AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“And my ears?” I demand, desperate for more answers.
“Yeah,” he nods, taking a closer look. “You’ve got elf ears now.”
“Elf ears!?” I shake my head at myself. “No, no. This can’t be happening. This is a dream, right? I’m still dreaming. We aren’t really here, in the woods. We’re back at the factory. Yes, this is a dream.” I keep babbling, and he lets me. He knows I need to get it out of my system somehow. This seems to be the best way, to just keep repeating that this is a dream.
“No,” he says after a few moments have passed. “You’re not dreaming.”
He takes me by the hand, and his touch calms me down. At least a little.
“I know this might be difficult to accept, but you’re not a human,” he says.
“But…” I look at him, disbelieving. “That is what I believed my entire life.”
“I don’t know if the shifters know,” he suddenly wonders. “It would be better that they didn’t.”
“Why?” I ask.
“Because dryads are very powerful beings,” he explains.
He takes my hand and spreads my fingers wide apart.
“Don’t,” I pull my hand away from him. “My fingers are gross.”
He pauses, then reaches for my hand again. He touches my fingers gently with his, intertwining them. This time, the touch of his hand is warm, pleasant.
“Your fingers are beautiful,” he says. “And so is the rest of you… pointy ears or not.”
I chuckle. I can’t resist him. I doubt I’ll ever be able to.
“You see your fingers as ugly, but they can do amazing things,” he continues. “Try it.”
He lets go of my hand, and it remains floating in the air between us, as if it doesn’t belong to either of us. That is certainly how I feel about it right now, as if it’s not my hand at all.
“I don’t know how,” I admit.
“You do,” he corrects me. “You’re just fighting it.”
“I’m not,” I pout.
“You are,” he says. “And it’s OK. I understand. I would fight it also, if I thought I was something… ordinary all my life, and now, it turns out I’m not. I’m extraordinary. I’m supernatural. I’m beyond belief.”
Once again, he makes me smile with his words.
“So… what do I do?” I ask again, moving my fingers forward and backward, flickering them.
“Try to close your eyes,” he says again, just like that time when he helped me remember Milena. I immediately do as he says. “Your body knows what to do, even if your mind may not know yet. Let these two parts of you meet. Let your body tell your mind what to do.”
I inhale deeply. Once again, that warmth rises out of some hidden depths of my body. This time, I don’t fight it. I welcome it. It surges through me. I feel it in the back of my neck, like goosebumps, then down both my shoulders and out of my fingers.
“There!” I hear him exclaim. “You’re doing it!”
“Doing what?” I ask, opening my eyes. “Aaaah!” I gasp, looking at my fingers.
They’ve began to sprout branches, extending several inches. I can’t even see where my skin ends and where the branches begin, because they’re somehow merged together.
“What on earth…” I say more silently this time, mesmerized. One of the branches pops open with a leaf and another, a small, white cherry blossom.
“You’re blooming, Bianca,” Edmund says in awe.
