The Red Cape

The land I live on is sculpted by angels. Not the perfect cherubs who sit on gold thrones and endless praise, but the bitter, hardened spirits, too drunk on power to forge smooth curves. It’s full of jagged lines, treacherous crossings, and resigned flora resting among grey trees. It’s not pretty, but on the hilltop—where lightning always strikes twice at our charred trees—my mother built our cabin.

The cracked wood in our walls resemble my mother’s rough hands; they echoed love louder than anything else. The dripping water from our imperfect roof echoed my childhood cravings for a friend. It's in those dusty corners that I learned to conjure up the things I needed within my imagination. That I learned what loneliness was, and to be angry when it bit me. That I learned to forgive when I found the courage to be alone.

Outside, we charted the surrounding woods out over the years, until we could weave through the tendrils and identify every leaf in our sleep.

It wasn’t glamorous, but home was home. Home was the nightly howling, just close enough to jolt us awake from time to time. Home was the thorny briars that encircled our cabin like a fence. Home was the stream at the bottom of the hill, cast in shadows, always smelling faintly of rotting carcasses.

The villagers called my mother and I witches, since we lived in a place they lacked the courage to explore. If any of them took a moment to forgive these harsh woods, they might be able to see the beauty carved into the bark. If they looked close enough, they might see the fear glowing in the eyes of any creature clever enough to comprehend their footsteps.

That's what my mother told me—back when she still comforted herself with word. The truth is, we didn't choose to live on that unforgiving hill. As outsiders—strange birds who didn't know how to clip our own wings—we lived between worlds. My mother, exiled from home when she had me without marriage, brought me up all alone in the woods. And that was where I, increasingly hardened to the way of our world, learned to grow up.

The first years in my memory were fraught with fear—we’d heard so much about the dangers of the woods, but never did we expect to root our hopes and dreams within them. Even so, it was almost better than the townspeople's’ jeers my mother later repeated to my young ears. Fear and cowardice had a funny effect on the weak, I suppose. As I grew older, my mother began to hide her words deeper and deeper inside. By the time I turned thirteen, we spoke only in gestures, practiced understanding, and paved our routes around routine misunderstandings. She became, slowly over the years, mute. I blamed the world around us, ignorant and spiteful as it was. And for a long time, before I learned to let go, I blamed my father too.

Some speculated that my father cursed her when he left. Others believed she was crazy. Always had been, always will be. I figured it was heartbreak. Either way, dwelling on speculations never made a difference. Tragically, he became a ghost hanging over my childhood imagination, or an empty page, just waiting for little girls like me to fill in with abstracted fantasies. Perfect fathers with perfect excuses, ready to love with arms wide open.

Once I was old enough to know better, I stopped filling in those gaps. I stopped thinking about him at all. Not if I could help it. He was a bastard—always was, always will be.

Before he entered my mother’s life, my mother was a seamstress. One of the few pieces she’d taken with her on her flight was a scarlet cape that she carried me in. I’d always imagined her love sewn underneath each hem, her old confidence threaded through the pieces. I’d imagine some part of her ached to see me grow into the garment every day, a constant reminder of a better time.

I loved the cape to pieces. Red against black, light resisting shadow. It was funny how much I believed the garment made me somehow better, brighter, than the world around me, like I could carry my mother’s past, her old happiness, with me wherever I went.

It’d be funny, I think, if it weren’t so tragic. I loved the way the cape set me apart, even if it got too much at times. Once in a while, my mother and I would venture into the village for supplies. We were infamous—the witch and her cursed, red child, I suppose. I loathed the way villagers looked at me—equal parts intrigued, equal parts frightened—as if I were a wild animal, descended to exact my vengeance. Their eyes always wandered to my red cape, if only to avoid gaping at the scar that ran down my right eye.

I suppose I could’ve put my head down and drowned my colours out with tones of black and brown like everyone else, but why? Why should I have to compromise who I am for those who would never accept me? That was the one benefit of standing on the outside: you could do whatever you damn well wanted. When your entire existence was raised up by the hands of isolation and suffering, you were almost invincible.

But these self-assuring mantras didn’t always work. So when my mother stopped speaking altogether, I began avoiding the villages. I built a garden around our property and took care of my mother as best I could. The years passed peacefully, and we were even, dare I say, happy for a while.

Then, my mother died.

I can still remember how sunny it was that day. The clouds above congregated above our hut like a halo as she held my hand for the last time on her deathbed. Her pale face was like a pastel reflection of my own future. For better or for worse, I could not look away.

Then, after a decade of silence, her voice vibrated once more with her final words: “Hyejin.” I leaned closer, my expression stoic as I willed myself not to cry. “Live.” She coughed. I waited, rubbing her arm with what little comfort remained in my palms. “Find the happiness...you deserve.”

I nodded. I couldn’t stop thinking about how foreign my mother’s voice sounded in my ear. We exchanged our last burst of love with our eyes, my hands gripped around hers. I placed my forehead against our entwined fingers, and let the silence pass through us and transport us to a place beyond this plane of suffering.

We stayed like this until her hand slipped through mine. God, I could still hear the crack of my heart breaking in two as I threw my arms around her shoulders and cried. I cried and wailed until I could almost believe the sky would open up and take me with her. If not, maybe it would at least rain some sympathy down on me.

But it didn't.

It was hours after I buried my mother that I realized I was completely and utterly alone. The silence this time was not the presence of my mother. It was an oppressive reminder of my loneliness, the stillness of the air, and above all, the stillness of an indifferent world.

Would anyone mourn my death? I wondered as I sat in my mother’s dining chair. What was I even doing with my time here?

For weeks, I lived like a zombie as I roved about the house, trapped in endless spirals of existential anxiety. One day, I picked up my battered red cape and went out to my barren garden, where I stood, silently regarding the weed-infested land warily. The garden once grew tomatoes under my care, but now it was only white flowers on tangled green vines that claimed the earth, strangling everything else to death. It was, I believed, a sign from my mother telling me to leave. Find happiness, she had told me. Don't let this place squeeze the life out of me.

