Fern knew from the first day she arrived, that, in her woods, the trees had eyes; they whispered it so to her. Each tree in her forest was exactly like the next; paper-white, with the slightest hint of a grainy, slate-colored film, like the light of a pale lantern cast against rain-speckled concrete, and perfectly smooth, spare their jagged, unforgiving eyes. Aspens, she’d heard them called, in human tongue.

Fern hid in the looming shadows of their trunks, and only their trunks, as the leaves had fallen for the last time long ago and left only barren branches. She sat upon a low branch, whistling a song taught to her by a blue jay, in a different time. A murder of crows perched on the branches above her and stared down at her with eyes like dark distant stars, singing back a single, low note. They were the only winged folk who took nest in her woods.

Her eye slid to theirs in envy, as she only had one that worked; the other was milky-white like the bark of the trees, and blind. It hadn’t always been that way; it was a curse of sorts inflicted upon her by the aspens. Although the audience of crows was few, Fern could feel hundreds of eyes focusing on her, as was common. Fern didn’t mention it aloud, but her mind cried out to the trees that it was impolite to stare.

Somewhere off in the distance, Fern heard the sound of a wolf’s howl, a bitter cry at the moon, which had first started as one voice, and became many. A pack of wolves prowled the woods in the same way she did, creating trails in the thin layer of snow that always blanketed the ground; they kept visitors away, but they weren’t the real danger to fear in the woods, Fern knew. Large slivers of moonlight shone through the canopy of empty branches, and made cracks in the seemingly-everlasting twilight of each night. During the day, the sunlight bled through the overcast clouds that hung low over the trees, casting everything in a pale grey light that reminded Fern of a smooth, riverside stone.

Suddenly, Fern sensed a presence that disturbed her peaceful half-slumber under the cover of dusk. She smelled them long before they were visible to her sharp eye, which, although lone in its watch, could see in night’s cover as well as it could by day.

Humans…. Fern thought, as their fleshy, multi-layered stench lingered in her nose. Thinking of the word lit a pang of regret ablaze in her chest, but it was quickly drowned out by something ravenous clawing at her stomach.

“Whitewood! Whitewood!” She could hear it whispering into her ear like a creature of the night, before it fell silent once more, as soon as she flicked her head to look below her, all of her senses sharpening and instantly sending her back into the present.

Looking up, she gave the crows an eldritch smile that lacked many teeth, which was expected from someone of her young age, and struck a feeling of unease in even the night-colored birds. Fern made her way swiftly to the forest floor with a well-aimed leap, causing her curly, wild brown hair to fall across her face in long waves. Brushing her hair out of her face, she stood for a moment, looking off into the darkness surrounding her, that crept behind trees and slid past the slits of moonlight. As she tasted the scent bristling through the air again, an odd hunger took root in her stomach, and Fern understood that it wasn’t her own.

Her feet found their way quickly across the gnarled vines and twisted roots that littered the forest floor, whilst guiding her gracefully through the trees. Although she went on two feet, her sense twitched and strained in the way that only an animal’s could; she displayed an odd mix between human and beast. Fern stopped at the edge of the clearing, where there were four people dressed in warm clothes, teasing each other and laughing boisterously in raised voices like a merry council of elves as they trotted upon a game path that had been downtrodden by wolves, and other creatures of the forest they had yet to meet. Watching their faces, clearly those of young adults, and the shadows stretched out across them, Fern snaked between the trees at the edge of the clearing with her body pressed close to their bark, like her namesake.

“Whitewood! Whitewood! Whitewood!” The thing took up its chant again, except it hissed the words with a fiercer volume than before, and willed her body to move without her commanding it so. The teenagers poked and shoved each other in the ribs, clearly having trespassed into her territory on a dare, and a sudden flood of hatred overtook her. For a moment, she hesitated, in an attempt to keep a hold on her humanity, which she knew the forest was stripping her of, but the power of the woods met the threshold of her own power quickly.

Her hands hovering at the sides of her head, Fern allowed the whitewood to overtake her. At that moment, her blind eye began to twitch and move in its socket. The woods came alive. The trees pulsed, their eyes, which had changed from slits in the wood into something piercing and catlike, darted in every direction, before resting on the people disturbing their forest. As her blind eye glared sharply, yet sightlessly at the intruders, they became quiet and looked around cautiously, a sudden chill coming over them.

