The forest was black, the leaves and branches above blocking the moonlight like thick blankets. For the first time in two days, the ranger slept, and dreamed of another place, long ago; another forest, another girl, a girl older than the trees that stood there. Next to him, Lora lay still under his cloak. Her eyes were open.
She watched the man intently, trying to make out his face in the dark. She rustled the cloak, and then coughed softly, still watching him sleep. Discerning no movement, she carefully got up, shivering slightly as she abandoned her blanket to the dead leaves; there were two packs now, hunched side by side like gravestones, one draped in something. She picked it up - it was another cloak, obviously made for a child, or someone small, but it was warm, although not as light as the rangers'. When she stood up something hitched in his breathing briefly, and she stopped still. Nothing moved, nothing changed in the clearing. Satisfied, Lora shouldered the smaller pack, and crept into the even blacker shades between the trees. She looked back at the man once, her expression unreadable in the darkness, and whispered, "Bye bye, Dain", before she disappeared in silence.
All day she had watched him, tried to learn the way he moved, but she still found that she had to half his speed to get at least a portion of the way to silence. She also could not make out where she was going, but only knew she had to go in a straight line, to get as far from him as possible before daybreak - this was harder than she imagined, however, with trees and roots blocking her way constantly. More than once she became completely disoriented in particularly dense growth, and emerged from it ten minutes with the distinct feeling she was back where she had entered. Still, Lora knew she was getting somewhere. As she walked she tried not to think about what she would do, when she got out of the forest, if she did.
"You must have been lost for some days, young one", he had said, his knife on her skin. She touched her throat involuntarily, remembering. How long had she been in this place, now? A day? She had woken up a day ago, and before that… nothing. Surely she had been here forever, she could never have known any light but green or black, never been in a space without trees standing watch all around.
Lora dug her nails into her arm.
Steady now, don't get panicky. That's the last thing you need… she thought, and tried to concentrate on something else. Being silent, walking. Just walk. Strange, how different this had been in the daytime, even though not much light managed to get down. And he had been there, knowing the way, moving so quickly and quietly, but always stopping and waiting so still when she fell behind, all too often.
"I'm not going to be interrogated by any lord", Lora muttered defiantly to herself to bolster her spirits, but feeling the worse for it immediately. "And it's too late to change my mind now anyway. Just keep - "
She stopped suddenly and listened, her head down, suppressing the urge to look around wildly into the pitch black. She had heard a whisper. A cold slithering hiss, so near her, above her head, and her heart was beating so loudly that the thing could probably see her,
I'm going mad, I must be imagining things I must be, but that branch just whispered to me…
Lora broke free of her fear and tried to run, but couldn't. Something was holding her every muscle stiff, like an invisible spider-web, and there was sand in her ears and mouth and hair, and she was being buried, suffocated. The black from the forest gained entrance to her head, and she fell, her eyes open in terror.