Here's the next part. Sorry it took so long. I've been helping my brother and his wife move into their new house. But anyway, thanks for the review yuriAMANDAyaoi and several favs. Hope I don't disappoint.

Carelessness ~ Merida ~ Part Two

There was snow clumping and crunching under her boots, for there was a good amount of it covering what little grass grew deep in the forest. The trees too could not escape the winterish touch that eclipsed this part of the forest, nor the late summer buds and leaves that now had a nice layer of ice on them.

"Whot in tha name of Horbor—" Merida thought aloud. "I've never seen anythin' like it before in ma life! Snow! In tha summer! I must be goin' mad." She looked ahead of her to the fading but still resilient blue will-o'-the-wisp flame, and noted that the snow and wind only got worse from here on out.

Again she stopped in her tracks after a time still following the small mystical creature. Exhaustion was hitting her, weighing down her arms and her legs. She hoped it wasn't much further.

Was the wisp doing this? Could a wisp be powerful enough to change the seasons? For as much as Merida chased mystical and cursed creatures, she really knew very little about them. Just stories of stories that, at time, even she didn't think were true. Wisps just took travelers onto safer paths, right? So if that much was true, why take her down a path that threatened to kill even the most experienced traveler? And more importantly, where was this wisp leading her to?

Turn back, a voice called to her, and she wasn't sure if it was her own voice speaking in her head or if it was something whispered on the wind. Turn back; it said again, you can still make it out.

"No," she whispered, teeth chattering in the process. She drew her arms into her, trying to hold on to the last bit of warmth she could. Amid all of this; the blinding snow, the cold, Merida felt something. An urgency, and not for her to return back along the path to safety, but an urgency one has when they are about to meet something that would forever change them.

Whatever was ahead, she needed to see what it was. She felt like she wouldn't be complete, like she would never quite know herself if she didn't overcome this.

"I will not turn back!" she said, louder this time; to the voice in her head, and to the raging storm. "You think a bit o' cold is gonna have me runnin' like some sucklin' pup? Well then ya should'a picked someone else ta do this! I'm here now and I'm not goin' back!"

It was a good speech, but Merida's fine cotton dress was starting to become wet, cold and clingy. Her boots were damp, and her toes cold. She had lost feeling in her fingers a while back, and her face felt stiff and numb. She was already starting to feel sleepy, and Merida knew that before long the cold would overcome her. Did she really want to keep going at the cost of her life? How much time had passed? Were her footprints along the trail already covered by snow?

Suddenly and unexpectedly, the blue will-o'-the-wisp flame settled ahead of her then vanished entirely leaving her to stare intently at the still form of a boy.

He was covered in so much snow that Merida had thought her eyes were playing tricks on her. She thought she was seeing a group of leaves, or an odd shaped log, but as she neared she saw that it was indeed a boy slouched over an old stump. What she had thought was a log was a brown and tattered overcoat he wore.

Who was he? Was he someone from the village? Or could a wisp take on a human form? Merida also couldn't get over the strange feeling that she was disturbing something, her earlier feelings about what was leading her here was long gone. She had come too late.

The onslaught of wind and snow was at its panicle. Merida could barely see past the outline of trees beyond the clearing. The air almost seemed as if it was alive.

She turned him over a bit, just so she could get a look at his face. Oh, the poor soul. No older than herself by her guess. His skin was deathly pale skin, and he had very old looking tussled hair—was it white or gray? And was his hair color because of the weather or not? She guessed it didn't matter much now.

"If ye are a wisp," she said to him, "Yer the strangest lookin' wisp I've ever seen. And I saw Mor'du's spirit rise out of his body when he died, so I should know." She touched his hair lightly, to sweep it back from his face. Are you sure he's not from the village, Merida quietly asked herself.

And then the strangest thing happened. His cool eyes opened slowly, tiredly. He looked at her.

"…hey" was all he said.

Merida jumped back, falling on her back, but quickly regained composure, and sat up a few feet away.

"Hey?" she exclaimed, almost shouting. The boy's eyes widened a bit. "Hey? Don't ya 'hey' me, ya scared me half ta death! I thought ye were a goner, frozen ta death, or hewn by a wraith, or a witch or Ankou himself! Now I may be a fine archer, but not even I can take on a god, nor a witch for the matter, and who knows what hunts a wisp?"

"What makes you think I'm a… what did you call me?" he asked, appearing startled himself. He lifted his head up to rest it on his arm. "A wisp?"

"Aye, a wisp. A will-o'-the-wisp. What else would ya be? That's whot I followed from the stone circle," she said, then went on when he gave her a blank look. "Ya know that stone circle that's by here…no? Ah, never mind. It's just that I've heard stories 'bout 'em, 'bout ye, 'bout wisps, when I was wee lass, and I even seen some at that time too. I've grown up being able ta see wisps. They led me to a witches dwellin' and helped me whenever I didn't know what to do. They led me ta you too."

"I'm not a wisp," he said, brow furrowed.

"Then who are ye?" Merida asked. She noticed it almost immediately after his eye opened. The wind lessened, the snow stopped tumbling, and was now just flurries. "Did you do this, makein' it snow in tha summer?"

He had closed his eyes again, and the wind picked back up. He seemed completely content just to lay there in that odd angle.

It was a few moments before Merida prodded him with a twig she found yet uncovered by snow. "Are ya just goin' ta ignore me than?"

"Until I wake up," he said, eyes still closed.

Not a good stopping place, sorry. Will update soon.