"Hazel, come on!" Gretchen all but screeched at him as the two of them ran through the woods. She had their father's bow strapped across her back. The two of them were on a hunt of sorts, trying to find a beehive that the two of them had stumbled upon while playing in the forest a day or two before. Since then, Gretchen (and it had been almost all Gretchen) had decided that there were going to come back to collect their quarry.
The hope was that Gretchen could shoot the hive down, and then they could harvest it for honey and bring it home to their father.
How they planned to get around the issue of the bees though, Hazel wasn't quite sure of yet. They hadn't planned that far ahead, and Hazel was smart enough to know that a bow and four arrows wouldn't be enough to fight off bees even in a highly skilled set of hands.
"I'm coming!" He called back to his sister, doing his best to keep his footing on the mossy ground as he followed after his sister who had chosen to sprint through the forest. He was bigger than her, he needed to be more careful about where he went and how he did it.
But that wasn't going to deter Gretchen.
It was his favorite thing about her— there was nothing in all of Remnant that could stop her from doing anything once she set her mind to it.
"Well, we can't be out for very long!" Gretchen called back to him. "We have to get back before dad notices that—" She turned halfway so that she could look at him as she spoke but slipped, sliding down to the ground with a thud.
Hazel's heart beat a little too fast in his chest and so he put caution to the wind and rushed to Gretchen's side to help her up. She grabbed onto his forearm when he offered it, and Hazel pulled her to her feet with one hand.
"Thanks, Hazel." She grinned at him, only for a split second before blinking and realizing that she needed to check that their father's bow was still unharmed. "Looks like we're still good."
"Risky." He reprimanded her quietly, even though he knew that his complaint was sure to fall on deaf ears.
"It'll be fine." Gretchen said. "It was right up ahead of here, right?"
"Yeah." He confirmed. He'd always been better at remembering the lay of the land than Gretchen had. She'd always been the more adventurous one of the two of them by a large margin. In the oddest way, they managed to balance each other out.
Gretchen grinned. "Dad's going to be so glad we brought back honey though." She said, head held confidently high as she walked. "I mean, when's the last time we had it fresh? And you know that the stuff that's at the market in town isn't as good."
Hazel couldn't remember the last time they'd had fresh honey. In a way, it didn't matter.
All he could think of was how bad it would be if their father ended up needing his bow in the time that they were out.
Well, that and how they still hadn't quite figured out how they were going to handle the bees when they disturbed the hive. It wasn't like either of them were Huntsmen, or like they could fight for themselves.
They were just a pair of stupid kids.
Gretchen though, she tilted her head in a way that she always did when she rolled her eyes, an exaggerated sort of motion meant only for Hazel to interpret. "You worry too much."
"No I don't!" Hazel retorted, deciding to speed up so that he could fall into step with his sister. "This is just a bad idea."
"Dad will love it." Gretchen said. "You know how much he likes—" She stopped dead in her tracks and pointed up toward the treetops. "That's the one, right?"
Sure enough, the hive was there, hanging in the treetops and waiting for them.
"That's the one." Hazel confirmed. They'd both seen the hive twice before, but it had always been up to him to remember exactly where it was. He let out a breath and looked to his sister to see that she was already removing their father's bow from her back so that she could fire on the hive. All that she had to do was knock it down, and then—
Well, Hazel didn't know what would happen after that.
Presumably, it would involve a lot of bees.
"Okay, so—" Gretchen said. "I'm going to shoot it down and then after that—" Her tongue stuck out slightly in concentration as she nocked one of the four arrows that the two of them had brought with them. "We're probably going to need to run."
And yeah, Hazel really didn't like that plan.
Wasn't exactly a mystery why either.
"Count of three!" She exclaimed. Hazel sighed and turned his back to his sister and prepared to sprint through the moss covered forest. If he was lucky, he wouldn't slip and fall and get stung terribly for it.
Gretchen counted down and let the arrow go. It flew just to the left of the hive. She huffed out a little annoyed sound and repeated the process two more times, getting closer to the hive each time but still missing both of the times that she tried to hit it.
It brought her down to their final arrow.
She stared down at the bow, clearly frustrated that she'd missed the hive. Hazel almost considered taking the bow and trying with the last arrow himself, but that was a bad idea. He knew that for a fact he wasn't worth a damn with a bow. At least when Gretchen was taught with it she could hit the practice target once in a while.
It wasn't something that Hazel could boast. He'd always ended up overshooting or undershooting for fear of snapping the bowstring.
He was certain that would only be the case there.
Of course, if he took it and missed with the last arrow, that could be a good thing, couldn't it? Then the two of them wouldn't have to worry about the bees. They could just go back to the cabin and relax and while maybe they wouldn't have comb-fresh honey, they'd be safe.
"Let me—" Hazel turned toward his sister, just as she'd let the last arrow fly. Hazel watched as it flew through the air in a perfect arc and hit the hive, knocking it down to the ground with a crash.
