Therian story CHAP 2

Instructions

Despite the unfamiliar territory, she walked through the woods with a confident stride and her head held high. There was a certain calming feeling to these woods. A welcomeness she couldn’t quite explain. It was like this has been her home her entire life. She found the tension in her shoulders slowly relaxing and her mind falling into a place of quiet peace. She took a slow, deep breath, savoring the sharp earthy smell of the forest. She found herself walking deeper into the woods, drawn to the unknown in the expanse of trees that seemed to stretch out forever. She heard the soft crunch of leaf litter beneath her shoes as she walked deeper into the forbidden woods. She found no sign of shapeshifters anywhere nearby. The only life she saw were bugs scuttling the ground, birds cawing and the occasional squirrel darting up a nearby tree. No sign of mutated creatures who can shift forms and eat humans whole, only a peaceful, beautiful forest. The kingdom is a joke. Sending units of men to go out on “hunts” into the woods, looking for creatures that don’t even exist. She found a spot next to a large oak tree and slumped down against it, loosely tossing her bag aside and looked up, letting her eyes close. She savored this fleeting moment of peace in her otherwise stressful and demeaning life. It was only her and her mother most days, her stepdad was always busy in the deepest parts of these very woods taking week-long “hunting” trips with the rest of the royal hunters. And every second with either of them feels like hell. According to her mom, her dad had died before Briar was born, so she’d never met him. Her entire life, her mom has bounced around from boyfriend to boyfriend to become Briar’s “new father” and it wasn’t until last year when mom finally settled on Briar’s stepdad, Orson and they got married a few months later. Except what her mom doesn’t seem to understand is that she doesn’t want a “new dad” to replace the one she'd never met. And what’s worse is that Orson acts like he’s her real father as though she hadn’t just met him a year ago. The sound of rustling and the scrape of nails on dirt pulled Briar out of her thoughts. She opened her eyes and sat up, what was that…? She wondered, and looked around. A sudden chill raked down her spine. There may not be shapeshifters… but she’s deep in unknown woods. Meaning there are animals that would make Briar a snack. She looked around cautiously, slowly standing up, when she went to grab her bag from the ground, her hands reached for empty space. What the heck? She put it down right there, she swore she dumped it down… The sound of rustling in a bush behind her made her spin around. There. She crept towards the bush as quiet as she could, straining to hear what was in the undergrowth when she heard the distinct crinkle of a chip bag. Something got into my snacks. Maybe, she mused, I can scare the creature off. It was probably a squirrel or raccoon scavenging for easy food. She felt bad for the creature. It was surviving out here, it needed to worry about predators, getting its next meal when Briar was upset over having to do chores all day. But no matter how much she felt bad for the creature down there… The bag had her phone in it. If she lost her phone, her mom would k!ll her. It would only fuel her mom’s belief of how immature she was and she’d have an extra eye watching her as if the constant supervision she had now wasn’t enough. She got down to her knees in front of the bush and muttered apologies to the creature as she parted the leaves to get a look at the thief. And what she saw made her let out a startled yelp of surprise. It was a human.