Chapter 72

Part 4: Sporting Wood

Coop trotted along in wolf form through the wooded grove. To a human, this area deep in the heart of the Olympic Peninsula's temperate rain forest would seem impenetrably dark, but to his senses it was awash in the silvery light of the full moon. He'd never ventured this far into the forest before, but he knew he'd be back. There was something elementally soothing about this grove - as if it had never been touched by the hand of man. All the tension of his day slipped away, even more so than it always did when he was able to shift and run through the moonlight. Here in the forest, he wasn't Professor Marceski, constantly worried about maintaining his grant funding or getting that next paper published, and he wasn't even Cooper, the werewolf. He just was.
He paused beside a particularly stunning red alder tree and lifted his leg.
"Don't even think about it, Fido."
That gave Cooper pause. He stood there, leg cocked, and studied the tree. Had it actually spoken to him, or was he more stressed-out than he'd realized after just finishing up his tenure approval?
"You heard me. Shoo. Go piss on somebody else."
He yipped softly back, tipping his head from side to side.
"I know what you are. If you want to talk to me, fine, just project your thoughts, dummy. But first, go over in the bushes and relieve yourself. Don't get any of that nasty stuff on my bark."
The voice was decidedly feminine, if a little bit on the snarky side. Now that he thought about it, he could tell it was inside his head, not something he was hearing through his ears. Huh. Trees that could talk? While his scientific brain was processing the possibilities, he walked over to some huckleberry shrubs and took care of business. Then he went back and sat down in front of the alder tree.
What are you? Trees couldn't talk. He was a botanist, damn it. He knew that.
A tree, you moron. You are a little slow, aren't you?
The scruff of Coop's neck stood up. He was considered a genius in scientific circles. He'd almost perfected a vaccine against Dutch elm disease, a breakthrough that could save thousands if not millions of trees a year. He was not a moron.
Really? Then why are you sitting on your butt, talking to a tree?
The tree had a point, but Cooper shrugged it off. Do you have a name?
You don't know an alder when you see it?
Another voice, also female, but a little - older? sharper? - chimed in. This one is a bright one, isn't he? Why are you talking to him? Cooper looked around and placed this voice into a Douglass fir off to the left that had to be over two hundred feet tall. The alder, at maybe sixty feet, was positively dwarfed by her - its - neighbor.
Sorry, ladies. I meant individual names, since clearly, each of you is unique.
The fir laughed - at least Cooper could have sworn it did. How could a tree laugh? He's a charmer, even if he isn't too smart. I'm Xera.
Kyla, said the alder, her psychic voice sweeter and more musical than the fir's, even though she'd been kind of snotty at first. What's yours?
Cooper Marceski. He dipped his head in greeting to each tree.
Cooper? Does that mean you make barrels? The alder - Kyla - sounded unimpressed.
Cooper chuffed a laugh out his snout. No. It's just the first name my parents gave me. I'm a teacher and scientist.
Oh really? He could hear the skepticism in the voice of the fir. Scientist.
Yes, Xera. I know you think I'm a little dim, but in human form, I'm a professor of botany. Which was probably why his mental breakdown took the form of talking to trees. The irony was by no means lost on him, even if he had cracked.
You're not crazy. Kyla's tone was actually kind for a moment. If you believe in werewolves, why not talking trees?
You've got me on that one. Hard to argue with the fact that if shapeshifters existed so did other things. Hell, his own cousin Jackson was married to a vampire. Only he'd come to accept his own species as a biological fact - an evolutionary offshoot of some sort, involving a shadowed, secondary double helix of DNA that was irreversibly intertwined with the first. Vampirism was some kind of viral DNA modification. Talking trees though? Those made no sense at all.
So what are you doing this deep in the forest if you have to get up and go to work tomorrow? Xera asked.
Just running. I don't have any classes on Friday, so it seemed like a good chance to get in a nice long run. The weekend and the full moon didn't always coincide, so he tried to take advantage of it when it did. While he didn't have to shift at the full moon - honestly, he could shift whenever he wanted to - the lunar cycle did exert a pull, and the full moon made him tense, his skin tingling uncomfortably if he forced himself to stay in human form through the whole thing.
Tonight though, it had felt so good to run that he had gone deeper into the forest than he ever had before. In fact, a glance up at the sky let him know dawn was just an hour or so away.
I should be going. He nodded at each of the trees. Can I come back and talk to you some other time?
Whatever, replied Xera.
Sure, said Kyla. Damn, her voice was awfully sexy for being a tree. Coop wasn't sure he was comfortable with that thought. Probably a good time to head out, before he started trying to hump a knothole or something. This was getting weirder by the minute.
Then good night, ladies. Cooper sprang to his feet, yipped a farewell and raced off toward home.