The pale-white bark of the aspens peeled itself off, revealing the darker colored underwood, which was unveiled to the world for just a moment, before it began stripping away too, this time in a fluid fashion, in the same way wax melts off a candle. Saplings began to appear in a circle around all the people, and she could feel the creature hidden within both her chest and the trees weaving something powerful around them; a cold feeling in her stomach gave Fern the realization that she was nothing more than a device to expel it. The saplings that were closer in began to wind themselves around the feet of the teenagers, slinking up their wriggling legs, and grasping tightly onto them, whilst the ones that were farther out shot up into small, crooked trees that craned over the intruder’s heads. Disappearing from her line of sight, the people were trapped behind the line of small, thin trees that looked as if they were the white, brittle fingers on the hand of a skeleton hidden beneath the dirt. The woods that controlled Fern had become part of a forgotten creature, one as big as a mountain and just as old, and it was hungry.

The cage of trees began to pull them down into the ground, which had opened up into a seemingly endless pit to receive them, the teenagers within them, as she watched. As they disappeared underneath the earth, and their screams muffled into nothing, the woods settled back to the way they were before almost immediately. Fern let out a deep breath, when the creature finally released its grasp on her mind, and her unseeing eye. The crows, who had been watching from another spot in the trees, began to sing the low note again, willing her to continue her song from earlier. Although the sound of her whistling was clear and sharp once more, she couldn’t help but hear the aspens whispering to her.

Whitewood… Whitewood…

Winter-

By the first snowfall, they have disappeared from sight--fits right in with the rest of Winter. I used to wonder where the homeless people that once crowded the streets went, theorizing that perhaps they were under one of the many snow piles that collected by the side of the road. Most people don’t even think of them; out of sight, out of mind. The homeless during the Winter remind me of the Canadian Geese they once shared the parks with; except their wings have been clipped, so their flock deserted them for warmer skies. When I look far out into the blizzardy snowfields, I can almost see them, traipsing through the blankets of snow. Always, they’re leaving, walking away from the cold. Though, when I blink, they’re forgotten again.

Winter is the season of vanishing.

Spring-

Everything has expanded, to fit the beings newly created within it. We care for the new life that this season brings, and forget about the already-made beings that still need us. The world around us thaws and awakens all at once, even those we have forgotten. In Spring, homeless people are the ruins of our society. They were forgotten somewhere down the road, and now they’ve become part of the environment we left them in, covered in frost and twisted vines that creep across their faces. Homeless people have awakened from their slumber, yet we force them to drift back into their endless sleep still.

Spring is the season of forgotten awakenings.

Summer-

How many desperate faces have I passed in my air conditioned car? I can’t remember. The waves of summer heat caused their faces to melt from my memory like the wax of a candle. They sink into the sidewalks; no one’s willing to pull them out. Pedestrians walk past homeless people without understanding of their presence--to them, they’re already submerged in the cement. And I am no different. The homeless became nothing but recurring faces in my dreams. In Summer, I learned to walk past them as if they were the streets themselves. When I did see them; they were fragmented; half of them hidden under the concrete. As Summer went by, I realized that the only thing that allowed their presence was the streets, and even those were swallowing them up into their depths.

Summer is the season of the unnoticed.

Fall-

The end descends on us before we are ready, in the same way a cat pounces on a mouse. Dead leaves fall off the trees as if our lives are one big play, and they are the closing curtains. Mother Nature lets out an aching sigh ad tells us it's time to go home. Yet, the homeless still stay. Unlike every other creature, they have no home to go back to. Still, everything ends in the same way it always has, and the homeless live in the end, the empty void between the end of Fall and home. For the homeless, there’s never an end;Fall is the beginning.

Fall is the season of beginnings and ends.

Persnakety crossend out and adjusted the spelling of another word, before continuing to tap the red marker, held by the end of his tail, against his slanted head. This was how he spent most of his days, dishing out hash criticism and scolding his apprentice of sorts, who was a bat. Rumors around the publishing division, where he worked from 9:00 to 6:00 each day, said that he'd bite anyone who used "your" or "there" is a grammatically incorrect way. The main writer he edited the work of was an octopus only a couple floors down. Something Persnakety had noticed was how the octopus, whom he didn't know the name of because he's never cared to ask, misspelled certain words over and over again, even after Persnakety's constant comments pointing it out. The word he misspelled, which Persnakety had noticed hi messing up often, was Chihuahua, which the last two h's  missing. Such a mistake made his rattle shake with contempt, and he left a sour note about bringing his friend, who happened to be a chihuahua, to work and letting them rip off one of the octopus's eight limbs. Most editors weren't nearly as vicious as him--which he thought to be an accomplishment-- because he was very serious about impressing the humans. Persnakety figured that, if there were too many mistakes, someone would begin to suspect the company was, quite literally, run by animals, which it was indeed. 

