the split-paths
Once again you choose to continue on despite the forest’s tricks, be it out of caution, mistrust, or something else. The voices fade into the background behind you, dampened by the fog, and once again you are alone in the woods. For a while, it feels as though the air is thick and heavy, hard to push on through; the fog drapes you in a coat of dew, weighing you down. No matter how hard you strain, the light remains stubbornly fixed ahead of you, never closer, never further. The forest grows deathly quiet beneath all that fog.
For a while the silver light shines brightly ahead, bright enough to guide you, as the forest grows ever darker and the day ever longer. While the path you walk has been carefully groomed, the forest surrounding it grows wild: vines hang low on the branches, undergrowth presses in against the edges of the trail, grasses and flowers struggle to grow in the hard-pressed dirt. They scratch at your sides as you walk past, like fingers reaching through the fog to tug at your mane. Perhaps you still find beauty in it all, in the vibrancy of the flora as it attempts to take back this path. But perhaps there is only a whisper of suspicion in your mind, in knowing the forest does not seem willing to let this path continue-
Perhaps you don’t notice it beginning to lessen at first, the chains of mist shackling your legs loosening their grip. But slowly, slowly, the fog begins to fall away bit by bit, ribbons of white rising into the sky.
And yet, it is almost easy to miss the split in the trail. It turns sharply to the east, snaking away into the trees. Perhaps you follow it without question or doubt in your mind, without realizing the way a fallen tree seems placed perfectly just off the trail. Or perhaps you notice right away the hoofprints leading around that fallen tree, and pause long enough to see a gap in the foliage that looks suspiciously akin to another trail, however overgrown and wild it may be.
Past the fallen tree, the new trail is drenched in moonlight that caresses each leaf and petal with all the tenderness of a mother. Dust motes and specks of light dance along the overgrown trail, beckoning to you.
You turn back to the pathway you were already on, and find it drenched in darkness.
To continue the quest, you must reply to this thread with your character's choice. There is no word limit, and you can be as creative with the prompt as you'd like! The two continue on through the mist to the light shining through, only to find that it is unnaturally bright moonlight highlighting a new path veering to the side. The path they followed continues on straight ahead, but is now drenched in darkness.
Choices: take the moonlit path or the dark path
@euryale @erasmus
A note: this will be the pair’s final choice to make! Choose wisely...