On that very day, I knelt by my mother’s grave, marked with a white stone, and laid my palm on the soil with one last whispered goodbye. Then, I drew my hood over my ears, packed my meagre worldly possessions into a small bag, and left the only home I ever knew.

I didn't know where I was going. My only destination was anywhere far away. Away from the villagers, whose tormenting voices drove my mother from me. Away from these woods, whose leaves and thorns invited both love and fear. The mid-autumn air was crisp, and I felt...free.

I knew the woods like the back of my hand. At least, the twenty-kilometre-radius around my house. Once I cleared the familiar mossy smell of my part of the woods, I entered the deeper, unfamiliar forest. Trees were taller here, yet darker still in the shadow of the mountain. I remember looking up through the canopy to see the blocks of rock above me—it was so dark that I could not tell where the mountain ended and the sky began.

Still, I kept walking, a speck of blood-red against the black backdrop, illuminated but invincible in that first week. I told myself that I could conquer any animal, large or small. There was food everywhere if you knew where to look, and water was easy enough to follow if you knew where to listen. I hated the bugs above everything else—the bites were like red volcanoes on my skin. It was especially bad near the lagoon, where the nasty ones would flit around the brown water from one end to the other, searching for new blood.

Yet it was by the lagoon, while I waved off the buzzing creatures with a dirt-flecked hand, that I met her. The most beautiful, ethereal creature I’d ever seen, though it certainly did not seem that way at first.

Not while I crouched there, frozen and ankle deep in swirling brown mud. The creature’s orange eyes blazed at me through the tall reeds. Caught between fear and intrigue, I studied those eyes and clutched my heart, waiting for its first move.

Suddenly, a deep rumble tore through the lagoon, and the creature stood on its hind legs to rise above the reeds. The creature’s white fur bristled in the wind, sending a pattern of black undertones rippling through its coat like a pebble along the surface of a lake. Its pointed ears twitched while it's eyes slowly blinked back. Then, its long, white muzzle sniffed at the air—it would have been cute perhaps, or harmless even, if not for the twisted way in which it bared its teeth and drew back its lips into a grin.

Hello.

I ducked behind the reeds, accidentally dipping the edge of my cape into the cloudy water. The rumble continued from the base of the creature's throat. Was it...purring?

Don't be scared.

Then, silence. Thick, heady silence that seemed to entrench the entire lagoon. The purring stopped. Even the air too frightened to move. I don’t know what possessed me to step out of the reeds in that moment, but I remember rustling out of cover as I watched the world with glazed eyes, as if my body were not my own. I pushed the long stalks out of the way, and—

“Boo.”

I screamed, stumbled backward, and splashed into the water before my senses could process anything else. I screamed with my eyes wide open, though I saw nothing in front of me. The reeds closed in before me, then opened again to reveal an entirely unexpected presence. Towering above me, doubled over in laughter, was a girl in a simple, white dress. Her short brown hair swept back across her face as she bent backwards this time, still clutching her stomach, laughing and laughing. Her unabashed joy woke a flock of birds from the nearby trees, and they tore through the skies in a panic. My heart went out to those birds.

“I’m sorry,” she said, wiping a stray tear with the heel of her palm. “Are you okay?”

I nodded slowly. My gaze caught her offered hand, trailed up her arms, and to the dimple punctuating her mischievous grin. She was beautiful, and the thought caught me off-guard. I blushed and took her hand.

When I found my voice, it sounded unfamiliar to my own ears. “Who are you?” I croaked with the elegance of a flustered child.

“My name’s Wheein!” she chirped back. Her smile was so persistently mesmerising that I found myself mimicking it in spite of my awkwardness.

My eyes darted around the lonely lagoon. “Hyejin,” I mumbled anxiously. Her eyes flashed orange for a moment, and I blinked, unsure if I was seeing things. “Do I make you nervous?” she leaned a little closer, and I backed away instinctively.

“No. It’s just...wait, how did you know?”

She grinned a little wider. “Your heart never lies.” her eyes glowed orange once more, brighter this time as she scrutinized me.

“W-what are you doing?”

“Reading your heart. Your colours are...complicated. It’s dark. Just a hint of red, I think.” She tilted her head. It would have been cute, I think, if her eyes weren’t such an eerie shade of orange. “I don’t really get it, but it’s really pretty.”

“That doesn’t sound very pretty,” I said slowly.

“Maybe not to most people,” she said with a shrug, “but maybe I’m biased because I think you’re really pretty.”

I blushed. “Thanks...I think,” came my articulate reply. My fingers unconsciously brushed the tip of my scar along my cheek.

As if sensing my insecurity, she took a step closer. “You really are,” she insisted.

A breeze blew by and picked up the edge of my wet cape. I must’ve shivered when Wheein pulled me up closer into the reeds and led me to dry land below a sparse canopy of withered, grey trees. Her smile, gently carved into her soft features, was softer now, almost affectionate when she asked if I was cold. “A little,” I replied. A heartbeat later, a shadow swept over Wheein, drowning her colours in black. I watched with wide-eyed horror as the shadow stretched and grew, as if battling her silhouette and molding it into something else entirely.

When the shadows passed, the orange eyes returned. Behind those eyes was the great pointed-ear creature, standing before me on four great paws. The creature exhaled, raising its white fur to reveal the black underneath.

Why do you look so surprised? Wheein’s voice echoed in my mind, but the creature’s mouth wasn’t moving. My back hit the tree behind me before I even realized I was moving. “What are you?” I muttered.

Come here. I don’t bite. The creature stepped forward and swept its long tail around my waist. The fur, neatly pressed down at first, fanned out in a cascade of black and white to engulf me in warmth. It was so soft that I found myself unable to resist, not even when it began to pull me closer and closer. I was entranced by the warmth and the cloudlike softness, so much so that I simply accepted the way Wheein picked me up in her two great paws and held me delicately against her shoulder like a newborn child. There was, suddenly, no fear when I laid my head against her.

That’s better, isn’t it?

“Yes,” I mumbled.