 Although his eyesight was blurry, he could almost taste the mistakes with a flick of his forked tongue. Whenever he spots an error, everyone knows it, because the nerve-wracking sound of his tail rattling can be heard echoing down the hallways long after it ends. As he always does, Persnakety noticed the finite details of the space around him.He noticed the sound of human children playing beyond the closed blinds of the office window, which caused his to smear the line he was making across the word Mississippi--only one p. His jaws opened, displaying his poison laced fangs, and he hissed. If there was one thing Persnakety hated, it was imperfection, especially from himself. Originally, he was a snake mind, living in a mouse populated town in the woods, which is where he learned perfection. Persnakety was known as a doting cleaner, always asking how his customers were doing, and if they were staying healthy. What the ice didn't know was that he was actually making sure they were safe to eat, his own farm of unsuspecting meat. He was chased out of town after he was caught with one of the local residents stuffed into his jaws. Personally, Persnakety wasn't sure why the mice allowed him, a Western Diamondback Rattlesnake, to live there in the first place. Now that he lived with the humans, he used this perfectionism to get a job as an editor. 

Before you ask, yes, Persnakety is well aware that his name is a mix between "persnickety"and "snake" and is disappointed that his parents would ruin his name to make a sub-par pun, although he had to admit, it suited him quite well. 

Awakening in the dead of the night, Florence could hear the footsteps.

The pale, dying-ember orange of her lit candle washed across the polished wooden floorboards and smooth oak walls that winded through her cabin’s dark hallways. Florence watched where the candlelight strayed into the darkness.

Her eyes were pure-black pools of night, that you could swim down within for hours and never reach the bottom. They searched the room’s pitch-black corners with ease, which was their gift, as they couldn’t see at all in daylight. On a shelf, there was a large, glass container, that had many butterflies resting within it, wings closed.

Florence heard the footsteps getting louder, and she became unsure to whether the sound was coming from inside or out. Some of the toys on her table began to shake slightly and Florence began to shake with them, involuntarily. She knew their arrival was imminent.

Her fingers brushed to her necklace, which was made up of many deadly nightshade berries on a string. Onto her chest. Oddly, no heartbeat.

Something slammed on the door. Whatever was on the other side of the door pounded heavier than any knock that could’ve been made by a human, and with the knocks came the sound of the door’s hinges snapping, the wood splintering slightly.

The shadows collected into the figure of a dark creature, the candlelight materializing into its eyes, which were bright and vibrant against its pitch-black fur. Its tongue lolled out of its open mouth, baring dove-white teeth that jutted from every corner like a thicket of thorns. It stared at her. There was a single nightshade flower on its chest, its pale green vine snaking up its legs, that looked to be an emblem of some sorts, like one a knight may wear into battle. 

Fidgeting with her fingernails, for the 35th time that day, Felix sat apart from the other kids as they marveled at the puzzle pieces solving themselves. Unbeknownst to them, she was the force behind their levitation, and the thought made her smile--she liked knowing things that others did not.

Holding her mother’s hand loosely, Felix’s eyes traced the corners of the room as if they would move too, before sticking most of her fingers into her mouth. There were some other people that occupied the unfamiliar waiting room, most sitting in the single row of chairs lining the walls, while a few young kids played with the large, wooden block, which had a simple jigsaw puzzle on each side, in the middle of the floor.

Despite being around the same age as the other kids, Felix felt no interest in the puzzle, and instead turned her attention to the old TV in the top corner of the room. The rims of it were the off-white color of eggshells, and the screen was completely static; the occasional, horizontal color bar flickering in and out of existence across it.

With calculating, grey eyes, Felix watched the room with the quiet observance and intellect of someone who didn’t quite belong there, like a time traveler from another era. Looking at her reflection in the crackling display of the TV, she observed herself closely, as if she expected her body to move without her commanding it so. Felix could just barely see the details of her face, which was cinnamon-colored, like the rest of her body, and completely smooth, as if she’d never smiled nor frowned in her entire life, a theory that was supported by the emotionless look she held on her face. She noted that her facial features were wolf-like, predatory; anyone who looked long into her eyes would feel as though they were being hunted. For once, instead of her grey eyes, which she was as obsessed with as she was with the color grey itself, Felix focused on her head with the most vigilance. However, the short, brown bangs that cut across the bottom of her forehead in a perfectly straight line were not her fixation; she was more fascinated by what she knew was lurking behind it, in her brain.

