"You know, I saw you at lunch today, and---"Hunter cut himself off mid-sentence: he noticed Ash"s eyelids were twitching. It looked like she was about to come to.
[Oh s.h.i.t, oh s.h.i.t, oh s.h.i.t,] he thought, panic rising in his chest.
She was still haphazardly dressed and propped up on his knee. He would have wanted to put a modest distance between their bodies (making room for the Holy Spirit, as the teachers called it) especially considering her state of undress, but that would have meant putting her back on the cold ground.
He settled for cradling her shoulders: it seemed like a rea.s.suring thing to do for her (human contact after pa.s.sing out and all that) but more importantly for him, he could at least keep her from slapping his face the moment she opened her eyes.
"Heeeey, Boots. Wa.s.sup?" he said.
[Wa.s.sup? Where the h.e.l.l did that come from? That sounded so lame!] he thought to himself, cringing inwardly.
Ash slowly opened her eyes. She didn"t slap him.
She blinked slowly---too slowly. Her eyes were unfocused and seemed to be wandering. Then she started murmuring. Hunter strained his ears to listen to her, but she wasn"t speaking words, just nonsense.
"Are you okay?" Hunter asked, a little too loudly.
Ash turned her head to face him, but she couldn"t seem to focus her eyes. They seemed to look past him despite being trained in his direction.
[She"s delirious,] he thought.
Ash turned her head away from him and continued to murmur incoherently. Hunter had to pull her toward him to keep her from falling over. As Hunter continued to observe her strange behaviour, a thought occurred to him.
[Was this her first time shifting?]
It definitely accounted for a lot of things: the torn clothes, the strange behavior, and the loss of consciousness. Ash likely shifted while she was still wearing her uniform, panicked while she was in werewolf form, and pa.s.sed out after she shifted back to human form.
The first time a human successfully shifts in and out of werewolf form is immediately followed by a state of delirium. The human brain becomes overwhelmed with the chemical processes involved in the physiological transformation into a werewolf that it, in effect, overloads. This overload results in mild to serious cognitive impairment that lasts anywhere from hours to days. Disorientation and difficulty in speaking is common, and so are hallucinations.
Hunter had gone through the same delirium himself after his first transformation. He remembered the debilitating anxiety and the disa.s.sociation from reality. He had been with his father in their family orchard, and he had thought that the trees were going to kill him. He was kept inside his room for 3 days, 2 of which he spent in a deep healing sleep.
Finally, the confusing events of the night made sense to Hunter. Now, he could wrap his head around the situation.
First things first: he needed to get Ash somewhere safe to ride out the delirium.
He thought about carrying her back to school through the front gate and making up an excuse about being outside with her. But with her torn clothes and his weird leather outfit, there was no way that was going to work out well with the school authorities. One look at them and the guard on duty would probably throw him on the ground and call the police before he could say h.e.l.lo.
He could try and sneak her back to his room and take care of her there, but there were too many risks involved: getting her over the fence, getting her to his dorm building, and sneaking her in to his dorm room, all while he was wearing his ridiculous leather getup and she was half naked.
Even a.s.suming that he could accomplish that, keeping her in his room was going to be a problem. The Dormitory Supervisor always checked the rooms in the morning to make sure that none of the students skipped cla.s.ses. If he found her in his room, she could lose her scholarship and they could both get expelled.
The best thing to do was to somehow get her back to her own dorm room. But how?
Ash"s eyes were still unfocused, but she was now able to sit on her own. As Hunter had been deep in his own thoughts, she had been sitting quietly, swaying from side to side, moving to music only she could hear.
"Hey, Ash?"
"Mmm-hmmm?" she answered dreamily.
"Can you stand up?"
"Cadenza," Ash drawled.
"What?"
"Sshhhh."
Ash put a finger to Hunter"s lips, shushing him. He stared at her as she squeezed her eyes shut, lifting her ear to the wind as if she were straining to hear something important. She was lost inside her own mind, oblivious to Hunter and his panic.
A moment later, she opened her eyes and looked at him, moonily.
"Dear," she said.
"Yes?"
"Dear," she repeated.
"Yes . . . dear?"
[Is she calling me "dear?" It sounds so old-fashioned but it"s kind of cute] Hunter thought.
Ash still had her finger on Hunter"s lips.
"No, dear?" she asked him, like it was a question he was supposed to know the answer to.
"Uhm, I don"t know, dear," he tried. Maybe that was the right answer.
"No, dear," she said sadly. "Deer gone."
[Oh. She meant the "deer" from before. She wasn"t calling me "dear,"] Hunter realized, suddenly feeling disappointed.
Ash took her finger from his lips. Hunter had hoped she would forget and just keep it there for a while: he kind of liked it.
"Do you want to go home?" he ventured. Maybe he could get her to tell him where her dorm room was, so he could at least try and get her there.
"Yes, please," she replied, smiling. She held her hands out to him, like a child wanting to be carried. She was so cute and trusting, it was breaking his heart to look at her.
"Can you get dressed first? You need to put a shirt on so we can leave."
Ash looked down at herself. She put her hands on the leather vest that was covering her top half. She ran her fingers over the fabric, enjoying the tactile sensation. And then she pulled it away from her body.
Hunter quickly averted his gaze as Ash took her time figuring out his vest and where her head and arms were supposed to go. At least she had a concept of how clothes worked and how to put them on.
Hunter doubted that he would"ve been able to control himself if she had asked him for help getting dressed. He had already seen quite a lot from Ash Parker tonight, and while he very much wanted to see it all again, he wanted that to happen under very different circ.u.mstances.
"Okay!" Ash announced happily, arms raised high in the air. Apart from getting the vest on, Hunter saw that she had also tied her torn blouse around her waist, fashioning a belt to keep her torn skirt up.
Hunter got to his feet. Ash grabbed his hands and pulled herself up.
He had never stood this close to Ash Parker before. He was so close to her that if he bent down just a little, he could touch his forehead to hers. In her current state, the proximity didn"t seem to bother her.
"Do you know how to get home?" he asked.
"Yes!" she answered.
[Oh G.o.d, thank you!] Hunter rejoiced. All of the night"s problems seemed solved. He just needed to walk her to the Girl"s Dorm and make sure she got in and everything would be all right.
"Wait!" Ash said, suddenly.
[Oh no, was she joking? Does she not know where her dorm room is?]
Hunter felt his heart sink to his knees. He had gotten his hopes up too fast. She was delirious, she probably didn"t even know where she was right now, let alone how to get back to her room.
Ash quickly bent down and picked up the pile of her socks and underthings.
"Garbage," she said simply.
Hunter exhaled a breath so hard it felt like he had emptied his lungs. In under a minute she had put him through a roller coaster of emotions. She just wanted to pick up garbage! For a person who wasn"t in her right mind, Ash Parker still had her priorities.
"Let"s go," he said to her. He couldn"t wait to get back to his own dorm room and put all this craziness behind him.
They got to the fence and Ash quickly climbed over without his help. Hunter felt relieved. He quickly cleared the fence and pulled her into the shadows with him. They walked quickly to the back of the Girls" Dormitory. Lucky for them, no one was there.
He walked her to the fire escape and quickly turned to leave.
"Goodbye, friend!" Ash called out to him, smiling.
She looked very happy, standing next to the dumpster, wearing his leather vest and waving goodbye to him. Then she turned and quietly climbed up the fire escape.
He just had the most ridiculous evening with Ash Parker and it ended with him in leather pants without a shirt on, standing next to a dumpster.
Hunter walked away from the Girls" Dorm with his arms crossed over his bare chest, laughing quietly at the absurdity of it all.