The conversation had seemed to end relatively naturally and, though she wasn't completely content with the extent of information she received - there was no way the man did not know more than what he told her, there was a knowing glint to his eye and he wasn't even trying to hide it - she did still have more of a basis to go from now than she had before and she just had to hope he really was telling the truth. He hadn't done much to spark confidence in his sincerity, and yet in the same vein he hadn't done much to suggest he was anything less than utterly and completely genuine in every single thing he did. In fact, he had managed to so completely find an unwavering middle ground that it exasperated her greatly in ways she did not completely understand herself.
She shuddered a little, and while she assumed this was more due to weather, there was a breeze after all, but it seemed a little too well-timed to have just been that.
In thanks, or perhaps just simple acknowledgement that she had been listening to all of which she was told, she nodded her head in a way that was nearing a bow. Feeling this was more than adequate in the way of farewell, she turned on her heels. Mia did have to pause for a moment to check the map she was given - given or sold her soul away for, whichever came first - to double check where she was supposed to do before she made her way over to one of the elaborate gateways that lined the area.
There was only one the key she presently had fit, so it seemed more like an illusion of free choice when there really was only one true outcome that she could go with. It was a less than ideal thought, certainly, but one she understood.
The world beyond this gate was overgrown, the path seeming like nobody had travelled it - or returned from it, if what she was told was not merely exaggerated - in a good while. It felt oddly wrong to barge her way through the plants, but she brushed the thought aside as soon as it had come. It was a path, paths were made to be walked on and that was precisely what she was going to do.
To protect her eyes from the branches, she brought a hand up as she moved. The worst thing she could think was if she somehow managed to damage her vision because she got herself caught up in her thoughts. Thoughts that were being tinted with a strange degree of foreboding at a rapidly growing speed. She didn't quite understand why she considered the area to be so ominously eerie, it was no different from where else she had been - which had been so wonderfully kind to her thus far - and yet she found herself prickling a little. Perhaps this was just because it was, even comparatively, oddly quiet. She had gotten used to the occasional caw of a bird or, unfortunately, a far off growl and so the fact the only sounds that she could hear were those of which she had made herself as she trudged her way along what little she could actually decipher of the overgrown path.
Or perhaps her discomfort was simply just coming from being under the unseeing gaze of the multitude of dolls that were strung up throughout the trees, scattered about the path, and everywhere in between. There always was something a little unsettling about the gaze of a doll, watching silently and seeing everything with their uncanny gaze. There was, after all. a reason they featured so heavily in horror media.
Having decided, and not without a great deal of forcing herself to believe this, that the reason she was unsettled was just because the dolls had been set up like they were specifically to deter passerbys from roaming like she was. If this was the case, and oh she so hoped it was, they had succeeded in their aim completely.
There were some shadows that it was wise to jump at, and she certainly hoped these were not among that number.
Along the way, she noted several gravestones, and yet this did not concern her nearly as much as the dolls had. As closely woven with death as the village seemed to be, it made sense for there to be a rather expansive cemetery to accommodate for this, as sombre this was as a concept to ponder. Sombre and tragically practical, which was never a combination that she was particularly fond of, not that one would usually find themselves delighting in the thoughts of the untimely deaths of total strangers.
It was not long at all before she wondered if she was going to join their number.
The bridge she reached had most certainly passed its prime, and likely them passed it several times over from the look of it. She would have quite liked to turn back and not have to deal with it at all, thank you very much, but a look at the map made it all too obvious that there was no other way to go around, and so it seems it was onwards and upwards.
Oh, and how Mia did not want to do that.
Absolutely refusing to look down, she locked her gaze as best she could on the other side of the bridge. Before the realisation that what she was going was utterly and completely insane, she took the first step onto the bridge, and then the second, and then, with her hands on the fraying rope barriers on either side, she forced herself to move as quickly as she dared. Too fast felt just as dangerous as too slow, especially in those instanced where she had to jump over a gap where a plank had once been and was now otherwise located in the water below. Very, very below.