A grey jay landed on the window to the outside and did nothing, only staring down at her observantly. She met its gaze, but only for a little while, before returning to the room in front of her. As she sat there, numbers began to stream through her mind, and she could barely think straight. One, two, three, four, five, six, five, four, three, two, one, another number, then another, so many she could barely keep up. Felix could hardly stand it, and she could now see the numbers rushing across her vision, inky-black blurs like rushing animals in the dim dusk of her mind’s eye.

Without any sign to anyone around her, she reached out with arms that were practically hidden under her hospital gown, exactly 3 sizes too big, and grabbed the plastic, tacky silver remote that was completely buried under a pile of magazines. She liked the black buttons; Felix brushed her arms across them with fingers that worked heavy, and blunt, like her. People often told her that she had an eye for the unseen. Doctors of all sorts had come to the conclusion that she was dangerously different from the other kids; that was why she was there in the first place. Felix didn’t care though; to her, nothing mattered, really.

Upon pressing a couple buttons on the remote at random, Felix was interested to find that the TV blinked to life, in rapid white flashes, before displaying a black-and-white video of six people in formal clothes, suspended in the air, each one a couple feet away from the other. The people, who were each poised like ballerinas in a music box, twisted ever so slightly in a wind that didn’t appear to exist. Felix stared hard at the screen with an intense curiosity; although nothing but a soft song, that reminded her of the one that played on her parent’s old record, accompanied the odd scene, a far-away buzzing had started in her ears. There were 6 people; she repeated the number again in her head. 6, 6, 6. The number scorched itself into her mind, and her finger almost flinched away in slight pain at the memory of a bruise forming on her skin. She imagined that her body was covered in bruises; when you touched them, instead of pain, a number rose there, until there were enough numbers scattered across her body to match how many there were forming inside her brain.

Suddenly, the TV glitched to another black-and-white scene, one of a woman and a man talking in some sort of living room; it seemed to be from the same era as the first clip, but it was like a sitcom. It wasn’t like any sitcom Felix had seen; the characters spoke in deep, glitched voices that were impossible to understand, and there was a laugh track on almost every sentence.

As she stared, a single, grey splotch appeared on the side of the TV, the same color as everything on the screen. Felix realized that her hand was tapping against the chair subconsciously, and more of the grey blots appeared on the TV, almost covering the rims. She couldn’t look away, and as she heard the laugh track for what was exactly the 43rd time, the inklike, grey substance began to stream down the sides of the TV, out the cracks around and across the screen. There was a noise, breaking at the walls of her focus as it became louder and louder, but it sounded like her head was underwater.

“Felix!” she heard an unfamiliar voice bark. Her mom was tugging on her arm, for her to focus on the man in a lab coat calling her name.

At that moment, she turned her head towards the man at the end of the room, and the break in her focus on the TV caused it to crash to the ground, its screen shattering against the floor. Everyone in the room jumped back, as if they hadn’t even been aware that the TV had been on. Once the TV began to settle against the ground, just as the other people were back into their seats, a feeling of unease hung in the air like static. Her body twitched of its own accord, and she wrapped her hands around her chest in an attempt to steady herself. Although it was certainly expected for odd things to happen in that type of place, most of the people, even the other patients, weren’t truly prepared for things like that to occur, when it was right in front of them; people rarely were. Felix had come to learn that much.

“Felix Novell? Sex: Female. Age: Six years old. Reason: Unidentified supernatural qualities. Is this information correct?” The man asked as she walked over, without her mom.

Felix gave a small nod as she took the man’s hand, and followed him out the other end of the room. In a single glance behind her, she saw that the grey ink was still leaking out the now-broken TV, spilling into the room behind her, engulfing the color from the walls. The buzzing faded from her ears as she gave her mother a stiff, last wave with her free hand; as the grey substance reached the other people in the waiting room, they froze in time, like the interwebs on a shattered computer screen. She tilted her head back, and felt the greyness crawl across the room and seep into the vacant spot left for it in her brain, leaving a still, colorless vacuum of a room behind her, where everything crumbled and drifted apart; she doubted that the doctors would be able to remove the grey matter within her.