Chapter 45- Forest of the Elves
Disclaimer:- all the characters form the game belong to moonton and this is not a commercial story but just the work of a diehard fan.
Claimer:- the other characters which are not in game of mentioned are mine
While the experience in the meadow was relaxing for them, the company knew that they couldn't stay there forever. After spending a day or two in the heavenly grounds, the group unwillingly packed their belongings and were ready to leave the area to carry on with their journey.
Hanabi was the most reluctant to leave, having been fast friend with those rabbits of the meadow, who she had characteristically named 'Shiro' according to their colour. She really didn't want to leave her fluffy friends. Hanabi even proposed that they should take the entire nest along with them, which was impossible at the moment. So after a lot of reasoning and promises to come visit them again, Hanabi finally agreed to let go of her outrageous demand.
With everything set and done, the group slowly made their way towards their next destination.
Saya gave a last look towards the meadow, taking in its beauty one more time before they would leave for a long time. She wasn't lying when she promised that they would come to visit again. That place was not in any map so it was most likely that they were the first people to discover that meadow so in a way, it was their own personal little paradise. Perhaps when this was all over, Saya would return back here. She had seen several excellent spots to make a decent house. Maybe Hanabi would come with her as well. It would be their own little world, away from the worries and cares of the rest of the world.
The thought really made Saya smile to herself, she would ask for nothing more than that if she would get Hanabi's company, no matter how short it may be to her. This now lead to another matter at hand.
They had known each other for a while now, and truthfully, Saya and Hanabi had grown very close to each other. However, Saya felt that now, her feelings went deeper than just friendship. She looks upon her human and could feel the warmth flutter in her being, she confesses to herself. She really loved Hanabi of Iga.
Love was something that was not a foreign concept for Saya, it's just that she had been too scared to open up to someone else for a very long time, yet she hadn't forgotten the feeling of it.
Hanabi was now the only person in the entirely of existence that she could call a family, she was the very reason she had to keep on going, the small ray of light in her otherwise dark and blighted world. She was her anchor, her purpose, her life. Such were Saya's sincere feelings towards her friend/student and she thinks to herself, perhaps she should tell her how she feels.
The thought caused butterflies to flutter within her stomach as Saya felt very giddy like a small girl but she was very shy about her feelings as well. In all her years, Saya wasn't exactly a very forward person when it came to romance, tending to be very reserved and bashful in her dealing with it because she would get so nervous and shy. So she decided that maybe she was not ready to confess to Hanabi just yet. A part of her was urging her to do it right here right now before it's too late.
So engrossed she was in her thoughts that she nearly missed the part when they entered a huge forest. The moment they entered the forest, the first thing Saya noticed was how the view changed drastically.
The huge trees reached about sixty meters in height with its dense canopy entirely blocking out the sunlight from above, large entangled root systems formed an intricate network on the forest floor, making it look like as if it was some sort of maze. The ground was filled grass, ferns and mushrooms of varying shapes and sizes giving the forest a strange supernatural aura.
"I have only but heard stories of this place. We are in the Magical forest of the Elven Kingdom of Moniya." Hanabi mutters breathlessly as she took in the majestic sight of the forest with awe.
Saya soaked up this information with a slow nod, "So, we have finally arrived the homeland of the Elves. The race with which the Humans constantly confuse me as?"
"Well yeah, you can't blame them. You look a lot like an elf, save the eye and the height." Hanabi remarked playfully as they continued further down the forest.
"So, any particular reason why we are in this place, Saya-chan?" asked Hanabi to her tall teacher. As an answer, Saya say, "Well, since you have already started with the basics of your weapons training, we will have to sharpen it to perfection before we can move of towards the advanced techniques. For that, it's better that we move to a more secluded area to attract less attention." She explains while Hanabi listened intently.
"So just like what we did before meeting with the Giant wolf thingie?"
"Precisely."
For hours, the two walked deeper into the forest, searching for a perfect place to settle down, however this was easier said than done.
The vegetation was too thick and left little free space enough to make a camp. In addition, the fact that the canopy blocked out almost all of the light of the sun meant that they could not see the sun and had no means to tell time. And the last thing they wanted was to get lost in the forest at night time.
"You know, I think leaving the Meadow was a bad idea." huffed Hanabi, her steps tired and wavering by walking too much that day.
Saya couldn't help but agree more, but she knew that pondering upon their past mistake would be pointless. Her main focus right now was to get her flock out of the forest and to safety, seeing that this so called Magical Forest was uninhabitable.
As they made their way forward, the group suddenly stopped when they heard a peculiar sound. It was faint, but they could hear sounds like as if someone was coughing. Curiosity took a hold of them and they moved towards the direction of the noise where the sound of coughing was getting louder and serious.
