"What?" She blinked, hands wringing together as she dropped her last fistful of grass into the fire. Wilson had more, but she had the sneaking suspicion that it wasn't nearly enough "I don't understand what you mean."
To be quite frankly, neither did he. But the hours had dragged on, and there wasn't so much as a peek of sunlight over the horizon. He may not have been able to keep the time exactly, but he'd learned he was a pretty good judge of time out here, and he couldn't keep ignoring the itching feeling that the sun ought to have been up by then. He shook his head, frowning deeply. "I can't truthfully say I understand it all that well myself, but if I'm correct, the sun should have been up about a half an hour ago." He said, grimly, surveying what was left of their supplies. They had a few branches from the trees they'd cut down, and a handful or two remaining of the dried grass - not even enough to make one torch, let alone two. "Winnie," he spoke slowly, his thoughts elsewhere as he addressed her. "I'm afraid we won't be able to stave off the darkness for much longer. If that book of yours has any tips on how to stop a night beast, I do suggest you brush up on your reading with what light we have left." The darkness pickled against the back of his neck as the ring of light shrunk further with every passing, burning second. He tossed the last handful of grass into the fire. It didn't do much.
Winnie felt a shiver run down her spine at the quiet urgency of his voice. It was the kind of tone one used when doing their best not to panic others. She got the strong impression Wilson had tangled with this odd entity once before. There was a nagging voice in the back of her head, reminding her that he must have encountered the beast once before, swallowed by darkness. He'd survived, hadn't he? She wondered what their odds were.
She stared down at the worn cover of her book. It had certainly taken a beating since she'd been spirited away to this island. It was flammable, but irreplaceable. She held in her hands too much priceless knowledge to let it go up in flames. She clutched it close, and then put it aside.
"What are you doing?" He asked, a bit confused as she began to undo the clasp around her neck, letting her cloak fall free, bundled up in her arms as she worked by the dying light.
Her cloak was gifted to her by one of her coven sisters. Taken in and taught the craft, she was given the cloak off of her sister's shoulders. It was a gift she'd always held as one of her most precious possessions.
Crouching carefully over the last of their fire, Winnie took the sharpest piece of flint they had, and began to tear the cloak into strips. She wrapped bits around the branches they'd gathered – wood that was too small to use as firewood and too big to use as kindling, that they'd planned to chop down into more manageable pieces once the morning came. When each was done, she dipped the tips carefully into the flames, watching the fire lick around and catch on her cloak. She handed one to Wilson, lit one aflame for herself, and shoved the rest back into their backpack.
"Torches," she said shortly. "They won't last long, but at least we're not trapped here."
He nodded once, very seriously. "Before we go…" he said, handing off his torch for a moment. She watched him, carefully keeping the light on him as he moved to the pitch black center of the ring of camp fires, where stood the tall, crooked form of the divining rod. Somehow it always managed to arrive with them. Winnie didn't quite know what to make of it, other than the fact that it was clearly an important instrument that wouldn't be wise to leave behind.
He plucked it from its pedestal with some effort, and placed it head-first into the backpack before taking his torch back. "So maybe we don't have the greatest track record with those wooden things, but if it can bring us anywhere that's not eternal night, it's still a small victory for us." He explained, as they began walking. Wilson didn't like the idea of leaving the safety of the campfires in the dead of night, but if they didn't have any kindling the fire pits were useless.
"I don't know," Winnie said, gloomily. "Every time we use one of those platforms, it just brings us some place worse."
"What can be worse than Eternal Night? Think about it – a constant race to keep our supplies up means that gathering food is going to be harder. No sunlight means berries and carrots and the like you bring back are going to be harder to come by. Having no reliable source of light means that we'll be done for if hounds decide to attack, literally at any time. And that's not even considering what'll happen if our lights go out." He said grimly.
It sent an uncomfortable shiver across her shoulders. "I've been meaning to ask you about that. You keep mentioning this… monster, in the darkness. Did you…?"
He gave a little hum, nodding, the movement barely discernible in the darkness. "Back when I first got here, wherever here is… I didn't know what was out there. How could I have? But it didn't seem to care whether I knew or not. It came out of nowhere, Miss Winnie, it truly did. At first, I thought it must have been the darkness itself attacking me. That's what it certainly felt like. Of course, that's nonsense." He waved it off. "Some sort of… remarkably stealthy, nocturnal creature that hunts in the darkness. I have a theory, see, that due to it living exclusively in darkness, it's eyesight must be so powerful that the light of the campfires – or even light as weak as our torches, here! – cause it a great deal of pain, rendering it unable to attack us so long as there's a substantial light source!" he said smartly.
"But what is it?"
Wilson fell silent.
"I, uh… haven't quite figured that out yet. Seeing as how they're only active in complete darkness."
"And you've never caught one?"
"Clearly not."
Winnie hummed, and Wilson was grateful for the low light – while not strictly being a scientist herself, she was still picking apart his meager attempt at academia. It wasn't so easy out in the middle of nowhere, to maintain reasonable academic standing.
Not that he'd had much academic standing to begin with, but Winnie didn't know that.
He cleared his throat, pressing on.
"But really, the matter at hand doesn't rely on catching one, so much as understanding it enough to simply avoid it. Whatever the beast out there may be, it's enough to know it's patterns and habit, to keep it at bay. For some of the creatures out here, that's the best any scientist worth his salt can hope for."