My eyelids fell heavily with the weight of the journey.

When I awoke, I was curled up alone on a nest of leaves. The sky was starting to lighten, and I would’ve been convinced that it was all a dream if not for the traces of white fur on my clothes. I picked off the white fur and gathered them into the palm of my hands. Then—out of sentimentality perhaps, or a sudden bout of loneliness—I picked off a leaf from a nearby bush, a dull green and delicately scalloped oblong shape, and rolled the long strands of fur inside it. I put the creature’s gift into my pocket and surveyed the forest around me.

I was reminded that I didn’t know where I was, or where I was going. I’d just woken up, but I suddenly felt so damn tired. I was...left all alone in the world once more, and though I’d been trying to keep those thoughts at bay since my mother passed away, it suddenly hit me like a wave. My heart dropped.

You’re all alone, those vicious thoughts sneered.

Alone.

Worthless.

No one is left to love you.

No one ever will.

Your mother was a liar.

You don’t deserve anything.

Paralyzed by those pernicious ideas, I went back to the pile of leaves where I had woken up, closed my eyes, and muttered my mother’s words over and over until I could fill my mind with them. Find the happiness you deserve...find the happiness you deserve. The mantra meant nothing to me then, but it had to be better than anything else my exhausted mind could conjure.

Are you okay? A crunch of leaves trailed close by, and I opened my eyes just in time to see the creature emerge from the dense bushes, as if from a dream. I dimly thought that the black fur took on the shade of the surrounding sky as it continued to lighten, and wondered what if I’d simply misremembered the white fur. I withdrew the leaf from my pocket, and trailed my eyes from the white fibers in my hand to the grey-black creature before me.

Suddenly, its wolf-like form threw a dark shadow over me when it stood up on its hind legs, but as powerful as it seemed in my weak and resigned state, I felt oddly safe in its presence. Warm, even.

I shoved the white fur back into my pocket and silently wondered. As if on cue, a patch of white revealed itself as the creature breathed and puffed up its chest.

The creature’s voice repeated its question.

I sat up slowly and rubbed my eyes. But the creature was gone before I could voice the curiosity. The girl returned. “Your heart was pulsing all these violent shades of blue earlier. You were in pain, weren’t you?” I regarded the girl carefully as she approached, stepping into my space and taking my hand like it was the most natural gesture in the world.

“No,” I said, “I wouldn't call it pain.”

She frowned.

That was when I noticed that she wasn't smiling this time. Her expression, tender and calm as it was, held no trace of the maniacal grin of our first encounter.

“This is a typical emotion of yours, then?”

I glanced briefly to our intertwined hands, then back up into her narrowed eyes. They held a steady glow of sunrise orange. Up close, the tiny specks of red and white pulsing inside made them look like spheres of fire, and they certainly had a certain warmth to them. Mesmerized, I leaned further into them. “What do you see?” I wondered out loud.

“I wish I could tell you, but you wrap yourself in all these layers, and it’s…” she cocked her head, “complicated.”

I shrugged. “We’re all complicated people, aren’t we? I mean, you’re a wolf. I think. Are you a wolf?”

“You don’t even know what you’re doing to yourself.”

I waited for her to elaborate, but she simply shook her head and stood, wiping a dusty hand on her white dress as she did, then began to walk away. I scrambled to my feet and followed her. I blamed it on curiosity then, and didn’t think much of it. In retrospect, that was perhaps the first moment I truly felt vulnerable. She had seen something—something that I couldn’t see from within my inner castle walls—and I needed to know. I needed to prove her wrong.

“Hey,” I called softly, stretching out to reach her, “what did you mean by that?”

She continued walking with her hands behind her back, like she was simply out for a stroll. Somehow, she looked right at home and out of place at the same time with her white dress and ruffled dark hair. She shrugged. “Not much. Just that it’s clear you don’t want any company.”

“That’s not true,” I said before I could stop myself. She stopped, then turned to me with an intense stare. I shifted my eyes forward and back, but she held her gaze. I could almost imagine her tail flicking back and forth as she waited for me to dredge up the right words. I presented my honesty with a touch to her wrist. “I like your company,” I whispered.

Her eyes glowed orange when she smiled. “Do you want to come with me?”

My hand instinctively reached into the pocket of my dress to touch the bundle of fur. “I have nowhere else to be.”

Suddenly, she was close enough for me to smell the hint of pine in her hair as she adjusted the red hood around my head. She swept my long hair out of my eyes, then stepped back to appraise her work. “Beautiful,” she said with a grin that sent shivers down my spine.

Then the shadows overtook her once more, and the massive white-wolf re all fours. She stretched her paws forward and leaned down. I heard her voice: climb on. Don’t be scared.

I sank my fingers into her white fur, and combed them back to reveal the black underneath. She was so soft. All I wanted to do was bury my face in her fur and fall asleep. Wheein chuckled, a low rumble that shook the trees around us. Go ahead. I’m stronger than I look.

But still, with my hands in her delicate fur, I could not will myself to move. So with another chuckle, she stood on her hind legs, the force of her movement knocking me backwards and into an awaiting paw. In one dizzyingly quick motion, she scooped me up and placed me on her shoulder. Hold on tight, she said, dropping back on all fours with a thunderous thump.

She leapt into the smokey grey sky and landed on the crooked edges of the black, willowy trees, magically as light as a baby bird as she ran across the treetops. The sky was a blur of slate as we ran by, but the darkness was somehow more beautiful than ever as the sweeping wind blew Wheein’s fur into sleek, white elegance.

I rested my cheek on her neck and smiled. My red cape flowered behind me like a flag among the stars. I in the cold air, tasting freedom on my tongue like never before.

I can sense your changing heart, Wheein’s voice whispered like a lullaby. There’s something magical about the beauty of the night, isn’t there?

I pondered her question, but said nothing, wondering instead whether she could see the truth. It wasn’t the night. It was—though I had no words for it then; no way of expressing these complicated emotions—her. This wild and beautiful stranger. I clutched onto her a little tighter.

