I quietly crawl around in the blackness of the forest sneaking up on the witch; the thick underbrush does nothing to mask the sounds of my footsteps. A few feet ahead an orange glow flickers in the clearing. She has her back to me, her silhouette, shows the loose robes she always wears. She doesn't move, which is odd, normally she is dancing, that is when she is not teaching me magic.
"Nice try" she speaks, "I know you are back there"
Signing, I stand up, and cry out in pain. She turns around and looks at me…I think, I wasn't sure, I had stars in my eyes. That was all I could see.
"You know, I thought you were good at sneaking around, people who sneak around look up before they stand up."
After a few seconds of sitting on the damp earth I rely, "Yeah, but, where I am from, I don't have to worry about branches" I stand back up onto me feet, rubbing my head gingerly I added "Not to mention the underbrush in here doesn't help my stealth ness."
I stepped into the rest of the clearing, and went over to the makeshift tent I pitched, right before I sat down to get comfortable, she told me I had to go get water if I wanted to eat.
She watched him walk out of the clearing carrying a bucket grumbling, "Stupid muggle, complains about everything" "I HEARD THAT!" screamed a voice from the pitch black of the forest. A couple seconds later, a thud and a loud clang rang through the trees. A quiet "oof!" came through the trees. She grinned and yelled out; "You are supposed to keep your eyes OPEN!" She chuckles when a "Yeah yeah" comes from somewhere in the darkness.
Picking myself off the floor, I think to myself; "why in the hell can't SOME light filter to the floor? When I stroll out of the forest, I am going to look like an albino." I felt the creek before I saw it. In my negligence I didn't pay attention to the quiet trickling of the creek, and ended up stepping in it. I bend down to fill up my bucket, then a thought slammed into me like a brick wall. I turned on my heel and stormed back up the back and stomped back to camp.
She heard something stomping towards her and she burst out laughing. In between her bouts of laughter she managed to squeak out, "You fell for it!" After catching a glimpse of his furious face she laughed even harder making any further words unmanageable. She just wanted to tease him, he should have known that she was a witch and she could conjure water if she wanted. She watched him thump over to his makeshift tent and take off his books and socks, and pout. He is so cute! No wonder Kali loves him so much…I wish he was mine, not hers. Briefly she fantasized about what he looked like without his clothing. But quickly shook that thought out of her head knowing it was never going to happen, she just wasn't as pretty as Kali.
Only three of us live in the forest that I am aware of. Kali, Tawnee, and I. Kali is my fiancé, she is about 5'3" with brown hair that goes to her shoulder blades. She loves animals, just like I do, which is why we are able to live in the forest. I will get back to the forest and how we came to be living in here in a little bit. Tawnee is a few inches taller than Kali, with a pretty face. I on the other hand, am 5'10" with jet black hair, and hazel eyes. The three of us became friends instantly, mostly because of our sarcastic wit, and stubbornness.
Sean picked up his rifle and started dismantling it again. He constantly cleaned his rifle, sometimes cleaning it two or three times a day. For some reason he found peace in being able to take it apart and know what each individual piece does, and how it works in combination with other parts to complete it's purpose…to fire heavy metal projectiles at incredible speeds. It was the same thing with the other job he did, ran steam locomotives for a railroad. He gave up the second love of his life to learn how to do potions. Only a short while before, Sean would be found running steam trains through the black forest. The black forest was so strange it was considered haunted. It covered thousands of square miles, and seemed to live, and move of a daily basis.
Seven years previously a railroad company decided to build a rail line through the center of the forest hoping to get trains around the forest in one day, instead of the week it would normally take. The rail line got about twenty miles into the forest when laborers started disappearing. The railroad thought they just abandoned the work party and left. The company went bankrupt trying to keep enough laborers supplied to keep the line moving, but eventually sold the line, at least what had been completed. Company after company attempted to complete the line. Almost seven years after the construction began, it was completed, but at a cost of trillions of dollars and almost three million men. Most engineers were to afraid to drive trains on the line because of the stories, about trees moving, and wolves bigger than bears. Most of these stories were fake, but it still kept a strong fear in men. Those who were not afraid to drive the trains, did so, and made fortunes. Sean himself made well over a million dollars in one year of running trains through the forest. That was in his first year. He had been running trains since the railroad inception.
Seven years after the last spike was driven in to the road bed, the railroad was still going strong.
While running the trains through the forest he would occasionally get a glimpse of a flickering fire. One day, he claimed there was a problem with the locomotive and ran into the forest to see what the light was. She told him of a magical school called Hogwarts, were young wizards and witches learned the skills of using wands to make things do almost what ever they want. He was interested, but the steam whistle from his engine tore through the trees, he promised he would come back and ran to the engine. After a period of weeks he kept coming back. He learned that Tawnee was an outcast because of the way that a great number of wizards and witches treated muggles. When she left the wizarding world, she took with her, her most famed skill: Potions. She had created almost three thousand different potions widely used in the magical world. She said that she knew how to live in the forest so, one day she walked into the forest, and people thought that she was killed by the creatures that inhabited it. Nobody bothered to send a search party after her. Before he left to get back on the train she told him that the secret to living in the forest was to respect it, and what lived in it. She wouldn't go picking fights with the animals, and the animals left her alone. She figured that the men in the work parties would destroy parts of the forest, and that pissed off the creatures in the forest, which led them to kill the workers quite frequently. So she told him not to destroy plants or animals and he would be fine.
After a period of a few months Sean decided to quit working for the railroad, and learn what he could about making potions. Kali wanted to go with him. The next day, they set out into the forest on a flatcar, as a pair of hobos so they could easily hop off when they saw the light. That is how three people came to be living in the darkest and scariest of the forests.