Tell Us How You Aren't Afraid to Die

Viride forest, like most forests, holds its audience captive by the usual beauty of it all.  Jungle greens, marsh yellows, earthy reds, browns, and greens, these are the colors of most flora and fauna.  Exotic in its own way that no plain field, or even a mountain range can boast.  Emersyn has never seen a forest outside of winter's grasp.  Oldwood, the forest of her childhood, never recovered after the terrible winter storm that happened during the season she had been born..  She thinks to herself now about how mysterious something so revealing can be afterall.

Standing in the heart of the Viride forest takes her back four years, a young girl at twelve months old seeing Oldwood for the first time since she had been born.  The trees looked quite similar to the rusks and barks of these which stand before her now, but now they teem with life, not death.  Emersyn remembers that the ground was soft and moist beneath her tender feet, but only because it was fresh snow. Nicolai ordered one of his cruel endurance trainings for the girl in the dead of winter. 

'This is a hunting exercise, Emersyn.   You will not hunt the wolves.' 

These woods echo with the sounds of singing birds and rushing fresh water, but her memory seems keen on recalling her father's second-in-command briefing the young soldier on the layout of the land that she was to be left alone in overnight.  Nicolai gave her five minutes to ask questions before they would leave her alone. Nicolai strapped the knife to her with a thick fur to use for the seventy-two hours that she would need it. 

The wolves will be hunting you.  Your job is to survive them, soldier.  

Instantly, hair bristles at the very base of her neck.  Emersyn realizes now that she has been standing in the clearing of the forest for too long.  Birds have come back to their shrubs after realizing that the gray horse in the wood will cause them no harm nor trouble.  The soldier, remembering that day as if it were here, now, centers herself quietly, calmly. 

Emersyn moves carefully, every measure still calculative and predetermined of its outcome.  Her breath is shallow, ears tuned to the environment rather than the tick-tick-ticking of her steady heart. Shapes move overhead, shadows slink through wood stalks and brush, and as always, the steady avian orchestra plays on.

Although the woman knows that Oldwood is not trying to kill her with its savage hounds (nor Viride with its birdsong), she still cannot help but feel as though one of them is following her here, now.


@Mateo  Woo, please have fun with this.  I think they can discover something in the forest together?  
~~~

The Bone Eater

Since this morning, fate has slotted Mateo for prey.  Perhaps it is natural selection, or maybe it is a test of his skill.  Either way, by meeting Emersyn, Fate has also given Mateo a sword.  Emersyn may never speak to the feathered pipsqueak again, but something important will happen today, and they have been chosen by Fate, to bear witness.

Subtle and silent as a cumulus rolling overhead, it is unseen.  It makes no sound.  It smells like fresh soil and wet leaves.  It is virtually non-existent if one does not know what to look for.  It could show its face if it cared to, but it is - quite naturally - transparent.  It is large. Large enough to pass as a persistent breeze that has followed Mateo from the moment he paused at his first mushroom and wound its way through the woods behind him as silent as a phantom. 



 It sews itself in and out of the edges of his shadows as they flicker like a horror scene in the dappled light - it takes hold with many hands, and eyes, and tongues.  It tastes him with every gentle breeze gliding through the understory.  This is its home - where it has lived for hundreds of years.  It can look like anything.  If everything could hold a shape all at once, then it would look like nothing.


When Mateo stops in the woods to think, to talk, hum to himself - to overall be distracted - that is when it takes the time to learn its quarry.  Every tiny twist of the ear or wing.  Every sunspot that dapples him.  No part goes unnoticed, especially when Mateo trusts that he is absolutely alone. Every swish of the tail, every toe that taps...

All of Mateo's secrets today belong to a monster that plans to snack on his fuzzy little bumblebee when the time is just right. 
It is Mateo's feathery attributes themselves that attract the beast. A satisfying crunch through hollow birdwing quells the bone eater's need to crush anything precious.  It knows how to hunt carefully.  It prefers to take them when they are sleeping but tonight might not be so easy.  It is a patient hunter, and so when Mateo meets Emersyn, it waits.  


Under the guise of nothing and everything all at once, a true danger lurks beneath the veil of awareness and neither of them know it.


All that is, just is.



..



"Did you hear that?"  Emersyn's ear twitches back.  Birds above in the branches have gone silent.  Certainly a fimbly featherbrain does not startle them with his wings?  The soldier's nerves remain shot, even when she lowers her aim on him she does not relax.  She knows that the wolves howling in her ears is just another sound the wind makes when it wants to scare something.  "Do you suppose there is something out there?"  Even though the sun is out, Emersyn cannot help but feel like the wood grows darker, and colder.  The needles quickly knit her hair back up so she has a place to keep them. 

A bird scares several rings of trees back, she can hear it flick its way through the branches.  Trees steel themselves in silence.  The blood in her face drains, even the blues of her eyes turn gray.  Two red dots glow in each one.  Shapes and slopes tie its form together. Horror seeps into Emersyn's face slowly, but permanently.  To her it appears to be a bear, or a mountain, whose eyes are as red as a smoke-filled sun, like a demon.

 "There are eyes out there, behind you.  Mateo. What did you do?"  She directs, asks, then accuses him shortly after. She wouldn't accuse him at all if not for the fact that the thing showed up on the very same path. Its body flickers and wavers out of visual range as she speaks. Readying itself.  Steadying itself.  Streamers of color slash through the woody background like a watercolor mirage.  Heat radiates from it in all the ways it shouldn't.  Its strangeness scares her as much as its stillness does.
"Its moving."  Her voice is calm, steady, but there isn't enough petal soft magic that Mateo could use to soothe it.

@Mateo  Ready ~ annnnd ~ GO!

~~~