We landed on a clearing of emerald grass surrounded by a lush, vibrant garden. So used to the grim shades of decay inside those woods, it was unlike anything I’d ever seen before. I almost couldn’t believe it was real—like I was deeply asleep somewhere. Maybe I’d fallen through my dreams and ended up here. But the paws engulfing me was a very real warmth. The damp touch of grass against my ankle was also very real.

“What is this place?” I whispered.

A shadow washed over us briefly, then Wheein returned with a triumphant grin. “Welcome to paradise.”

I treaded the unfamiliar terrain with careful steps, as if one wrong move could taint the biblical perfection of the natural world. I sensed her presence come up behind me, and it seemed only natural to feel her fingers entwined through my own as we crossed the field toward a wall of green vine hanging from the trees. With the back of her hand, Wheein pushed through the vines like a curtain, to reveal a world of blinding white.

I flinched, and when I opened my eyes, I saw stars. I blinked. Not stars, but hundreds of pieces of glass dangling by the green vines of a great tree. It was the biggest tree I’ve ever seen—beautiful—with its sturdy brown branches lit up by hundreds of colourful little lights in the mid-afternoon sun.

It was ethereal.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it? Wheein’s voice broke through the light. “Sometimes, when the sky is really dark and the moon is really bright, they look like stars, all clustered in this one place.” I glanced at the shade of the tree, where she stood beneath the leaves, looking up at the shards with a wistful smile. It was that moment, as the breeze gently rustled through her short locks and white dress and swayed them to the rhythm of the brilliant colours, that such beauty etched itself into my mind.

“What is this?” I asked, flinching when a beam of prismatic light caught my eye.

“A bit of paradise—my grandmother’s gift to me,” she said with a nostalgic air. “She always believed that once you recognize something—someone—for what it is, you can pave a way toward what it can become. She saw things no one else did. She saw...beauty. Even in me.”

“You are beautiful,” I said, striding up to her as if it would further press the truth into her.

Her smile was slow and tinged with an unfolding drop of tragedy. “It took me a long time to believe it. Some days I’m still not sure I do. After all I’m…”

“More than human,” I finished with a tender smile. My heart, dusting the cobwebs off itself, leapt forward when she blushed.

We said nothing as she took my hand and led me out of the shadow of the tree, and toward a red-bricked house on a grassy knoll. All the while, the tips of my fingers burned against hers, and I wondered—as the emotions bubbled up and made me breathless—if this was what my mother intended. Was this...happiness?

The thought of my mother slipped through the cracks of my consciousness, flashing images of her smile, her pain, and her silence. All for what? Love? Was this...love?

I stopped, my eyes trained on the other girl’s back as she pulled me along, joy lighting up her hair with every bounce. God, she was so beautiful. My arms extended before me like a half-embrace, then pulled taut when I dug my heel into the soft earth.

She turned back with an inquisitive tilt of her head.

I wondered then if my mother saw my father in the same way, if she met his eyes and knew from the first moment that she would give up everything. I wondered if she felt as nervous as I did now, fearing I would end up in the exile, a cottage on the hill perhaps, shunned by the world around me, but—ah—what else did I have to lose?

I opened my mouth to meet her expectant eyes, but my words, shy and empty as they were, buried themselves deeper inside.

“Hyejin,” Wheein said softly, her brown eyes lightening into a deep orange in the light.

“Yes?”

“You’re not alone anymore.”

My mother’s face flashed before my eyes, my faceless father beside her. My mind flashed to her life in silence—a chill crawled through my skin.

“For now.” My intended laugh came out harsher and more spiteful than I knew—I winced and pushed past Wheein toward the house to hide my shame, though my hands stubbornly refused to let go. Wheein followed me silently. I squeezed my eyes shut as I pulled her along.

My anxious jog slowed to an apprehensive walk as we approached the house. It was quaint, with once-well-kept flower pots riddled around the doorstep. Yellow shutters were open, with creamy white curtains fluttering through. I craned my neck to look through the translucent material, but couldn’t make out much more than a wooden chair inside.

“Does your grandmother live here?” I asked, pretending to admire the house to avoid feeling the burning gaze on my back.

“No. Not anymore,” Wheein said. “She died a few months ago.”

I spun around and met her sad smile with wide eyes. She simply shrugged a shoulder—I watched the way the strap of her white dress fell and thought how tragic it was that one so beautiful and pure could learn to accept her fate with such nonchalance. Wheein tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and pushed past the door.

I wondered then what the colour of her fur would be now if she were to transform—the simple, easy, complacency of white; or the dark of anger-infused pain she secretly brewed. I understood then, as I followed her stark, white back, why her fur was always monochromatic. It was a perpetual balancing act between white and black, even when it was easy to favour one over the other—it was simply impossible. I thought then, as I followed her inside, how similar we were.

We were no different. Especially not in that drafty house with the creaky floors. As bright as the house looked on the outside, its insides were loneliness personified.

“Do you live here now?” I asked tentatively.

She pulled open a cupboard and waved off the dust in the air, coughing several times as she reached inside it. I pulled out a chair at the table and took a seat as I watched her. There were, really, nothing else to look at besides empty walls and cobwebs. Wheein pulled out a jar and took the seat beside me. She handed me a thin wooden stick, thicker than a toothpick.

She opened the jar, and revealed the golden syrup inside. “Have some honey,” she said, dipping her own wooden stick into the jar to pull out a long string of gold. The sticky trail fell across the table on her way to , dribbling onto her chin as it did so. Against my better judgment, my heart skipped a beat. Maybe it was the stark contrast to the beast inside her, or maybe it was the way her cheeks lit up bright pink. Either way, I couldn’t look away.

She smiled a shy, secret smile, and motioned toward the jar. I dipped the stick into the honey—I could feel her eyes as clear as day—and cleanly brought some between my own lips. I’d never had honey on its own before, though I’ve had honey and bread for breakfast with my mother on a few good days. It was strange, if not a bit silly, to think I’d never considered whether honey might taste good on its own.

