he couldn't hang out because of "training."
"What kind of training?" Jen asked.
"Just... self-defense stuff. Martial arts."
But I could see his colors changing. The gold getting brighter, more structured. The silver appearing around his wrists like threads being woven into something purposeful.
"Are you okay?" I asked him one rare afternoon when it was just us.
"Yeah. I'm good. Really good, actually." He seemed lighter, more focused. "I found something I'm good at. Something that matters."
"What?"
"Protecting people. Being the kind of person who can stand between danger and the people I love." He looked at me seriously. "Like you, Red. I want to be able to protect you."
"I don't need protecting."
"Everyone needs protecting sometimes." His voice was gentle. "Even stubborn girls who live in cottages in the woods with grandmothers who talk to trees."
I punched his arm. "Elara doesn't talk to trees."
"She absolutely does."
"Okay, she does. But respectfully."
We laughed, and for a moment, it felt like before—like we were still kids in a fort making impossible promises.
But something had shifted. Elias had found a purpose that didn't include me and Jen. And I was starting to understand that growing up meant growing apart, even when you didn't want to.
Two Years Ago
Jen left for college on the East Coast.
It was supposed to be all of us—me, Jen, and Elias, going to the state school together like we'd vaguely planned since middle school. But Jen got a scholarship to MIT, and you don't turn down MIT even for your best friends.
"I'll visit," she promised through tears as her parents loaded the car. "Winter break, spring break, I'll be here so much you'll get sick of me."
"Impossible," I said, hugging her hard enough to bruise.
"Take care of E-Cryis for me. Make sure he doesn't get too serious."
"I'll try."
After she left, it was just me and Elias and Elara. And Elias was barely around anymore—his "training" had gotten more intensive, more secretive. Sometimes I wouldn't see him for weeks.
When I did see him, he was different. Harder. Still kind, still caring, but like someone had taken all his softness and forged it into something more durable.
"I'm leaving too," he told me one evening in November. "After I graduate."
"Where?"
"Huntsman Corps. It's a... training program. They teach people how to deal with dangerous situations. Supernatural threats."
My heart stopped. "Supernatural threats?"
"Like the wolves that killed your parents." His colors were steady, determined. "Like the things that go bump in the night that everyone pretends don't exist. Someone has to stand between normal people and those things. I want to be one of those someones."
"That's dangerous."
"So is doing nothing."
We looked at each other, and I saw the gulf between us—I was Elara's granddaughter, learning to talk to forests and count to thirteen. He was becoming a hunter, learning to kill the very things I was being taught to negotiate with.
"Will you come back?" I asked.
"Always. This is home. You're home." He took my hand—we'd held hands a thousand times, but this felt different. Final. "I promise, Red. No matter where I go or what I become, I'll come back for you."
Another promise.
I wanted to believe it.
One Year Ago
Elias left in June, right after graduation.
No ceremony, no big goodbye. Just a text: Leaving today. Training starts tomorrow. I'll call when I can.
I didn't cry. I was too numb for crying.
Elara found me on the porch that evening, staring at the woods.
"Everyone leaves," I said.
"Not everyone." She sat beside me. "I'm still here."
"For now."
"For as long as I can be." She put her arm around me. "People move forward, baby. That's what they do. It's not abandonment—it's growth."
"It feels like abandonment."
"I know."
We sat there as the sun went down, and I felt the weight of being sixteen and alone except for an elderly grandmother and a forest that whispered secrets.
That was the summer I started really paying attention to the rules. Really listening when the woods talked back. Really understanding that Elara was teaching me things I'd need to know when she was gone.
That was the summer I stopped being a kid and started being whoever I was going to become.
Present Day
The memory dissolves, and I'm back in the cottage, the journal heavy in my lap, my phone showing Elias's number.
He'd left to become strong enough to protect me. To never feel useless again.
And now he's coming back, a hunter trained to kill the exact kind of creature that's been courting me with bread and patience.
"This is going to be complicated," I tell the empty room.
The scarf warms in agreement.
Outside, the woods wait. Inside, I count to thirteen for the hundredth time and wonder what happens when the boy who wanted to protect me meets the wolf who's been waiting for me to stop counting.
I guess I'm about to find out.