Featherless Bird

They stayed silent, Carolyn almost falling asleep since she had woken up so early, but she always shook herself awake at the last minute.

After a while, Wade dug in his backpack and produced a set of cards, the top of them decorated with cute little animals with eyes too big for their heads.

"Want to play?" he asked, already shuffling the cards.

"Sure. Crazy Eight?" Wade nodded and started giving the cards, a serious expression on his face. Carolyn almost laughed, but decided against it seeing as she had already tested his patience that day.

The game went by quickly, Carolyn winning in no more than three minutes. Wade had feigned being mad at her, which led to another argument about if she did or didn't cheat. Suddenly, Wade stopped talking, while Carolyn was in the middle of a smart-ass remark.

"And if you-" she was cut off by Wade putting his hand over her mouth, his other hand with a finger pressed on his lips. 'Shut up', the universal language said, and Carolyn obliged.

Wade didn't move from that position until he was sure she wasn't going to talk, and then he went and grabbed his gun before heading to the window-shaped hole in the wall. Carolyn followed quietly, and when she looked outside, she clamped a hand on her mouth.

There was an adorable doe eating one of the apples, minding her own business, not expecting anything.

"Don't look." Wade whispered to Carolyn. The soft noise made the doe look around, and Carolyn didn't have the time to turn around before a bullet hit the poor creature right in the head. The girl bit back a cry, and let the tears pool around her eyes. "Shh, it's dead. It isn't feeling any pain." Wade soothed her, while putting the ladder down. He climbed down, and Carolyn couldn't help but follow him, for an unfathomable reason.

Blood was splattered on the white snow, just making it even more visible. Carolyn put her hand on her mouth again, unable to stop herself.

"Caro, don't watch this, okay? Promise me you won't watch." Carolyn nodded fervently, not even caring at this point that he had called her Caro, something she only let her close friends or family call her. She turned around, closed her eyes and put her hands on her ears to make sure she wouldn't hear anything she didn't want to hear. She had never hunted in her life, but she knew enough to know what was to happen at this point.

Time passed slowly, as if it was mocking the poor girl who had stood in the same position for what felt like forever.

"Now, I'm done. But don't look alright. We're going home. You'll have to carry the backpack and the gun. The apples can stay here, I'm probably going to come later on anyways. No, don't look, just go in the tree house."

Carolyn did as demanded, certainly not looking, too afraid at what she would see. Just the image from her imagination made her want to puke, so she couldn't imagine the real thing. When she arrived back at the bottom of the ladder, she looked at Wade, but made sure not to look at what he was dragging.

"Alright, now you'll have to go in front of me. No, don’t look back, jeez. Well, actually, you can if you want to be scarred for life. Now, just follow the footsteps and you won’t get lost. There you go.”

Carolyn made a face, knowing that Wade couldn’t see her and began the trek back home. Yeah, this was the part that was going to scar her. It felt a lot longer than going, maybe because she had to carry the backpack also, or maybe it was because Wade stopped her every five minutes for a break, still forbidding her to look.

After a while, it started snowing again, but thankfully they were out of the forest so Carolyn didn’t get lost. She was starting to get cold, her hands becoming red, and her ears losing feeling. There was a hole in the boots that had rendered her feet soaked and frozen, and the clothes she had on weren’t that warm either.

Finally, the house came in her view, and she was almost sure she saw the angels singing over it. “Come on, I’m cold.” she whined a bit, jumping from one foot to the other.

“I’m trying. If you haven’t noticed I’m hauling a deer here. It’s pretty damn heavy.”

“It’s a doe.” she replied, smirking as she said it, knowing that it would annoy Wade.

“Whatever. Keep walking.” And so she did, a grin on her face, walking fast, although she couldn’t run since her feet were far too cold.

When they finally reached the house, she opened the door in one swift movement and sighed. It wasn’t exactly hot, but it was a lot better than the outdoors. Wade didn’t come in right away, so she decided to heat up some water so that she could make some hot chocolate, something that she deemed that she deserved.

The minute Wade walked in; Carolyn looked at him in the most repulsed look of disgust and gagged.

“I just washed these floors yesterday and I don’t feel like cleaning them again. Go change before I puke, please.” she stated, with almost no expression in her voice. The blood was all dried up on his clothes, making it almost a rust color.

Wade said nothing, just looked at his shirt before rushing upstairs to change. She then heard the shower starting and sighed, it was nice that he was getting the blood and whatever else off of him, but she had wanted for him to start a fire first. Oh well, she thought while she continued to prepare the hot chocolate.

Carolyn looked quizzically at the tea cups, was she going to take one or two. In one hand, Wade had brought her hunting with him, had made her walk in the cold and had made her carry the gun. But in the other hand, he had also been nice about making sure she didn’t look, had made sure that she wasn’t pointing the gun at herself, and had made her put some warmer clothes.

She sighed as she took two tea cups and made the hot chocolate.

At that moment, Wade came into the room with new clothes on and no bloodstains on himself.

“No bloodstains make you look a lot better.” she simply said while she was stirring the hot chocolate. He chuckled lightly while going to the door to the basement.

“Wow, you really are a smart-ass today, aren’t you?”

She juggled with what he said in her mind, she was being a smart-ass, but at least she knew where the line was and she didn’t step over it. Wade came back from downstairs, a smile on his face.

“There you go. This place will be warm in no time.” he said and she nodded before handing him his cup of hot chocolate which still had steam coming out of it. He gave her an appreciated smile and started to sip his drink, she did the same as him, and in no time they were talking about the best way to make hot chocolate.

It ended up with the two of them saying that their grandma’s were the best, and they agreed on that, because they didn’t have hot chocolate left and Carolyn was well past tired. When she went to bed, Wade was still up, telling her that he had to do something before he went to sleep. Carolyn decided to just let him be without asking questions; chances were that he wasn’t going to answer them anyways. Plus, she was too tired to even care at the moment.