I met her eyes for a moment and caught hers flicker to my lips. She blushed; my heart skipped once more. I pushed the immediate thoughts aside.

“It’s good, right?” she said with a hint of nervousness.

“Yeah.”

“My grandmother always kept honey in the house because it calms me down. Back when I wasn’t very good at controlling these...other sides of me, my transformation was often unstable. Dangerous too.” She looked down at her hands. “It’s kind of funny because my episodes never really had to do with my other selves. I guess it’s always been my differences that made me this way, but it’s never...Wolf’s fault. I wish I could blame animal instincts or something, but it’s never been like that. Ah, I don’t know if that makes sense. I used to hunt because I thought that was what I was supposed to do. My parents said I was an animal, so I learned to behave like one,” she sighed. “But Wolf and I are different...but also kind of the same. She’s like a friend I can trust. Sorry, that must sound kind of silly.”

“I think I kind of understand. It’s like you’re just…” I tilted my head, “uncertain, secretly sad, perhaps, or...lonely all the time.”

She gave an empty chuckle. “Maybe. Am I that obvious?”

“No. We’re just the same. I think I would’ve liked having a Wolf with me. It’s like having a friend with you all the time, and I’ve never really had a friend before.”

“Well, you do now.”

I grinned. “Do you remember everything you do when you’re a wolf?”

Pushing her chair aside, she smiled. As if to make a point—darkness flooded her skin and she transformed, her sparse black tufts splashed along her back this time. She sat down on her haunches, her form nearly filling half the room, and gazed at me with those inquisitive orange eyes.

Her voice filled my senses. I remember everything. I control everything except for the shade of my fur. She swiped her paw at her own face with a little whine like a giant, apologetic puppy.

“You’re white this time,” I said, astounded. My thoughts were still on the beauty of her forms, and the aching feeling of wanting to be close to her ethereal form when I took the tub of honey and approached her with an outstretched drop of honey on the stick. “Why do you change colours?”

Wheein stretched both paws out in front of her, then laid her head in between them. I positioned the honey in front of her muzzle, and a pink tongue broke out to give the stick a shy .

I can’t control it. It simply reflects my mood—I guess you can say that I’m like an open book. Or maybe a sculpture. Standing out here for you to interpret. Like your heart.

“Are you always black and white?”

Her eyes blazed at me, as if in challenge. You can’t have white without black, now could you? No courage without fear. No success without failure. No happiness—I swallowed a knot extending from my throat to my stomach—without sadness.

I put down the honey pot and held out my hand, holding her gaze in an unspoken kind of understanding. Her massive white paw covered my hand. Something warm bubbled inside me then, one I did not dare say out loud.

But for the first time, I did not feel so alone.

Later on, we took a stroll around the edge of her grandmother’s property until we got hungry. She leapt into the forest while I waited, admiring the faraway cliffs among the trees. She returned later as a girl, with two limp rabbits caught in her red-stained hands.

“Sorry,” she said sheepishly, “it’s disgusting isn’t it?”

I shrugged. “There was a time my mother and I had nothing to eat. Any scrap I managed to find, I gave to my mother.” I dropped the pile of twigs I’d been cradling in my arms into the center of the grassy clearing, and looked up briefly to admire the moon above the ring of trees around us. Wheein skewered the rabbits and started the fire, though I could feel her eyes flicker occasionally to my face. “Food is food, I guess,” I finished.

“Yeah,” she said quietly. She shifted her weight, seeming suddenly self-conscious as she hid the rabbits behind her. “Um, there’s a creek nearby. I’ll wash my hands after the rabbits are on the fire.”

I smiled. “I’ll be waiting.”

When she came back, it was beginning to get cold. Wolf appeared to wrap herself around me like a white blanket while we ate in silence. I watched the fire crackle in the dark, and listened to the sound of Wheein’s even breathing as she drifted off to sleep after her meal.

As I ate, I replayed the day in my mind. I don’t know what I did to deserve Wheein’s kindness. I don’t know what she saw in me, but I knew, deep down, that I wanted to give her my world. It ached to think of her in these woods, alone and in pain, even when her grandmother was there to sooth her. It ached to think that a creature so innocent should know the kind of loneliness I had resigned myself to. I sank deeper into Wheein’s fur, and hoped she would forgive me for these thoughts.

There’s nothing to forgive. Her voice came unexpectedly.

I whipped around to catch her orange eyes. “You’re a real mind-reader, aren’t you?” Her low laughter rustled the leaves around us.

No. Your heart simply looked the way I feel.

My heart thudded. “Won’t you show me your human form? I want to see you.” Before the words had finished leaving my lips, the darkness returned and Wheein once more sat behind me in her glaringly bright, white dress. I wrapped her arms around my waist, and leaned backwards into her front with a satisfied smile. “And how do you feel?” I asked.

“I feel,” her breath caught my ear, sending a warm feeling through my body, “like the luckiest girl on earth for stumbling upon you yesterday.” She tightened her hold. “Like something between us is moving too fast, but—unworthy as I am—I want to go everywhere with you. You make me feel…”

She paused, searching for the word.

“Not alone?” I supplied hopefully.

“Yes,” she breathed, “that’s a start.”

Without thinking, I brought her knuckles to my lips and planted a kiss. “That’s a start,” I mumbled into her skin. “I feel the same way—I—what could you possibly see in...someone like me?”

I turned around to straddle her lap. Her brown eyes brightened with reflected firelight when she met mine. I smiled nervously—sure of my place here as I rested my arms on her shoulder; unsure of how she might react to my act of courage—but she simply swept my hair back, along with my red hood. “I’ve been roving these woods because I’m afraid to be near my grandmother’s house. I’ve been looking all my life for something to make me whole...something to help me rise above the loneliness, especially when it hits me so hard it feels like I’m eating myself up from the inside. So many times I wanted to give up my search. It seemed ridiculous to spend my life looking for something I could not picture or name...but, Hyejin…”

I gravitated closer to rest my forehead on hers, my eyes half-lidded as I listened to her voice like a siren song. “Yes?” I whispered into the shrinking space between us.