Her breath caught in her throat. One of the planks she had only just stepped on fell away, and it was by great good fortune that she had not joined its tumbling.
The caution she had been trying to exhibit on her way across the bridge fell away at the same time the the plank did, and she broke into a panicked sprint, throwing herself across the remainder of the bridge with a reckless abandon.
Mia had found herself on solid ground for a good few meters before she realised that she was no longer at risk of falling. When she did realise, however, she permitted herself the chance to slow a little. Not too severely, of course, but enough for her to be moving at an infinitely more comfortable pace. She would have been perfectly happy with altogether wiping her hands of the bridge altogether, but much to her dread - a dread of which would have to be put on the backburner until she was given the opportunity to deal with it - she knew that she would have to come back the same way she had come.
But that would come later, she concluded, and so she simply just went to head through the gate instead.
"Where were you?" a voice through the mist asked. A particularly familiar voice too, as it was the voice of none other than Ethan Winters. There was no reasonable explanation for why her husband, who the last she saw of was him bleeding out rather fatally, to be running about in the mist.
Now, it was not the thought that there was a dead man walking about that caused her heart to feel like it skipped several beats all at once, but rather the fact that it was almost certainly her fault. It was not that she wanted him dead or anything tragic like that, but rather she wished that, if he did have to be dead he would stay down. At least that way she would not have to think about just how wholly and completely she might have ruined the poor man for the dreadful crime of wanting the best for a person who did not deserve it.
"Mia, you need to come home, Something is wrong with Rose!"
Squinting, she could see a figure through the swirling mist. The possibility of this being a trap did not - or perhaps could not - even once enter her mind as she broke into a jog. Her path was clear enough, there were fences either side of the path after all, and she was not particularly in the want of a detour at that moment. Not if the man she was following was getting further and further away with every step.
He should not be there, it was not safe for him there, she knew that with a complete certainty. Thank goodness, she thought in passing, she had gotten there before her husband came into any more danger than he was capable of facing.
"What did you do?"
Was this... accusatory ? Surely not, he had been so understanding, more understanding than she necessarily though she deserved. so why on earth would be change his tone so suddenly? Even still, she staggered a little at the implications of it, or perhaps it was just a head spin. Her head, she had not bothered to note, seemed like it was spinning the more she ran. This, she could only assume, was a result of her becoming more and more overwhelmed by things, and so she made the point of taking several deep steps to try and steady herself.
This was not so very successful, but it had been worth a try.
"Why did you do this?"
She practically stumbled into a clearing and, despite the fact she had been chasing someone, she found herself to be the only person there. There was no way Ethan could have gotten so far ahead as to lose him so completely. Surely not.
"I have to focus." she whispered to herself, feeling oddly like if she were to speak any louder it would be the equivalent of a most heinous blasphemy. Though a blasphemy against what, she could even begin to comprehend.
On her way, she had passed by several graves, in various degrees of upkeep and disrepair - one could assume this was a result of whether those among the living took the time to visit or not - so the fact she came across yet another should not have been a surprise to her, and yet it was. There was something different about this grave. Placed in a place of honour in the centre of the clearing, the space around it seemed like a sea of gold from the flowers growing there, and those dolls of which had been placed as offerings seemed to have been chosen with a great deal of care.
For all the care that was exhibited, the epitaph had been broken, reading only as '-a Beneviento. 1987-1996', which was a terribly short lifespan all things considered.
There was nothing but sorrow left in that place, and she had more than enough of that of her own, thank you, and so she would rather not be burdened by any more than she absolutely needed to. So, offering the grave one more quick sombre glance over as she did so, she carried on to what seemed like it could have quite easily been both an elaborate gate or the entrance to a mausoleum, each option seeming to be just as likely as the other, she prepared to move on. The steps were cracked and it seemed that she was the only person in a great while who had needed to navigate them.
The little bronze plaque by the door read 'Give up your self' - specifically 'your self' and not 'yourself' which would have a different connotation entirely - and almost with a sense of symbolic relief, she did exactly that.