Code Geass: Serena of the Beast People - Chapter 8

      A few more weeks passed, and one day, in the middle of winter in December, Suzaku and I woke up to snow falling outside the window.  "Wow…" I said as Suzaku and I went up to the window to glimpse what it looked like outside.
      "It's beautiful, isn't it?" Suzaku asked, but then his eyes got wider when he got a better look.  "And look, Serena!  It seems that this year, we've been blessed by a wondrous blue winter!"
      "Yes, we have, Suzaku," I agreed.  "But it's nothing compared to the one we had three years ago!  Do you remember that one?"
      Suzaku nodded.  "Yes, I do," he said.  We looked directly into each other's eyes, and my eyes glowed as we looked inside my mind, into the past three years ago.  We were six years old again, playing in the snow, but after a minute, the vision vanished.
      "Hey, Suzaku," I said, after we ended our 'looking-into-the-past' trance.  "Let's go see if Lelouch and Nunnally are up yet!  We can have a winter run!"
      Suzaku immediately became excited and said, "Yeah, let's do it!"
      Half an hour passed, and Suzaku and I were dressed and had eaten breakfast (we ate some cooked boar meat I had left over), when we went to go get Lelouch and Nunnally.  Surprisingly, they were already up, and they had been waiting for us, too.
      "Hey, you two!" I called over as Suzaku and I ran up to them.
      Lelouch and Nunnally faced us, but Lelouch was the only one who saw us.  "Good morning, Serena, Suzaku," Nunnally said.  When Suzaku and I reached them, we all turned to the falling snow again, but then, I suddenly heard a loud chirping noise.
      Lelouch, Suzaku, and I looked over and saw three mockingbirds sitting on a tree branch a few feet away.  "Uh-oh," I said in a deadpan tone, phasing into my wolf form, narrowing my green eyes angrily, flattening my ears, and my tail thumping against the ground.  "Not them again."
      Suzaku suddenly recognized them as well and he narrowed his eyes too, walking to my side.  "Serena, it's the Mockingbird Trio, isn't it?" he whispered in my ear, but Lelouch heard what he said.
      "The who?" he said out loud, and the three Mockingbird Sisters heard him, and began mocking him.  Instantly becoming annoyed, he shouted at the sisters to stop making fun of him, which only resulted in making the situation worse.
      "Lelouch, be quiet!" I whisper-yelled to the boy.  "You'll make the situation much worse than you already have!"  I got the four of us together and we began to converse: "Listen here, you three.  It's time I got the better of those good-for-nothing pests.  Stay very quiet; I'm going to go over there and teach them a lesson."  I put a sly smirk on.  "Watch and learn, my friends."  I trotted on all fours over to the tree, tail sticking straight up in the air.  When I reached the tree I said in a sing-song voice, "I'm he-ere."
      "He-ere!  I'm he-ere!" the Mockingbird Sisters said mockingly right back at me.  
      I got a quick look back at my three human friends, smirked wickedly, did a thumbs-up, and then: "I'm a stupid bird!"  And then I began walking away, eyes closed, ears back, and tail down, a frown on my face.
      "I'm a stupid bir-- Oh!" The Mockingbird Sisters had started to repeat my insult, but then when they realized what was going on, they stopped abruptly; my ears and tail stuck straight up, my dull frown turning into an extremely satisfied grin. Mortified by my trick, the Mockingbird Sisters began saying things like, "Oh, what violence!  Nasty little wolf!  Nasty!"
      When I got back to my friends, I leaned my wolf head down and whispered to them, "There, that shut them up."  
      My friends nodded.

      Later that afternoon, Lelouch, Suzaku, and I decided to have our own winter run*, like I'd used to do with my older brother Solaris, starting when I was only five years old and my brother was six.
      I put protective charms around the shrine, to protect the place from any Black Demons, because we left Nunnally there alone.  After that, the boys and I ran to the nearest opening to the forest we could find, and then we began running.
      I looked back at the boys, and saw that they were keeping up with me easily.  It seemed that the scratch I gave them a few weeks ago gave them the ability of tireless energy.
      When we came to an exit to the forest, a hill was just ahead, so I jumped high into the air, doing a flip mid-stride, phasing to my wolf form in the process.  I then came down, landing in the snow, and began running on all fours as a wolf.
      Suzaku and Lelouch came sliding down the hill, and after two minutes of me running and them sliding, we crashed into the snow bank below.  
      After a minute of being buried in snow, we began plunging our way out.  I dug myself out, and then shook the wet snow off my dark auburn-colored fur.  I turned and looked at Suzaku (who was the only one present at the minute), and after a brief pause, we suddenly burst out laughing.  "Oh, that was fun!  Insanely crazy, but fun all the same!" I yelled, slamming my paw down to the ground repeatedly, laughing uncontrollably.
      "I agree, Serena; that was fun!" Suzaku said, laughing hard.
      Suddenly, underneath the sheet of snow, a hand popped out.  It was Lelouch, yelling things.  It was muffled at first because of the snow.  "You two are the most reckless…" His head then shot out of the snow, and then he began pulling himself out.  "…insane people I've ever met!"  He looked at me and Suzaku, looking angry at first, but then he scoffed lightly, and smiled.  "But all the same, I guess that was a pretty good run."
      All three of us started to laugh hard, but then I stopped instantly as I smelled the air.  It was strangely unstable.  I then recognized the smell.  It was the scent of the forthcoming of a major snowstorm, and in a panic, I realized that it was only ten minutes away from hitting.
      "Serena, what's wrong?" Suzaku asked, noticing the panicked look on my face.
      "I can smell a major blizzard that is a sixth of an hour away from hitting!" I said.  I got down on my stomach and added, "Quick, get on my back!  We got to get back to the shrine before it hits!"
      Suzaku and Lelouch didn't argue and climbed up on my back.  As soon as they were on, I began running really fast, so we wouldn't get caught by the blizzard.  We got back to the shrine two minutes fast.  I undid the protective charms and walked inside the storehouse with Lelouch and Suzaku in tow.
      That night, the blizzard arrived with a bang.  The unstable and violent winds were coming through cracks in the wall, and my friends were shivering, freezing cold because of the wind's strong force.
      "Cold?" I asked.  My friends nodded, and I said, "Well, there's a hundred and ten degrees over here."
      They slowly came up and sat against me, feeling the intense warmth of my fur (I remained in my wolf form the rest of the night).  "Oh, Serena, you're so warm!" Suzaku exclaimed, a tingly chill running down his spine.
      "She is warm!" Lelouch agreed.
      I smiled and chuckled.  "That's the way it us for us Beast People.  We never get cold, not even in human form, unless we get wet.  A wet Beast is a cold Beast; a dry Beast is a warm Beast."
      The three of them smiled, and fell asleep against me, and soon, I fell asleep too, waiting for the next day to come.