“I think I found what I was looking for.”

Neither of us could tell who initiated the first kiss. All I knew was that her touch filled every void that I’ve denied for so long, and it left me wanting in ways I’d never imagined I could want. But her soft lips fit so perfectly against my own, with her body pressed against my own—god, it felt so good.

The fire warmed my back as I gathered her in both hands and drank deeply. She smelled like white flowers, tasted like love, felt—between my fingers—like the promise of tomorrow. How could a woman make me feel so weightless yet grounded at the same time? I was soaring, yet desperately wanting to meld with her at the same time.

I bit down on a sensitive stretch of skin along her neck, and she gasped, a burst of orange twinkling in her eyes.

“Hyejin, wait!” She moaned.

I lifted my head. “What’s wrong?”

“I”—her cheeks flushed crimson—“I want this so, so much. I...I want to be close to you, so close I could swallow you whole, and I know how that sounds, but I—I just don’t want to hurt you.”

I kissed her lips lightly. “You won’t hurt me,” I said.

She shook her head. “Your heart...the reds...the darkest shades are falling away—its pulsing red. Hyejin, it’s so beautiful...I...I don’t want to ruin it.”

I sighed and laid my head down into the crook of her neck. Our heartbeats fell into perfect synchronization, and I listened to the resonating rhythm. “Wheein,” I whispered, “if it’s beautiful, it’s because of you.”

Her hands fell to my waist, and held me tightly. “Are you sure?” She laughed with a tinge of nervous energy. “Because I didn’t want to ruin the mood or anything, but I’m pretty sure I’m lying on a bed of weeds and they’re really itchy.”

“Let’s go somewhere nicer,” I whispered into her ear. She grinned, somehow seductive in that adorable way as she extended her arm above her and offered her hand. I placed a quick kiss on her temple, and pulled her up to take her by the hand.

We walked in silence, away from the cabin and into the woods—turning our backs from the obvious choice to forge our own paths in the dark.

A pair of birds cut through the trees. A troddened animal cried out its loneliness on the mountaintop. Something scurried through the brush. Feeling the warmth of Wheein’s fingers in mine, I could practically hear the steady pumping of her blood. All around us, life was bursting in a way that I’d never noticed before. My red cape blew behind me, while Wheein’s white dress billowed beside me—for once in my life, I wasn’t the only speck of colour in those woods.

In an alcove behind a shallow waterfall, right by the green lagoon where we met, I laid down on a bed of rocks and pulled her up against me and onto my lap. The water rushed above our heads—the steady rhythmic roar so loud that it poured the words right out of us. Silent amidst the noise, I felt nothing but courage as I pulled Wheein’s white dress over her head. Nothing but wonder as I traced a path along her skin.

She kissed me deeply—I felt the scrape of her canine against my lip. From behind my eyelids, I could see the bright orange desire glowing in her eyes, could feel its effects pouring into me like water.

“Why are you hesitating?” She mumbled against my jaw. Her voice was like a dream under the din of rushing voices.

“I’m not,” I said, but sure enough my hands had stilled, stiff in mid-air as if I was trying to cradle her in a bubble.

She kissed me again. “You know, I’m not used to this,” she said in my ear.

“To what?”

She caressed my cheek with a gentle thumb, then ran a hand down to my exposed collarbone. “To feeling worthy of something without the guilt. Like I’m good enough to deserve the things that I want.” She laid her forehead on mine, the orange glow in her eyes flaring even brighter for a single moment. I read her lips before the sound could reach me: “Maybe for once, I could just reach out and take it.”

“Yes.” I arched into her body like we were made to fit together so perfectly.

We explored the possibilities that day, time immaterial against our desires to map each other’s bodies. Our bodies, light against dark; our passions, red against orange. From our nook, we soared up to the highest heavens, further than either of us could ever imagine. It was the kind of pleasure that could only come from feeling so utterly whole, like all those years of loneliness could collapse and shatter into dust in a single moment with Wheein. Even when our heartbeats slowed, and our skin chilled in the cool air, the feeling never went away.

We watched the sunrise that day from behind the waterfall, and admired the way the smudged-out red-orange glow could shine so brightly from behind the crystal curtain. I watched the way its shape filtered through, beautiful but not quite whole, and it was in this moment that the first inkling of pernicious doubt settled in. Maybe, I thought, this was too good to be true. Maybe Wheein was the sun, and I, like the waterfall, could only ever hope to catch her reflection.

But it was in the same moment that Wheein draped my red hood around us, and laced her fingers in mine. “It’s so pretty here,” she sighed. I made a vague noise in agreement, still trying to climb out of that horrible, horrible vacuum of doubt before she noticed. “It’s hard to believe it’s real.” Once more, I hummed. She squeezed my hand. “It’s hard to believe we found this place while stumbling around in the middle of the night. We were pretty desperate to find a flat surface, weren't we?” She said with a grin.

“Wheein!” I cried, pulling away slightly in shock.

She laughed. “It makes you feel pretty lucky, doesn’t it?”

I grinned back in spite of everything, and surrendered myself to the moment. The insecurities would return later, but in that moment, if it was going to be the first and last moment I had with her, I was determined to pretend all of this was going to last forever.

“Yeah. I’m pretty lucky.”

She caught my eye and broadened her smile. “Me too.”

Of course, we couldn’t hide behind a waterfall forever. We took our time and circled the lagoon, talking and laughing as the pink dawn faded away. I can still remember the morning sun, hot against our backs as Wolf carried me across the tree tops, and the sky—I’d never seen it bluer than I did that day.

The sky feels so close, doesn’t it?

“Like I could touch it,” I said, extending both hands above my head. With a cathartic kind of whimsy, my fingers wrapped around a cloud and held it in a fist.

Be careful, Wheein said, standing on top of a leafy brown branch. I dropped my arms, and dropped my face into the familiar scent of her fur. As I was sinking deeper, something suddenly caught the corner of my eye.

“Ah, wait!” I cried, just as she shook out her tail and readied herself for the next jump. “Look! Up there.”