Both of them seemed to freeze in place as they realized that they had made a horrible mistake.
"Gretch—" Hazel began to say just as she saw the dark cloud of bees begin to swarm out of the hive.
"Run!" She shouted and turned and ran, her hair flying out behind her as she took the lead. Hazel swallowed hard and followed after, unsure that he'd be able to keep up. Gretchen kept a quick pace, with Hazel struggling to keep up.
There was a pond, Hazel realized. Their father had taken him there to fish once before, and he was pretty sure that he could find his way there. He just had to be able to get Gretchen to listen to him.
The trail was up ahead. He just had to get there.
"Gretchen!" Hazel shouted to his sister as he pushed himself ahead of her. "This way!"
She nodded and pushed off of a tree that was on the path, practically leaping onto and off of it with one graceful movement, almost like a rabbit. She ran along side him. "Where are we going?" She shouted back at him.
"There's a pond!" Hazel shouted back at her, checking back over his shoulder. "Maybe if we go in—"
"They'll lose us!" Gretchen laughed as she began to run faster and faster. "Good idea!"
The clearing began to form up ahead of them, and Gretchen all but threw herself into the water, curling herself into a ball and splashing into the lake.
Hazel grit his teeth and threw himself in after her.
The water hit him like a sucker punch, colder than he'd originally been prepared for. Underwater plants tried to wind themselves around him, tried to drag him down. Hazel forced himself upwards to find that he was alone.
"Gretchen?" He asked in a panic, all but turning his entire body as he tried to get a glimpse of his sister. What if the weeds—
"Hazel!" She shouted back to him from the bank behind him. "Get out!" She shouted at him, and it took Hazel a moment too long to realize that there was panic written clearly across her face.
Something was wrong, and it wasn't just the bees.
It was then that Hazel saw the water ripple.
He tried his hardest to swim to shore with his sister, the bees be damned and barely got there when a large, black and bone white form appeared out of the water itself.
Grimm.
He'd never seen one in person. He didn't think that Gretchen ever had either. Their father had always warned the two of them never to go out into the forest alone for a reason, and he was about to be the only one left in their family.
They couldn't fight a grimm alone.
"Gretchen!" Hazel all but screamed to his sister. "Run!"
What other option did he have? If he could get her away while the grimm was focused on him, then their father could save them both. She ran faster than him, she was more surefooted, she could—
"No!" She shouted back, and it was then that Hazel realized that she was running toward him, pushing herself the same way that he had moments before.
The grimm fully emerged from the water, a gigantic turtle with jaws so large that they could have snapped trees in half with no trouble. And if it was large enough that it could snap trees, then it could kill Hazel and Gretchen with no problem.
Hazel glanced around his surroundings and tried to think, he had to do something, anything because if he didn't then he and Gretchen were both dead.
He tried to scramble to his feet, sliding in the mud and finding it difficult to get out of it so that he could at least reach the banks and make his own getaway that way. But still he wanted for Gretchen to run, that way it wasn't as much of a loss.
"You have to—" Hazel began to protest as the grimm got closer to him, it's maw opening and beginning to charge something which he was clearly about to be on the receiving end of.
"I'm not going to let you get hurt!" Gretchen screamed, and all at once the forest around them seemed to quiver.
The wind whipped hard around him, and then Hazel was able to get to his feet, to run towards the path where he could at least make an escape. Something was wrong, but he didn't know what.
Where was Gretchen?
The wind tore the leaves from the trees around them, spinning into a cyclone that surrounded Hazel.
It was only when he looked up that he found her, strange soft-green flames burning from her eyes. She floated above him, almost supported by the wind with her dark hair flying out behind her.
She looked down at him, and Hazel saw soft relief wash over her features.
His sister looked back at the grimm and the frown appeared on her face, one of the few times that Hazel had ever seen it. But then she seemed to shrug and aimed her arm towards the grimm, like that would do something.
The leaves around her turned to shards of ice and shot towards the grimm, eviscerating it as thunder cracked around Gretchen.
The grimm began to smoke and disappear, leaving the pond looking like a sickly sludge.
As the winds began to still, Hazel had no idea what he had just seen. Had Gretchen just activated her semblance, or was it something else?
He looked up and realized then that his sister was falling.
Hazel thought fast and braced himself to catch her.
The least that he could do was get the two of them home, honey be damned.
Hazel caught Gretchen and carefully lowered her to the ground. Their father's bow had been cast aside on the banks of the pond. He kept looking back over his shoulder at her nervously as he walked across the area to retrieve it. When he returned to Gretchen she was still unconscious (exhausted, he realized belatedly.)
In one careful motion Hazel lifted Gretchen up and draped her over his back in an awkward piggyback of sorts. He looped his arms around her legs, carefully lifted their father's bow, and began the trek back to their cabin.
When the time came to ask what had happened, Hazel didn't even know where to start.
He accepted the brunt of their father's scolding, and then sat by Gretchen's bed as he waited for his sister to stir.
It took too long.