Dawn sprang to her feet, dwelling on the unexpected encounter with the certain young man. She whimpered as her lower back throbbed where the boy had caught at it with his boots. Eyeing the boy in front of her curiously, she pressed a basket with elderberries to her chest. There were reed sweet-grass stalks, woven into the basket's handles, which had shrivelled up, and the threadlike projections flaked off into the air as they brushed Dawn's side. 

"You alighted yourself so gracefully," she blurted, gazing at the boy in front of her.

A sudden realisation hit her as what she had just said had sunk in. Colour drained from her face, and the basket fell to the ground with a soft thud. Elderberries that Dawn had meticulously collected lay scattered on the soft forest carpet, glistening like royal blue sapphires. She bent down and frantically searched for her basket. As a result, the shawl that was draped over her shoulders slithered down and joined the basket on the ground.

Dawn had never wished so much for the ground to open and swallow her up.

Before she could recollect herself or pick her belongings up, the boy had gently grasped her shawl, and handed it to her. Dawn searched for his eyes, while wrapping the shawl around herself. She could read perplexity written all over his face, however she gave him credit for appearing merely stricken.

"I am terribly sorry for causing such inconvenience, miss," he murmured, proceeding to sweep elderberries back into the basket.

She joined him with a swift movement. He handed the basket to her, which was filled with berries. Dawn examined his hands, which had been stained by the dark elderberry juice.

"And I am terribly sorry for this," she pointed to his hands. "Thank you for doing that, I was quite surprised to meet any living soul this early."

"I usually take a different path for my morning training," he remarked.

"How unfortunate of you to choose this day to alternate your route," she grinned, clutching the basket until her knuckles turned white. She wished she could dump it somewhere on the ground and escape this place. And, perhaps, this person as well. She had never seen this young man before, and she clearly had no idea what his intentions were, to be running in the forest all by himself.

Only certified fools relinquished the fact that werewolves would roam the woods every night and look for foolish prey.

"I am Aedan," the boy ventured, extending his hand.

Creepy and ill-mannered, she thought to herself. Who in their right mind would extend a hand to a girl after all?

"Lovely to meet you, Aedan," she replied politely, drawling the syllables of his name and trying not to look at his extended hand.

It was a name she had never heard of before, and curiosity gripped her with an enormous force. A thousand thoughts raced throughout her mind, but she refused to give in. Dawn wanted to ask where he lived or who he was. Was he a local or from some other village? Or possibly a town? She searched for his face, took in his appearance, however it told her nothing about his identity. It was as if his true self was concealed somewhere deep within.

The boy looked down at his hand in confusion, but quickly snatched it behind his back. Dawn glimpsed his white shirt cling to his chest, and she quickly averted her eyes. Warm blush crept at her freckled cheeks, painting her complexion in a rosy pink.

"I am afraid I have to go as my Aunt would be looking for me at any moment." She could see his shoulders relax a little bit, and he crossed his arms behind his back. His mouth parted as if to say something, and Dawn prayed silently he wasn't going to ask for her name.

She inclined her head slightly in respect, and, to her surprise, he returned the gesture.

So he has got some manners, she concluded in her head.

Dawn spun on her heels and hastily moved her slippered feet one after the other, breathing heavily. She brought a hand to her chest, where her heart raced and hammered against her ribcage, to calm her heart. She whirled to check if the boy was still statued next to the elderberry bush, but he was nowhere in sight.

She blindly gripped the nearest tree trunk and let her breathing stabilise. She looked up and spotted her cobalt-blue cottage with a white roof less than half a mile away. Gathering her skirts, she sprinted through the rest of the forest, when trees started to part further away from each other.

At the doorstep, Dawn was met by her aunt's panic-stricken face after she had banged on the door a dozen times. She spilt inside the house and shut the door at once with a thunderous crack.

"How many times have I told you to close this door gently? One day you would take this bloody door off its hinges!" the woman snapped, looking daggers at Dawn with those ebony eyes of hers. The girl winced and threw an apologetic glance at her aunt.

The girl leant against the wall in the hallway facing her aunt, her heartbeat's race still echoing in her ears. She wiped sweat off her forehead with the back of her sleeve.

"I think I have just met an ill-mannered ghost, Eyllene," she delivered, catching her breath. "A very ill-mannered male ghost."

But whom was she trying to fool? She clearly knew the boy in the woods was no ghost. The brief brush of her fingers along his calloused palm was a good evidence to it.

"What a load of nonsense! Ghosts? In the forest?" Aunt Eyllene lightly touched Dawn's forehead. "My darling, you are burning," she whispered.

Taking Dawn's hand, she led her to the kitchen, seating her niece down behind the table and taking the basket with berries away from her hands. Eyllene's brows knit together at the sight of scrunched and juicing berries, but she chose not to question it, considering to what extent her niece was distressed.

"And just look at that face of yours! Gardening in such heat will do you no good."

Dawn's hand shot up to pat her warm, sun-burnt cheeks speckled with freckles. "But if it wasn't a ghost, then who was it? If he'd been a werewolf, he would've eaten me before I could do so much as blink," she said, wrapping her fingers around a glass of water that her aunt had set for her. "Besides, he looked nowhere near menacing. And his hair wasn't cut short to the scalp like the boys in our village tend to do."

"Perhaps, he is a son of a wealthy farmer? I know a few families whose children never tend to the farm since their parents employ workers to do all the job. One of them is the Fairens' boy," Eyllene suggested. She sat across her niece, returning to chopping down vegetables for their late-evening meal.

Indeed, the Fairen boy was very soft and pampered. He appeared to be those things, however Dawn saw through his beautiful facade he had put up around the personnel of his father's house. She realised he was an abhorrent young man the first minute she had stepped a foot into their house.

Dawn sucked in a breath. "Speaking of whom, I should better get going, otherwise Madame Fairen will seek to my dismissal from the only source of gold coin income I have!" She exclaimed.

Leaving her aunt, she hurried down the narrow corridor that connected the kitchen to a little lounge, which was painted in Eyllene's favourite colour blue. A white wooden bench and small table in front of it was a blur as the girl slipped through the room into the hallway that connected two small bedrooms to the rest of the house. Dawn cleansed her face with the water from the basin that stood beside an abraded mirror; brushed her teeth with a licorice root and pulled her long chestnut-brown locks into a tight bun at the nape.

A simple routine she had gotten used to while working at the Fairens' manor.

She had stripped out of her day dress, and clothed herself into the muddy-brown working dress. The girl smoothed the dress down, tying all the strings on its bodice.

"Don't forget I will need your help with the apples tonight! We will need to gather all the rotten ones from the ground and bake a delicious pie!" her aunt had called out when Dawn was at the front door, lacing up her shoes.

Dawn beamed at Aunt Eyllene through the hallway and made a loud slurping sound.

And with that, she was gone, and all that was left was a waft of honeysuckle scent that lingered at the front porch, as she darted through the front garden.