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“You’re always staring out there. What are you looking for?”
Will startles at the voice, shoulders hitching reflexively and he fumbles with the coin in his hand; a small, dirty thing with a hole in the middle. It was like nothing they had in the village. When Will had shown it to his father, he was told to keep it safe; “Might be worth something. You never know!”
It had been the latest windowsill gift from his friend, after several months of nothing. Will hadn’t been worried; the gifts came in waves, with long periods of silence between them. Lone moss balls left sitting on pinewood for weeks, months on end.
Until, eventually, Will would wake up to a gleaming amber stone, or a snail shell, or the femur bone of a rabbit.
Or a coin.
He hadn’t seen the raven since that first day, though. Just a single, ink black feather, left beside a slightly crushed forget-me-not.
He hasn’t been back in the forest, either. Always standing on the outskirts. Watching, waiting, for just a glimpse
Will turns the coin in his fingers, before looking over his shoulder at the girl - he thinks her name is Lou Ellen. They weren’t quite friends, but she didn’t avoid him like the other kids would, cupped hands and sideways glances trading whispers that would eventually reach Will’s ears.
Strange, quiet, possessed. The doctor’s son, who went into the woods as a boy, and something else came back in his place.
Maybe it is because Lou Ellen is as much an outcast as Will - her mother was a witch, so the village children would say. Lou seemed to enjoy the rumour far more than Will would if he were in her shoes, leaning into the whispers with a blank, vacant stare and a murmured curse to the kids who were a little too mean. Pockets of her charcoal frock full of strange stones and beetle shells.
Spiders, once.
“Do you think it’s real?” He asks instead of answering her question.
“What?”
Will nods towards the woods. “The creature in the forest.”
Lou Ellen grins, and settles on the grass beside him. Will stiffens - she's closer than he would like, but if Lou Ellen notices, she doesn’t mention it.
Instead, she answers, “The monster, you mean. ‘Course it’s real. You've seen it, haven't you?” She leans in, dark eyes round and curious
Will frowns, fingers closing over the coin in his hand. Protective. “It’s not a monster.”
Lou Ellen tilts her head, but Will finds he can't read the expression in her eyes. “Why are you so convinced it's not a monster?”
Something curls in Will’s chest, indignant and anxious, and he finds himself searching the girl's eyes for the usual sign of fear. “Why are you so convinced it is?”
He never finds it. Lou Ellen grins.
“I'm not.”
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─── ⋆⋅☼⋅⋆ ───