Where?

I scrambled up her neck, and pointed as far as I could in her peripheral. “That light!” Several hundred meters west, a tree glittered white and blue in a sea of browns and greens.

Grandmother's tree.

Wolf leapt into the sun, toward the tree, catching the breeze against her fur and spreading my cape behind me like a pair of red wings. The wind rippled through and combed out every hint of grey and black in that moment. Is this happiness? Wolf said. Her question, so deep and rich, filled my mind. With the whistling wind loud in my ears and her bright white fur filling my vision, I squeezed my eyes shut and smiled into her neck. It was enough, I’d hoped, for her to understand.

We landed on the highest branch of the glittering tree, careful to avoid brushing up against the pieces of broken glass. “Wow,” I breathed, looking out from the top of Wolf’s head. “I bet you can see this place from miles away.”

Wolf’s laugh tumbled through the leaves like a fresh gust of wind. It’s like sitting in starlight isn’t it? Her snow-white tail swished happily from side to side. I come here sometimes when I feel alone. If the light shines just right, this place is like a beacon at night, calling me home.

I pulled my red cape over my head and rested my head on my folded arms on top of Wolf’s head.

I listened. All you could hear was the gentle clink of glass, Wolf’s steady breathing, and the occasional burst of birdsong.

I marvelled. I’d never known the world to be so full of colour before. The deep blue sky, the emerald trees, even the smoke grey mountains. And in the middle of all of that, there was us. Just me and Wheein, red and white splashed in a world of our own among the rainbow shards.

There was nothing but peace: the kind of peace I haven’t allowed myself to feel for a very, very long time.

As the day passed by, however, I knew it couldn’t last. We’d shared our stories, our spaces inside and out, but I dreaded what came after. I dreaded tomorrow, and the thought of leaving. But I had to leave. This wasn’t my place, as much I wanted it to be.

That night we returned to her grandmother’s cabin. Through the green arches and up the cobbled path—my shadow never felt so heavy behind me as I thought of ways I could leave a piece of it with Wheein. My heart sighed, strained and useless against the voice in my head. You’re getting too brave, it said, too assuming. What makes you think she even wants it? I glanced at Wheein, who spoke so sweetly, who looked so radiant under the stars. Who was I to carve my name into her light?

We sat on her front steps, as I pretended to quietly admire the night as I planned my flight. I had to leave at dawn. The longer I stayed, I knew—warmed by Wheein’s head against my shoulder—the harder it would be for me to leave.

Where could I go? I quietly wondered. My gaze floated toward the flower pot beside me. My hand, inexplicably, found itself inside my pocket, where it brushed up against the leaf-wrapped gift. My heart sunk even further. This will be enough, I resolved—it had to be.

Beside me, Wheein continued to speak, oblivious. “My grandmother used to grow vegetables,” she said, hooking her arm beneath mine. “She had a garden behind the house. It’s just weeds and dirt now since she stopped when she got sick, but I remember it being really...kind of magical when I was younger.”

“I...we had a garden too,” I said. “My mother, she…”

I burst into tears. I thought I’d laid out my emotions in cement; I thought I’d learn to find strength in my loneliness. I thought I’d stop missing my mother. Wheein held me closely, our wet cheeks mirroring the aching we’ve denied for so long. I drowned my voice in hers, felt her heart tear open in time with my own as we mourned. First, the loss of a love we never truly appreciated, then the loss of our youth misspent, reaching for loneliness when love was standing right there. Was.

I’d never shed so many tears, but for all the times I’ve cried, I’d never felt so free.

I didn’t want to leave.

“Hyejin,” she sniffed. “Don’t go.”

I memorized the tessellation in her irises, and the sensation of her lips against mine. I wished so bad that I didn’t have an obligation to dawn. I wished so bad to just…

“Stay.”

I closed my eyes.

“With me.”

My heart lurched into my throat.

“Right here.”

I clenched my fists in my lap.

“Please.”

Please.

“Hyejin.”

Wheein. Oh, beautiful, beautiful Wheein.

The orange-brown of her eyes glowed with the promise of dusk, the kind of promise that threatened to fade at the first sign of light. I couldn’t risk that kind of heartache. Even if I had nothing left to risk, I was so, so scared of the loss. The pain. The hollow waking from this beautiful, beautiful fantasy.

So I said the words, though they were not my own, but the words of ghosts. The ghosts of my family, my self-doubt, and my misfortune—the rattling voices of society—hanging over me.

“I can’t.”

Wheein tilted my chin toward her. “I can practically hear the voices in your head,” she said with a short laugh. “It’s like...you’re having a conversation all by yourself up there.” She let go, and dropped her hands to her lap. “You’ve already made a decision without me, haven’t you?”

I said nothing. Something scurried by in the bushes. Something howled. Something cried. You could hear everything in the silence that stretched around us like a dome.

“Why did your mother stop speaking?”

I looked at Wheein, who was picking at a blade of grass at her feet, then I turned to the stars, as if my mother was up there watching. “I don’t know,” I said. “People stopped listening, I guess.”

“Did you?”

“What?”

“Stop listening?”

I shrugged. “Maybe. I don’t know. I guess I started listening in different ways. Maybe we ran out of things to say. Or maybe I just...got tired.”

Wheein stood and extended a hand to me. I took it without much thought and allowed myself to be pulled to my feet. We glided across the grass, down the hill and toward the dull glimmer of Grandmother’s tree, swaying its limbs gently under the husk of dark night.

We stood toe to toe beneath a curved overhang. My heart pounded at the sight of the tree’s magnificence sprouting behind Wheein, so tall and dark—like Grandmother was watching; like she was waiting for me to say the right things.

“Hyejin,” Wheein said, slipping both hands into mine, “I know we...we hardly know each other. And I don’t want to make any promises that I can’t keep, but I want to promise you something anyway.”

My breath caught in my throat as anticipation chilled my back with it’s treacherous hands, and hope—guilty and raw—gripped me in ways I could not comprehend. I wanted to run. Who was I to deserve a promise? Promises were so sacred and precious, and I—making up my mind once and for all—was nothing.

