{{ NOTE: part one is found in comments in the sprite inside }} { part two :: for @CatMeowLove7 } The forest was never silent. Always there was motion, noise, life. Plants reached dark leaves towards golden sunlight. Animals darted between their branches. Mara walked between the roots of giant cedars, leaped over fallen logs, waded through the river on slick stones. She walked between earth and sky, between life above and death beneath. She was one with the forest, just another spark of life hidden by its thick canopy. She was a hunter, a predator. She was a protector. “Where are we going this time?” Cee asked. His voice was small, but that was normal for Spirits. Cee took the form of a bumblebee, bright and shining like a firefly, only all over. That would happen no matter what form he took; it was the tell-tale sign that a creature was not to be killed. That he was a friend. “Oh, I don’t know. Further out. Maybe stay for a few days, until I catch something.” “We should have gone with the hunting party last week.” “You know I don’t like that. It’s no fun when they’re stumbling around.” Cee hummed. “I think you just don’t like watching people who are better than you.” Mara almost slipped on a patch of moss as she looked up to glare at him. Cee hummed, glowing with laughter. Spirits were strange; like animals, you had to get used to their ways of displaying emotion. But Mara knew if Cee were human he would be clutching his sides and wiping away tears. Mara stuck her tongue out at him. Not very mature, no, but satisfying. And her mother couldn’t see her all the way out here. With a buzz of outrage, Cee zipped around her head. “You’re not as smart as you think you are,” Mara grumbled. Cee alighted on the end of her nose, bright, shimmering, almost painful to look at. Not wanting to trip, Mara paused. He dimmed the glow so she could see his fuzzy bumblebee body. “And neither are you,” Cee agreed. Mara rolled her eyes, but she was smiling. “Fine, fine. Deal. We both need to work on our egos.” Cee flitted his wings, nodded smartly—or as smartly as he could in this form—and darted off. “C’mon! Let’s go find the clearing!” “No! I said I wanted to hunt! Mama is expecting—!” He was already gone. Mara sighed, shaking her head. She looked back, even though she knew the woods would have swallowed up her house by now. Sorry, Mama. Hunting would have to wait. She followed the spark of his form into the forest along a familiar path. Frowning, Mara surveyed the river. They didn’t usually come from this direction. Cee must have forgotten. And even with Mara’s skill, the river was overburdened by recent rain, sloshing over its normal boundaries, foaming with fury. It would just love for her to try to cross and get caught beneath its current. Mara blew a strand of hair—which had come undone from her ponytail—out of her face, thinking. Perhaps Cee would come back. He couldn’t be that far ahead. But he clearly hadn’t realized the river would pose a challenge for Mara, flying as he was. Sometimes Spirits could be so empty-headed! If Mara went to search for a place where the river was crossable, they might get separated even further. With an annoyed huff, Mara sat down on a rock at the edge of the river. Her eyes quested around the bank. Aha! Mara jumped up and hefted the length of wood. It was about two handspans long and the circumference of her clenched fist. Lifting it closer, she studied to make sure it was just damp, not wet through. It looked recently fallen, perhaps even the product of a lumberjack who didn’t need such a small piece or was too lazy to check behind his wagon, and was far enough from the river to not be driftwood. Satisfied, Mara sat back down on the rock and pulled out her knife. Humming softly to herself, she cleared all the bark until she had a smooth piece to work with. Now, what to carve? Mara held the piece an arm’s length away, tilted it this way and that. Perhaps she’d draw an unflattering portrait of Cee. She laughed a little at the idea, but this was too good a piece to waste. Hmm…. Finally, decided, she set to carving. {CONT in Notes and Credits}
{part two, CONT from above}} “Mara?” Cee’s voice drifted through the trees. It hadn’t been long, so Cee had probably realized she wasn’t following before he even got to the clearing, but Mara was close to finishing her carving. “Yup?” Mara called. “Where—?” Then Cee’s bright form darted across the river. “Mara! Where were you?” “I could ask you the same thing.” Cee buzzed. “Well. I was where I said I was going. The clearing.” “I couldn’t cross, and I didn’t want to get separated further,” Mara explained, gesturing to the pregnant river. Humming thoughtfully, Cee hovered over the water. “Ah. I see.” “Let’s go find somewhere I can cross,” Mara said. Cee bobbed in affirmation. “Together, this time,” she added. She couldn’t help it. “It wasn’t my fault!” he protested. “How am I supposed to remember you can’t fly?” Laughing, Mara skipped along the bank, her knife slipped back into its sheath and her unfinished carving stuck in her backpack. Black vines spread across the path ahead. Mara hesitated, uncertain. A strange foreboding settled over her, a feeling like walking down an alley after dark, a certainty something bad had—or would—happen here. “Did you see these when you came?” she asked, kneeling to study them but making sure to keep her distance. The sun was high above their heads by now, though it was hardly visible through the thick canopy of branches twisting between them and the sky. If she hadn’t been paying attention, the vines might have looked like nothing more than roots cast in shadow. But she was looking. And they most certainly were not. Some sort of dark smoke emanated from the whip-thin vines. They covered the ground, crossing over each other again and again, like a huge black cobweb. All she could think of was an infection. Poison entering the bloodstream. Cee rushed to her side, vibrating with light and noise. Mara frowned. She wasn’t . . . she wasn’t quite sure what that reaction from him meant. Strange . . . . “N-no, I didn’t get this far,” Cee murmured, his voice very, very small. A slick, dark feeling, so like the vines themselves, whispered down Mara’s back. “Oh,” she said. It wasn’t the thing to say, but she didn’t know what would be better. “I don’t like them,” Cee whispered, ducking into her hair and settling on her shoulder. “Let’s leave.” Mara looked around at the path leading to the clearing. All infested. Even the trees . . . they looked darker than normal. She realized she couldn’t hear the forest anymore. Everything had gone silent, like a candle being snuffed without ceremony. All that was left was black vines and creeping smoke. +1288 for part two TOTAL WORD COUNT: 3,321 (including a paraphrase of the original prompt for part 2 I didn’t include here)