"What's happening?" Hanabi whispered, really worried who or what could be coughing so hard.
"I don't know, but whoever it is, they are in a very bad shape." Was Saya's reply as they peered through a huge bush. Pushing aside the branches, they stuck their head out of the bush to examine the situation. What they saw left them speechless.
Ahead of them was what seemed to be a little girl, however, this girl's face was green with sickness and she had been the one who was coughing. This caused alarm bells to ring in their heads and the two rushed towards the child.
"Oh My god! What do we do!" screamed Hanabi in panic as she tried to help the little girl who was still in a bad shape.
Saya was already on it and assessed the situation, "She is chocking. Hanabi, quickly, pat her back!"
The Ninja girl did as told, but she panicked a bit too much and struck the child the wrong way. Suddenly the little girl stopped coughing and turned blue and couldn't even make a sound.
Saya paled at this and scolded, "Do you know what you did?"
"I did as you told!"
"You hit her the wrong way, now she can't breathe!"
"Well excuse me!" yelled Hanabi back, while the girl turned a deeper shade of blue. Acting fast, Saya held the little girl by her waist and put her fist just below her abdomen and gave several quick presses to force open the air flow of the girl.
As for the girl, she was turning paler and paler with each passing moment as Saya tried to force out the material that was chocking her. Suddenly, she lost consciousness, causing both of them to nearly get a heart attack.
"OH MY GOD! SHE IS DEAD!" cried Hanabi.
"NO SHE ISN'T! JUST STAY CALM!"
"I AM CLAM!"
Ignoring Hanabi, Saya focused at the child who had fainted due to lack of oxygen. Lacking options, Saya suddenly held the much smaller little girl upside down by her leg, making Hanabi loose all the colour of her face, "The hell are you doing!"
"Trust me." Was all Saya said, and patted the girl's back with quick jabs. Hanabi watched with hitched breath as Saya tried her best to 'cure' the child, while Saya kept muttering, "Please work, please work."
Luck was on their side once again because suddenly the girl let out a mighty cough and spit out the thing that was obstructing her air flow. Imagine their surprise when they found out that the tiny child had chocked on a mushroom.
"What the hell is going one here?" mumbled Hanabi while massaging her temple.
The night befell upon the Elven forest and so, without many options left, Saya had to set up a camp under the closest tree. Starting a fire, Saya was preparing dinner for herself, Hanabi and probably their mostly unlikely companion. The child whom they had saved from chocking to death lay sound asleep in one of their two bedrolls, while Hanabi watched over the child.
At first they were too preoccupied to notice but once the situation calmed down and tension was over, the two were very fast to notice that the little girl was in fact a very peculiar one. Especially considering that the pink-haired child had a fluffy racoon ears sprouting out of the apex of her skull along with a similar fluffy tail at her rear.
According to Hanabi, they must have stumbled upon a young Cat-elf, a supposedly rare sub-species of Elf, much to Saya's bewilderment. She was quite new to this world and was really not sure how evolution worked here, but considering how many magical phenomenons she had seen since her arrival, Saya didn't question much. She just focused on making their dinner.
Slowly the little child stirred in her sleep and muttered incoherent words before slowly sitting up. In a distinctly cat like fashion, she stretched herself and let out an adorable yawn. "That's the last time I'm trying to swallow a mushroom…" she mumbles to herself and rubbed her eyes.
Slowly she opened her eyes and the first thing she saw were the two older women looking at her with curious eyes. The child reacted by jumping up to her feet and panic.
"Kya, I am being kidnapped by two women!" the child screamed, much to the bewilderment of both Saya and Hanabi.
"Kid, it's okay, we are not gonna hurt you…" Hanabi tried to explain and get closer to her, but this proved to be rather counterproductive as the child suddenly turned hostile. To their shock, the little girl pulls out a huge boomerang form as if out of thin air. She hissed like a cat and threatened, "I'll be angry if you pock me again!"
"What? No one is pocking you!" the child answered Hanabi's words by throwing the boomerang at her. The Ninja girl had to duck to avoid the surprise attack. She turned towards the Cat-elf and yelled, "What the hell?"
But the girl simply smirked and pointed behind Hanabi, confusing the human girl. She did turned however and quickly learned that it was not a good decision as the boomerang was returning back and hit her square on her forehead.
"Ha! Take that you, Masked Bimbo!" cheered the child triumphantly.
She seized her victory dance when Hanabi slowly stood up from where she had fallen. One could see that Hanabi now had a noticeable red bump on her forehead while she herself was seething with rage. Looking at the child with murderous eyes, Hanabi growled dangerously, "What did you call me?"