I tried to pull away, but she only tightened her grip. I searched her eyes—pleaded—but found a different world inside those warm browns.

“No matter what,” Wheein declared boldly, “I will be here, and I will listen. I will make sure you never lose your beautiful voice, even if we have to scale every mountain to find your song. I can’t promise that I won’t screw up, but for as long as you will stay beside me, I can promise that I can try...aish, maybe this is too much.” She trailed off, looked at her palms. A curious expression crossed her face, torn between fear and wanting. “I just,” she started again, glancing sideways to avoid my eyes, “I think...argh”—she took a breath—“look, I know we hardly know each other, and you...There’s a whole world inside of you that you’re keeping to yourself, so maybe you’re not so different from your mother in that sense, but you’re also strong and wonderful and...you...you have me. For better or for worse, Hyejin”—our eyes met—“I think I’m in love with you.”

I said nothing. I didn’t know which expression to wear while I tried to work through her words. Surely, if was too good to be true.

But Wheein wasn’t done.

“Please stay,” she said. “If not here, then let me be with you wherever you go.” She stepped closer. “Your heart, I wish you could see how it beats with the passion of red. Unless...it’s not passion at all”—she withdrew her hand like I was a stray flame she’d accidentally touched—“oh god, I’ve misinterpreted, haven’t I? I’m...I’m sorry.”

Suddenly she began to cry, muted sobs against her palms, and suddenly I was beside her, surrounding her. Suddenly, I was crying too. Crying, and confessing, and giving her glass shards of my soul, hoping with eyes squeezed shut that she won’t drop them.

I told her I was sorry. I told her that I was only good at running away. I told of my plagues: my doubts, fears, and sins. “Someday,” I whispered, my guilty arms like dead weights around her waist, “I will ask too much of you. Maybe you’ll do the same for me. We might get tired of each other, and we might weigh each other down just to lift each other back up.” Wheein began to pull away, but I clasped my hand on the back of her head and held her against my shoulder like she was the only thing keeping me on the ground.

“But as much as I fear that someday,” I said, “I can’t deny today either.”

So, before courage could slip through my tired fingers, before doubt could lodge its place inside my heart, before the colours of my weary soul could push her away, I told her that I loved her too.

It was a strange feeling, kissing her under that great tree—so far away from home, yet so at home at the same time. Her orange flames burned a ring around my heart, and I—like a seer transcended—could taste our past, present, and future on those lips. It was the kind of rush I could get addicted too, and fortunately for me, it was a kiss that paved the way for countless others.

And so I stayed.

I passed through the first dawn in deep, guiltless sleep, and arose with Wheein’s gentle breath against my collarbone. There were excuses at first, reasons I found in Wheein’s touch that justified my stay. But with each passing dawn, the useless excuses began to fall away with my loneliness, and—with Wheein’s hand in mine—I allowed myself to embellish the names that we carved into the worn wood of Grandmother’s cottage.

We spent our first days peeling off the weeds in the garden. It would’ve been back-breaking work if Wheein hadn’t summon Wolf to help us. Wolf loved digging around the plot, softening up the dirt and kicking the rocks to the side. Her fur was almost always pure white in those first blissful days.

When the land was ours again, I took a journey back to my mother’s cabin to find the seeds I’d neglected. I would take countless trips over the years back and forth, but I could still recall how much shorter the distance felt on that first return journey. It was the first time I was alone again after nearly a week in Wheein’s light. Alone, but for the first time not lonely. I spent a lot of time thinking about my time in those woods, my time in Grandmother’s cabin, and maybe even my time on this earth.

I’d knelt beside my mother’s grave and caressed the white stone that marked it. And I’d never considered myself superstitious—or even remotely spiritual—but a breeze suddenly picked up the corners of my red cape, and gently lifted it. For a moment, I felt my mother’s calming presence around me, and it was almost like I could hear her voice again in the wind. Her cadence, as alive as it had been when she had sewn together my precious cape, soothed my heart in the most beautiful melody.

When I returned to Wheein with a fistful of rescued seeds, she smiled like she’d heard my mother’s song.

Sometimes I think this girl was crafted just for me. She was everything I never had the courage to want, and together we never desired more. Over the years we crafted and shaped these lands into our own home, building and growing and expanding and living. Sometimes we would even chance the surrounding villages, especially those who had no memory of my red cloak. But once the novelty wore off, we had no desire to go—these places were so ever-changing, ever-growing in all directions. Buildings became a little bigger as time went by, more and more people lived closer to each other, yet seem to grow farther apart. In later days, we even made our trips far, far away, but we were always happiest in our stretch of the forest, a 20-kilometre radius around our house. There was simply nothing like the shelter of home.

So we stayed in our little world. For the most part, we’ve been very happy—happier than I ever thought I deserved to be. I love Wheein more than anything in this life—more than I thought possible—but as much as I wish our love could conquer anything, my doubts never fully disappeared. Neither has the black patches on Wolf’s fur. There are still days when I feel so empty and lonely that I don’t know what to do, and there are days when Wheein withdraws in the same way. There are days we weigh the darkness inside of us—deep down where love can’t reach—and wonder if we’re enough. The only difference now is that I can reach out: Wheein was my beacon in the night, my glittering tree in the forest, and, even if love couldn’t conquer all, we learned to soften each other’s edges. In her arms or nestled in her fur, everything is perfect.

She makes me feel so whole, even if I feel like the most broken woman in the world sometimes. She makes me feel so brave, even when I’m not. She makes me feel like a drop of honey on her tongue, so calm and captivating, or a breeze through the glass shards, so beautiful and free.

I guess that’s the kind of love that leads me home—the kind of love that makes us human.  

Notes: I will be revisiting this story to do some edits, as I often do when I'm rereading my own works. As usual, all forms of support are much appreciated. Please let me know in the comments if you'd be interested in an analysis! Finally, as stated in the Foreward, I will be doing a giveaway! Check the foreward for details, and catch me on Twitter :)