From Above the Treetops

X

N.J climbed into my car and studied the various boxes on my backseat warily while plugging himself in with his seatbelt. I hadn't told him what my plan for today was and it was safe to say he didn't trust my mysterious activity.

"Care to explain?" N.J gestured to the boxes.

"We're moving across the country!" I exclaimed, pulling off before he had a chance to react.

"Thank god. I've been waiting for the day you'd ask me to elope together." N.J batted his eyelashes at me, "Hopefully it's coastal. Beach babes."

I shook my head at him, focusing on the road ahead. It was only a short drive, but with all of the boxes we needed it was easier to drive than to walk the distance. Even as two wolves, all those boxes would be too heavy to lug across the dense woods.

N.J wouldn't shut up with his questions as we drove, however, so I was eternally grateful that the drive wasn't long. Pulling up in front of Oscar and Ava's house seemed to confuse him further. I refused to listen to his endless questions as I climbed out of the car and began to unload the boxes. N.J didn't hesitate to open one and when he saw the paint cans inside, his brow creased with further confusion.

"What are you planning?" N.J asked, pulling one of the cans, a sage green one, out of the cardboard box that was near falling apart from the sheer weight of the paint cans.

"Keep it down, it's a surprise. I'll tell you inside." I rolled my eyes, taking the box with the paint cans from him.

He nodded and rushed inside, obviously thinking the faster he moved inside the quicker he could know. The kid was impatient. I lugged the boxes inside by myself, bitter that he hadn't offered to help. Just then, it was as if he realised, he came running back outside and took a box before running back inside equally as quick.

"Come on!" He yelled, "You move so slow, gramps."

I laughed at that, quickening my pace despite myself. I carried the box inside and straight up the old wooden staircase at the back of the house, winding up to a small box bedroom. I set the boxes down in the centre of the room and turned to N.J, who was carrying the second box.

"We're painting the baby room as a surprise for Ava's baby shower." I grinned, "I didn't invite Mila because she's shit at painting, but Oscar gave us permission to do what we like with the walls."

"We're doing a mural?" N.J grinned, "That's so cool."

I nodded, feeling pretty proud of the idea. N.J and I were both pretty artistic, so I thought it would be a cool thing to surprise Ava with. I wanted to give her something more sentimental than just some baby grows, I suppose. The boxes contained some green, black and white paints as well as red, yellow and blue so that we could mix the paints to get different shades and such.

"I was thinking, since it's going to be a half-wolf, half-human baby that it would be cool to make the nursery feel as welcoming to the pack as possible. We live in the middle of the woods, and the woods are beautiful, so why not make it a cute woodsy scene?" Explaining my thought process came out more soppy than I had expected.

"See, this is why she chose you as the god-father." N.J grinned, grabbing a paint tin and a screwdriver to pry the top off.

"Stop getting ahead of yourself." I chuckled, "We need to lay down the tarps first. We can't leave this place looking worse than when we came in."

N.J reluctantly set the screwdriver down and helped me lay out the floor protection, taping it to the skirting boards to keep them clean too. Oscar had kindly moved all of the furniture out of the room for the day so that we could decorate. Ava would kill us if we got paint all over her house.