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 forest was good for smelling things, especially around the changing of the seasons. It was a game of his to name the things he did not know, and he found this endlessly more entertaining than looking up their real names. Thus he is here, now, instead of in the library or at the tavern, with his nose to the ground and the dappled sun soaking eagerly into his dark back. Near a fallen log, a tall, bright orange mushroom catches a ray of sunlight on its round cap. Something about it suggests it popped up quickly, overnight maybe, and would be gone just as fast. "Ah, and he we have a rare specimen colloquially known as Solis' Member," he thinks crudely to himself, and a juvenile cackle follows. "Okay seriously..." he steps closer to the fungus, inhales deeply a scent not unlike... lemon? "I hearby dub you, noble creature, Orange Mushmon." It was admittedly not the cleverest of names, but he found the name rather charming in its gracelessness. And it was leagues more dignified than Solis' Member. Having noticed one of the specimens, they're suddenly easier to see. They don't seem to clump together but rather they extend in a line that goes deeper into the forest-- almost like a gingerbread trail except... phallic and likely inedible. Something moves. "AH!" Mateo shies, pedaling backwards and unfolding his wings as though that would make him seem larger. It takes too long to realize it's just a girl. "Gods, you scared the-- you startled me." Who sneaks around the forest so quietly, like a predator?! He's indignant and out of breath, not a flattering combination, and he realizes suddenly that the Orange Mushmon was trampled in his terror. Its bright orange color has turned an angry shade of blue, and a strange black fluid seeps from its base. He'd like to investigate it further, but his attention returns to the stranger before him. First things first. "Who are you?" - - - @ Emersyn, the soldier
The forest was cold, dark, silent. It was always like this when it was time for the hunt. Winter wore itself on dormant forest branches in the grim gossamers of timeless Death. Some of the trees were truly dead while others slept. The sky was gray, the snow white, and against a thousand charred, black trees the young soldier amongst them was non-existent with her wintry coat. On feet more silent than the coming of Winter itself, the girl disturbed not even a shrew, who unknowingly continued to tunnel just beneath the soldier's thin shadow. A great horned owl who made his home in the tallest, most-oldest tree in the forest was the first to make a sound. His warning call was a sonorous 'ho-ho-hoot!' that carried through Oldwood to the soldier's attentive ears - the owl had sited wolves on route through the trees. It was the sign for the soldier to take to the air, and was soon on her way up a narrow pathway which lead into a near frozen brook where she continued upstream in frigid water to lose her path. Hungry enough for anything in the dead forest, the wolves dared to hunt their greatest enemy. The pack passed by, parallel to their targeted quarry, never knowing their opportunity to trap the soldier and kill her. Much to their hunger and dismay, the soldier was more clever, as clever as a cloud passing through in the deep night where no moon could sight her. Even now, watching them turn and go, the soldier kept her heart quiet despite the natural fear of meeting something unknown. Wolves, she knew nothing of them. She had only ever heard of them. Now she could see them. Now she knew them. By smell, by sight, by taste, by sound, and she knew she would come to understand their teeth and their claws, because she would kill them when the time was right. Mateo, all feathers and blackness, came into Emersyn's vision faster than she came into his. Lalloping around in the forest like a young buck. She briefly wondered what that must be like, to be without the type of discipline that turned young hearts to stone and the mind into an impenetrable fortress. Keen eyes tracked the black as he moved through the trees, his shape was off but Emersyn knew that it was too early to decipher who it might be. Waiting only took her seven seconds before the boy startled when she shifted a foot in the leaves, both intentionally and unintentionally. She would never admit that encountering anybody other than those she already knew, made her uncomfortable. Mateo came up quick, and despite having thirty extra seconds of knowing he was coming this way, Emersyn was surprised when he balks and spreads his wings in defense. Wings. Even she can admit to having stared at them for an indecent amount of time, she said nothing to him - which - she should have by now. Her face read a blank page in a story book, all those pages before the beginning were food for thought, clarity. She gave him nothing other than the incredulous amount of time she took to study his physiology. A horse with wings. This, she decided to herself, must be more of that new world helter-skelter. If she has scared him, then she has done a good job at looking like the soldier Nicolai always hoped she would become. What she didn't realize was that her own magic had her readied to attack. Telekinesis, although weak, was quite fair to her. The hair pins that had been holding up the long sways of her black and silver curls are flanked at each side. Poised, pointed, promising precision. Emersyn had no idea that her fortress is an armed one. Even as her blizzardy hair spun out of its careful architecture as she lifted her head, the woman made no move to inspect why she was having such a wardrobe malfunction at a time like this. And finally, who are you? he said. Who am I? Emersyn could be anybody, anything to him. She chose ambiguity for all intensive purposes. At least for now. "Those are poisonous." Emersyn warned without glancing down at Mateo's feet, so am I, her gaze secretly admitted. Her penetrating blue eyes were pins of their own as they held the boy captive within her sight. "You should step away from those, immediately." Her stance did not change, but it is clear that she wouldn't let him pass, or come near her. @Mateo Welp, I'm sure she is just being extra today because she can. For some reason I struggled with tenses. He stares at her. Sweet Tempus, she is downright terrifying with those hair-thingies pointed at him and that ice-water stare. Some people were into being scared, they enjoyed the thrill of it. Mateo was not one of those people. Quite the opposite, in fact. Danger made him feel afraid. Pain made him feel... well, pain. "Those are poisonous," she says, like it's an answer to his question. Dead serious. "I knew that," he says with a bold smile-- they would both know this was a lie, but one she couldn't prove. He surreptitiously steps to the side, away from the mushrooms and no closer or farther from the mare. "Would you, ah, put those down please? I'm too young to die by hair accessory." He actually was a reasonable age to die an unusual and unexpected death, but he didn't think she would know that. Mateo had the gift (curse) of youth-- he didn't look half his age. His voice even cracks a bit at the word die, and while he would later claim this was all done on purpose, for dramatic effect and to emphasize his youth and, by extension, innocence-- there was nothing intentional about it at all. Just a pure, unhinged fear of death, twisting in his throat at just the most inopportune time. He clears his throat. "Please? My name's Mateo." His voice smells like sun-baked earth and feels like fat white lily petals brushed across her cheek. Colors flare at the edge of their vision at the mention of his name, Mateo. It's magic, flexing its long fingers through him. A headache begins to flare at his temples. He wasn't good at controlling it. He wasn't good at much of anything at all, if he thought about it. Which he didn't, because he never liked the conclusions he came to. "I'm a scribe, for gods' sakes. Never hurt a..." Mateo was a decent liar, but even he did not have the spunk to say fly. "Anyone." - - - @
|