The child, now sweating nervously, slowly inched backwards and bolted away, "Run!"
"Come back here you little brat!" roared Hanabi and chased the child, who ran all around the camp with an angry Hanabi at her heel.
Saya looked at the comical commotion with no idea how to respond at all.
It was clear that Hanabi was very angry right now, so to save the still young child for getting hurt, Saya suddenly snatched the child up from the ground held her out of Hanabi's reach. (Which due to her height was not so hard to do.)
"Let me at her, Saya-chan! I will strangle her!" yelled Hanabi, still very angry and was trying to reach of the traumatized little girl.
"Hana, she is just a child! Don't be so heartless!" Saya half argued, half scolded, which calmed Hanabi a bit. But it was clear that she was still cross because she stomped towards her bedroll and sat down with a pout.
Now that the bigger child was taken care of, Saya turned towards the smaller one and frowned at her, "That wasn't very nice you know."
However, the little cat-elf just stared at Saya with twinkling wide eyes. Looking at her from top to toe, the child finally breathed out, "Pretty!"
Saya sweat dropped at this while Hanabi 'Hmmph-ed' in annoyance.
Hanabi had been quite difficult to reconcile but Saya was eventually able to tone down her anger to the level where she allowed Saya to take care of the wound on Hanabi's head and have dinner. Now we find her, Saya and their unexpected additional Guest, the Cat-elf girl, enjoying the dinner together as they all ate in silence.
Enjoy was putting it lightly as Hanabi was still eying the tiny cat-elf with murderous eyes, luckily the child was too busy enjoying Saya's cooking to notice the imminent danger.
"Wah! This is so good!" she exclaims and ate happily. Saya even had to scold her to eat slowly and to chew properly unless she chokes again.
"I believe we all were off in a wrong footing, so let's start over. I am Saya Mahira…" Saya introduces herself politely, "This is my friend and apprentice, Hanabi no iga."
The little girl answered with her mouth still half filled with food, "I am Nana, nice to meet you. Oh my god, this is so good! It's been ages since I ate a proper food. Just eating mushrooms can be boring." With that she ate more and asked for another refill, which was her fourth by now.
For someone so tiny, she sure ate a lot, but Saya obliged and gave her as much as she wanted, feeling remorse of the child that somehow triggers her maternal instincts.
After finishing her last filling, Nana sat back heavily and let out a satisfied sigh, "Ah, that hit the spot."
Ignoring the fact that she ate almost twice the amount of food Hanabi would eat (and trust me, she has a healthy diet)Saya was the first to inquire their young guest, "So, Nana was it? Care to explain what happened to you that we found you….in such a difficult situation like that?"
Saya was careful with her words while speaking, but Nana was a frank and straightforward person and let out a laugh, "Well, I found a new sort of mushroom. You see, I have eaten all sorts of mushrooms in the forest but when I found this new one, I got a bit too excited and tried to swallow it." Nana explained with a sheepish laugh, "Thanks for saving me."
Hanabi scoffed at this, still salty over being called a bimbo, "You better be, because that mushroom was poisonous. It was better that you chocked and didn't ate it, or things would've been even worse."
Nana paled at this and held her head muttering how she will never eat mushrooms again. While Saya frowned upon Hanabi's bit too direct approach. On noticing Saya's look, Hanabi says nonchalantly, "What? I just told her the truth."
Saya shook her head and turned back to Nana, "It is dangerous to stay in the forest, let alone all by yourself. Tell us where your home is and we will take you back."
The child giggled at this, much to their confusion, "Why would I want to go away, silly. I live in the forest!" she declares with a proud smile, making Saya frown at her answer, "What about your parents?"
It was then the two felt very bad for Nana because she just gave a gentle smile and answered sincerely, "I don't have any."
Her words causing many thoughts to race through Saya's mind.
Who was she?
What was she doing here?
Where are her parents?
And lastly,
How long has she been alone out here?
These questions made Saya's gut grow heavy with unreasonable guilt and pity. Even Hanabi let go for her previous anger and now felt sorry for the poor child. Still oblivious of their concerns, Nana gave a smile and chirped, "Enough about me, so tell me. What brings you here to this Magical forest?"
Although there were a bit embarrassed to admit it, they confessed that they were indeed lost in the forest and were looking for a way out.
Nana laughed at this and spoke, "I don't blame you. The forest can be really confusing for someone who isn't use to travelling through it. However, as thanks for saving my life and the delicious dinner, I will help you find your way out of the forest!"
This new development was unexpected but not an unwelcome one. Saya and Hanabi smiled at each other, fortune was really favouring them. But for how long?...