To his relief, she hummed in agreement, remembering the tales he'd told her of the great monstrosities that occasionally plagued his camp: things he'd dubbed the Deerclops, or the Moose Goose - neither of which she had yet encountered, and both of which sounded like fantastically made up beasts out of an old story book. But after some of the things she'd seen on this island, in the months since she'd arrived, were more than enough to give her inclination to believe him.
She was quite often impressed with Wilson, his stories and his inventions and his wonderful knack for staying alive. She was well aware that he was far more versed in academics and the sciences than she was, even if his way of thinking was a little… eccentric. The one time he'd uprooted and entire berry bush to wear on his head, she'd been tempted to say his eccentricity was veering more towards insanity, but when she was the one that had to fight off an angry pack of spiders after he hid neatly beneath his bizarre hat, she had to admit that his ingenuity hadn't failed him yet.
She wondered what it would be like, to be of a scientific mind rather than a magical one. Dreadfully difficult, she imagined. She didn't know what she would do without her magic.
Probably wear bushes on her head.
She froze, throwing a hand out to catch Wilson's arm as he kept moving. He staggered to a stop, looking back at her with some concern. "What is it?"
"Do you see that?" she asked, trying to focus her gaze, trying to make sense of the odd shapes she saw in the darkness beyond the safety of their light.
Wilson squinted. "…No?"
She handed him her torch, transfixed by this strange thing in the middle of the blackened woods.
"Wh- Winnie! Be careful!" he hissed, reluctant to follow her. He watched as she neared the edge of the circle, her form disappearing as she ventured further out into the darkness. "Winnie! I strongly suggest you leave whatever it is alone and come back into the light immediately!" there was an urgent stress in his voice, his teeth grit as he spoke. Had he not just finished telling her about the beast that lurked in the shadows and would happily tear her limb from limb if she went too far?
"Wilson, there's something here!" she said, brightly. "Come closer so I can get a better look."
He reached further out with the torch, feet stubbornly planted in one spot.
There was a long stretch of silence, and he rather wished Winnie would hurry up examining whatever it was she was most likely disturbing. He'd learned long ago to stick to the paths in the dark, that beasts sometimes laid themselves down in the night to sleep, and without adequate lighting, you didn't know they were there until you were right on top of them, and they were biting at your heels as you ran aimlessly through the dark for dear life.
"Winnie, we should really keep moving," he hissed to her.
There was no reply; not even one of the half-interested hums she made to acknowledge that she'd heard him, but was ignoring him anyway.
"Miss Winnie?"
Blast.
He took a tentative step forward, trying to find her shape in the dark.
There was a rumble in the earth, like the booming rattle of a giant approaching, but Wilson knew these weren't footsteps; it was too continuous, too even. He wobbled a bit, trying to keep his balance in alarm as there was a great explosion nearby, and a fire roared to life before him. It was huge, the flames reaching high above them and cast in a deep shadow before the flaming pedestal was Winnie, arms outstretched in a deliberate attempt to will the pedestal to light - and to her delight, apparently with success! She wore a great grin that stretched from ear to ear, hey eyes wide and excited as she looked back at him.
"You… did that?" he asked, his voice struggling a bit as he recovered the the weight of the unknown. The new light was warm and bright, casting a huge circle of light around them. Absently, Wilson extinguished the torches to save what was left of them.
Winne stood straight again. "Yes! I did!" she said, a little breathlessly. It sounded like she was a bit winded, but she didn't seem to mind.
"Uhm…" He blinked, studying the new light source, unsure of what to say for a moment. "…Well done."
Winnie beamed proudly, seemingly oblivious to his confusion. She had no reason to think it was anything less than obvious: the fire had been lit by magic.
Of course, this was Wilson. It wouldn't have surprised to know he spent the next half hour wracking his brain trying to figure out how, if he held both torches and she was out of kindling all together, how she'd managed to light the pillar, but it wasn't the first thing that crossed her mind either.
They spent a long while around the fiery pillar, taking their time to gather supplies in the immediate area, to restock what they had lost wasting time at the last camp fires. Wilson fashioned a crudely made axe by the fire, nearly slicing his finger on the sharp edge of the flint as he tried to bind it properly in the poor light. Winnie foraged in the nearby woods, returning to their impromptu camp with only enough to pass them a few hours. There was very little to be had in the darkness, with no sun to grow anything substantial. She returned with a few rabbits she'd plucked from their holes as they'd slept, and a small handful of berries. It was better than nothing, just barely enough to sate their hunger.
A little pile of small bones collected between them. They were thrown down haphazardly, and Winnie glanced down at them once the pair had finished eating. She had marked each bone while she had cooked then, carving little symbols into the epiphysis of each individual bone. Wilson remained unaware.
She frowned down at the little pile.
All of the markings had landed face down, obscured in the dirt, save for one. The little symbol stared up at her, loud and demanding.
Quickly, she scooped up the bones, digging out a little impression into the earth with the heel of her shoe, tossing them in and burying them quickly, preferring to forget what she'd seen rather than bother Wilson with her divination. He wouldn't believe her, anyway, and she wasn't going to set about trying to convince him again.
Winnie didn't need convincing, though.
She knew it was never a good thing when the only bone to present itself to her was the bone of loss.