Kita was sat on the front porch. It was night, and the moon was attempting to filter through the clouds. Cross-legged, she took a deep breath and held it, slowly breathing out through .

            It was a ritual she carried with her from the forest, and now, while all the wolves were sleeping, memories of her home were the only thing she wanted to think about.

            Not this house.

            Not these wolves.

            Not Kai and his magic-

            Breathe. Just breathe. Feel the moon.

            But how did Kai have magic? No matter how she tried to clear her mind she couldn’t get past that one question.

            In the forest, magic was a sensitive topic. It hadn’t always been that way, but it had for as long as Kita could remember. Everything she knew about it was from whispers behind closed doors and furtive glances thrown behind turned backs.

            The fact was, magic hadn’t always been scarce.

            Apparently, it had once flown through the forest with the wind and the leaves, so ingrained in every life that it pulsed with every Fey heartbeat. She didn’t know what had happened, by her guess only the five Generals would know, but nowadays magic was rare. Any Fey born with the ability to use it was automatically taken to the Inner Circle to protect the source of the Fey.

            Kita had been born with magic, yes, but not enough to be noticed. It was more of a bubbling under her ribs, something she carried with her rather than something she could control. She wasn’t noticed by anyone looking for magic users, she even doubted her parents knew about it. She’d dutifully kept it hidden all these years, not wanting to be taken away from her home.

            But all of her life she had been told that magic was a trait of the Fey, and only the Fey. Here she was, with a wolf who had that very same ability. How was that even possible? There was a possibility he didn’t even know about it, but that didn’t change the fact that he existed.

            What else had she been lied to about?

            And so Kita was sat under the dark sky questioning everything she had ever been told, and her thoughts turned to home. Because as much as she was doubting the Fey, they were her family. She’d never left the forest before, and even when she’d gone on trips with her friends she always knew that she would end up at home at the end of it.

            And she missed her family. As disappointed as her parents had been about her often wayward choices, they still loved her, and Kita could only imagine the heartbreak and shame she was causing them. Only this sliver moonlight was familiar to her, and even that was barely showing tonight.

            Footsteps creaked on the porch behind her and Kita tensed, looking quickly over her shoulder to see a figure with his hands raised in a surrendering motion, a goofy smile tugging at his lips.

            “Luhan?”

            His face broke into a smile, “you remembered!” He kept his voice quiet, almost hushed, but it was still tinted with enthusiasm. He sat down beside her not seeming to care that she hadn’t yet taken her eyes off him. “Can’t sleep huh? Must be weird being out here.”

            Kita nodded, “yeah, I guess.”

            Luhan hmm’d, leaning back on one hand and looking at the yard where the edge of the forest lay silent and unmoving. He seemed immune to the fact that Kita was still staring, but she couldn’t help herself. Luhan’s features were so delicate, like he’d been finely painted by the lightest of a brush. If she didn’t know better, (and if she couldn’t see the rounded tips of his ears) Luhan could have too easily passed for a Fey. It was unnerving to her, wolves were supposed to be big and strong and mean looking. Luhan almost looked… adorable, especially when he turned his big deer-eyes on her.

            “So what did you steal?” He asked, leaning closer with a grin. “I promise I won’t tell.”

            “You can’t ask her that without me here!” A hushed whisper came from the window above them, and another figure dropped down silently beside them. One look at his eyes and Kita knew exactly who he was, “Xiumin.”

            Xiumin dropped down to sit on her other side, wiggling his eyebrows at her playfully, “Go on, what was it?”

            Looking between the two expectant wolves Kita couldn’t help but let out a chuckle, “It was nothing, really.”

            “It can’t have been nothing,” Xiumin pressed, “they wouldn’t have put you out here if it was.”

            “Come on, it’s not like we’re going to report you.”

            Kita shook her head smiling, before giving in, just a little. “It was a rock.”

            The two boys were silent for a second, before meeting each other’s eyes and saying in unison, “A rock?”         

            Kita nodded, “it’s very old, and it was supposed to have magical properties, but it doesn’t. Either that or it’s been replaced with a fake and I got myself banished for nothing.”

            Again there was a beat of silence as the two boys processed what she’d told them. Then Kita had her hand in her pocket and she was fishing it out. They boys leaned closer, eyes widening expectantly, not knowing quite what to expect but it certainly wasn’t this.

            It was more of a pebble than a rock. It sat neatly in the centre of Kita’s palm. Luhan stretched out his arm to take it,

            “May I?”

            Kita hesitated, but then nodded. It’s not like she had anything to lose, the stone was useless, it had proven that already. Luhan could do no harm to it, even if he threw it into the woods it would do her no more good than it was doing now.

            He plucked it from her hand and held it between two fingers examining it from every angle. “Well, it’s a pretty colour, but it’s just a rock.” He flipped it to Xiumin who looked at it more closely but came to the same conclusion.

            The appearance was probably the most important thing about it. It was a pearly grey, smoothed to the point where it shone in the light. As Luhan said, it was a very pretty rock, but the best light to bring out its beauty was moonlight, the light that the Fey treasured above all else.

