This was not the chapter I had planned! It's just a blurb that doesn't necessarily affect the wider story, but I was inspired by the season. Happy Halloween!
Chapter 12.5 A Ghastly Interlude
Waning sunlight stretched defiantly from the west, ribbons of orange and gold curling over the treetops through the deepening blue sky. Long rickets of umber pooled under newborn leaves. The forest shuddered in fear and pain. This was not what Spring was supposed to be. So much had gone wrong here, twisting the balance of existence awry.
So much was still going wrong.
Shadows coalesced in a hollow of trees. Broken branches and fallen limbs and overturned trunks had created a thicket of gloom the sunlight could no longer reach.
It reached up from beneath.
No. That wasn't quite True. Not it.
She.
She was a she.
She wondered how she knew this, why she knew this.
Gender is meaningless for ones such as We.
The knowledge rose deep from within the shadows from which she had risen. As she had risen. They called to her, the other ones, wrapping around her newly formed existence in a loving caress. It was comforting there, in those shadows. Part of her wanted to stay forever, until she faded into nothingness and became one with it all… just another shadow.
But she was a She.
And that pulled at her, just as surely as her tiny, viny fingers pulled at the roots she used to haul herself up and away from the eternal abyss.
It didn't matter how much she loved them, something called her up and forward. So she came.
Dim eyes peeked from around the broken trees that held her as she watched. This is what had disturbed her. Called her forward (or was it back?) into the world.
Three humans.
Humans.
Humans.
The shadows called to her again. Hissing. Telling her this knowledge was unimportant. She didn't need it. She shook them off.
It was important to her. And yes, yes she did need it. Badly.
Three of them climbed down the earthen rise that held broken poles and splayed tarps to the shattered limbs where she was hiding. She hissed. They were wearing red. Rage bubbled where her heart was supposed to be. Heart? Heart? She had a heart?
No longer. They whispered.
She ignored the calling, choosing instead to narrow flashing eyes at the humans that dare invade her little copse. The anger lessened to a simmer as she realized. It was the wrong red.
She pondered that for a moment.
If these humans were wearing the wrong red… that meant there was a right red.
The idea bubbled, cold and certain, as she watched them. These were not the humans she wanted. She let them stomp through her branches and over her roots. She let them carefully, tenderly pull a broken lump up from the mess of leaves and twigs. Dim eyes brightened as she recognized what they were after. Another human. A dead one. A human body.
Her body, she realized.
No longer. The voices came again.
She brushed the knowledge aside with a twist of her mossy head and observed the humans with a renewed gleam in her eyes. A board was brought down by a fourth person in the wrong red.
Oh, when she found the right red.
Her new wooden face split in a thorny grin, bark peeling in dark strips to the skull white wood underneath. When she found the right red she would feed them to the shadows that insisted on calling her away. Maybe then they would leave her alone. Maybe then the whispers would stop. And she could just be.
But that was for later. For now she merely watched as the humans gently rolled the body into a thick white bag and then pulled it onto the board. Something cold grew inside the hot fury where her heart should be.
Should be. Should be.
But wasn't. Not anymore.
She didn't stop them from leaving, nearly rising up to watch them climb the bank with the white bag that held what had once been She carried between them. She ducked again as the first human turned back to look over her wooded glad with a morose expression. He was wearing the wrong red. And that dusky dusky skin was so similar to her own now, but he still had a bright bright light shining from within. He didn't belong to the shadows. He didn't belong to her.
She let them go.
With the wrong red and bright hearts and a body that was no longer hers.
She felt the shadows pull again, calling her to sleep.
It is over. They said.
No, she snarled back, slapping with vines and branches and a harsh shudder of leaves. It's not over. Not until she found the right red.
She would find them. And she would make them shadows just as they had made her shadows and she would see how they liked it.
Buoyed by the pleasant thought she rose, finally, wrenching away from the copse of birch and yew that had held her in her last moments and in her first to join the lengthening darkness of the forest beyond.
They were still out there, the ones in red. She could feel it. She would go to them. She would find them. The barbs that made up her mouth lengthened as she laughed, imagining what she would do.
After all, if Death couldn't stop her…
Nothing would.
Trees snapped as she passed, broken limbs adding to her broken form.
And the Forest trembled again, bracing for what was to come.
Ever read some of the pokedex entries for ghost pokemon? Freaking terrifying.
DodemGM: No! I loved XY! Honestly I felt the game had one of the best plots. Super Training was a surprisingly useful if tedious mini-game on your bottom screen. But I'm glad you liked the map. Natural Sciences are interesting to me, and geography is so important to both biology and politics I don't know why people ignore it so much.
P34644563: You're close :3 You're so close!