            “It’s called the moonstone.” Kita whispered, having now gone far beyond what she had ever intended to tell them, but her life in the forest seemed so far away. How was she to know that she would ever be able to return, that they wouldn’t just leave her out here? She just wanted someone who didn’t know that they should be judging her for stealing the moonstone, who didn’t know Fey history and Fey rules, someone who would call a rock a rock and not make it to be anything bigger than it was.

            “Wait, didn’t they search you before throwing you out here? How did you smuggle it out?” Kita froze, she hadn’t actually expected Xiumin to be that perceptive, but he was obviously more of a deep thinker than she gave him credit for.

            She shrugged in response, “I guess they thought I wouldn’t be dumb enough to keep it on me.” She relaxed as Luhan laughed, his perfectly proportioned face contorting into an –if possible- even more adorable laughing face.

            The truth was that in that moment back in the forest, she’d wanted to hide the moonstone from the guards more desperately than she’d wanted anything else. And somehow, she’d managed to do so. They’d searched her again and again but their hands seemed to slip over the stone every time. Magic was her only guess, that it had somehow helped her in her time of need, but she had no proper explanation for it.

            To take her mind off the situation, she peeked at Xiumin from the corner of her eyes. Although he wasn’t as quite as fair as Luhan, he was still not what she expected of a wolf. After a moment the corner of his mouth tilted up and she knew he’d caught her.

            “Not what you expected a wolf to look like?” He asked teasingly, and Kita heard Luhan laugh on her other side,

            “She stared at me for ages earlier! Maybe it’s a Fey thing!”

            Kita blushed a little at having been caught, but then admitted, “you’re not quite what I was expecting.”

            “What do they teach you in that forest? That we’re all bloodthirsty monsters?” Luhan joked, but Kita’s nervous chuckle told him that he’d actually guessed correctly, “Wait you’re serious?”

            “Well yeah, so I was kind of expecting to see, I don’t know, actual wolves.”

            Luhan was about to retort but Xiumin in, “Well you’re not quite what we expected either.” He mimicked her wording and gave her another lopsided grin.

            Luhan seemed to pick up the idea and nodded eagerly, “Yeah! How come you don’t have wings! I always thought Fey could fly!”

            Immediately, they knew they’d said something wrong. Kita’s face, which had then been easy-going with their teasing, had fallen. “The Fey don’t have wings anymore. Only a few of us do, and I’m not one of them.”

            Luhan and Xiumin exchanged guilty glances, trying to communicate telepathically about how to fix the situation and cheer up the poor Fey girl. Their minds were both coming up blank, but they were saved when a window slammed open two floors above them.

            “Not that I don’t really enjoy this little share fest, but some of us are trying to sleep.” Sehun’s drawl accompanied his annoyed face as he poked it out of the window, obviously woken up by their conversation.

            Luhan gave him an apologetic glance, and sighed heavily when Sehun slammed his window shut, probably making more noise than the three on the porch had made all night.

            “Well he’s going to be cheerful in the morning.” Xiumin groaned at the thought.

            “But he’s right, we probably should get some sleep” Luhan said, helping Kita to her feet. “Wait, you do sleep right?” His eyes were wide as if he was afraid of offending her and Kita found herself placing her hand on his shoulder to calm him down.

            “Yes, Fey sleep.”

            Luhan let out a sigh of relief, slinging his arm over her shoulder, and Kita felt a brief touch on her arm as Xiumin passed her to open the front door, sending a warm comforting smile at her.

            She’d been shown her room earlier, it had been Lay and Chen’s room before she had arrived, but they had insisted on moving and had found beds somewhere else in the house. Kita had been cautious at first, but she appreciated the gesture. As much as the wolves seemed friendly enough, she wasn’t sure she was ready to sleep in the same room as one of them.

            Xiumin and Luhan bid her goodnight when they reached ‘her’ door, “Don’t stay up much longer, you never know what’ll be happening tomorrow”, and then they’d disappeared into another room down the hall.             

            Slowly, Kita made her way into her new room. The two beds were up against opposing walls, and Chen and Lay’s stuff was pressed as far into one wall as possible to make more room for her, but she still felt like a stranger here. This wasn’t her room, this wasn’t her house. This wasn’t her home and these people weren’t her family. Her hands clasped around the moonstone in her pocket, briefly cursing the rock for tempting her and placing all of the blame on it for a brief second, happy to have something else to be angry at other than herself for just a moment.

            Then she felt weariness pulling at her, almost as if the sight of beds was making her realise her tiredness.

            “Well it has been a long day,” she murmured to herself, chuckling dryly at the understatement. But even then she couldn’t bring herself to climb into a stranger’s bed, so she pulled a folded blanket from the bottom of one of them and hoping that whichever wolf it was wouldn’t mind her using it this way, curled up on the ground and covered herself with it. It wasn’t particularly comfortable, but it would do.

            She her side, facing the window and seeing that same sliver of moonlight, she closed her eyes and imagined that she was looking at it from her own home in the forest, slowly allowing herself to drift off to sleep and promising that tomorrow would be better.

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A little exposition to explain a little of the world they live in, and I promise, there’s more Kai in the next chapter!

PS, considering this is my first story on here, I can’t actually believe the amount of support and love you all give, you’re all epic!