forest [open]

[brendan]

An investigating mother hare checked after his trail of wet slosh that turned the dirt to mud. Brendan turned around and gave it a tired look, wet hair dripping over his face. The hare approached without hesitation and stopped on Brendan's feet to feast on a few scattered berries. He must be in a really sorry state if the rabbit didn't find him a threat. He was hungry, but he knew that he'd have no strength to gather wood, find pot, boil water, skin the rabbit, cook the rabbit, and at last eat; the steps he'd routinely done countless times were suddenly the biggest hurdle in his life. It wasn't worth it. Even if the clawing sensation in his stomach was a sign of starving to death, it didn't seem worth it. Brendan gave the blinding darkness by the river one last look before turning and walking away.

He couldn't see a thing. His eyes have longed adjusted to the darkness but staring at it seemed to make him only see darkness, darkness dancing around, swimming at the corners of his eyes. The longer he tried to distinguish shapes, the more they faded away. Brendan couldn't see anything at a distance and he knew many creatures at the forest saw him standing still and vulnerable. He felt for a tree, his hand landing on a rough bark with something oozy and sticky on the surface. It was disgusting, but he doubted it was anything dangerous. Wiping it on his shirt, Brendan clipped the heavy volume of a tome on his right arm and poked his foot around the tree. He kept feeling for a leverage, testing his weight with trying jumps. When one felt solid enough, he gave it a go and dug his nails on the wood. Brendan fell, but he simply repeated it gin as falling hadn't registered to him.

He scrapped his knees on the tree several times. The one of his left was pounding hotly; Brendan knew it must be bleeding from a few cuts. He doubted his hands were better, but then they'd bled more often than his knees and healed anew with thicker skin. His strength was leaving him fast. Brendan didn't spare himself a few breaths and kept going, higher and higher in the tree. What kept him moving was the cold. When he had climbed high enough, he was exhausted enough to appreciate the freezing wind. Brendan wasted no time to sleep. As he did, he knew he might either freeze to his death or fall in his sleep. He kept a tight leash around the tome, thinking it was some boulder that grounded him to the trunk of the tree.

...

He didn't dream. In an instant, his eyelids flied open, the sun out and shining. Brendan looked around, not recognizing the pitch-black forest he had briefly travelled through. He felt something was wrong but as it turned out, he had only been alarmed. Below him came a voice. Brendan sighed and closed his eyes again. When he unconsciously moved his hand behind his back, the tome brushed his arm and even before it made ugly contact with something solid down there, Brendan knew it had just made a free fall to the ground. Or worse.

[Yaesa]

brendan

An innocent jaunt up to the forest was about to prove interesting, as Yaesa would figure out shortly. She was wandering about the woods, but despite how deep they were into the woods, only her boots had any sort of indication that she had been anywhere near dirt, and it looked to be quite recent. She did however have a leaf in her hair, which was probably another indication, but honestly, she looked... practically pristine.

She hummed to herself as she busied herself around the roots of the tree that Brendan and the voice that Brendan heard came through the leaves. "Ah, here we go, some mild milkcap." She said, presumably to herself as she picked a large brown mushroom with a milky underside. She busied herself with the picking, all the while not realizing that she was about to be abruptly interrupted.

A book fell on her head.

"Geh!" She squeaked out at the book's impact. Miraculously, in one of those instances that could never be replicated, she caught the book as it bounced off her head and her fingers snapped the book shut. She rubbed her head and groaned as she tried to read the words in the spotty bits of sunlight.

"Wind..." She murmured to herself, and then she tilted her head upwards. Why had a magic tome fallen out of the sky onto her head?

The answer was soon discovered by the young figure in the trees, a boy by the glimpse of it... she couldn't imagine a girl was silly enough to go up that high and drop things. She peered up quietly and tried to get a better glimpse. The figure seemed young but that could have just been that they had the height of a youth... and the build. She wouldn't be able to tell without a closer look.

"Um!" She called up into the trees, and she waved the book above her head. "I think you lost something...?" She commented, but that was obvious. Of course he had. How silly of her.

[brendan]

"Sorry!" If there were any doubts of his youthfulness then the voice had shot it down completely. Brendan tried to get a good look of the innocent passerby directly below. The leaves stubbornly blocked his point of view and rustled at his face. "Please don't take it! I'm coming down, hold on." Brendan pushed away a jutting stem and traced with his eyes his path of descent. He wondered how he even got up here.

"Umm!" He reached down with his foot and experimentally applied his weight before switching his grip from the branch to the bark of the tree. There was no footing for him to use. Really, how did he manage to get up? Already, Brendan was clinging to his life but retreating to his safety branch or helplessly screaming did not cross his mind. He squeezed the trunk in an embrace, lowered an arm down followed by his opposite leg and arm and continued to alternate carefully with his limbs. He'd never climbed a tree his entire life. You wouldn't find a tree in a desert.

But it wasn't that hard. The roughness of the bark of the tree was like adhesive keeping him glued to the tree. If he had a cloth to go around it, he could climb by pulling himself with the cloth while he pushed his feet against the trunk. The alternative was what Brendan was doing: acting like a hand gripping on an object. His arms and legs were effectively like fingers used to grasp things. Too bad he wasn't like a spider. Usually, animals who had to do impossible scaling down had something to help them stick, like hair or some sort of substance.

Brendan took a leap to the closest branch and landed perfectly. Inspired by his success and feeling confident of the distance, Brendan jumped down again where he made another successful landing. He'd momentarily forgotten about his tome and the stranger. He only thought about the next step he had to do.

For the rest of his way down, Brendan scaled down until the leaves have cleared up without his notice and he was already three feet from the ground. Eager to complete the task, Brendan jumped down but his third jump didn't prove to be very smart. He reeled uncontrollably forward like his feet had gained a mind of their own. He barely stopped himself from slamming full force on another tree, which had instead kept him from crashing on the ground. Brendan turned around and showed his hand, palm up, to the woman.

"Can I have it back?"

There were reddish marks with slightly frayed skin all over Brendan's arms and it was hard not to miss the very red blood on his inner calf. The cut must be shallow since the bleeding wasn't going past his ankle. Brendan didn't appear to be fazed by it.

Yaesa

[Yaesa]

brendan

Yaesa was about to make some kind of protest, that she could just leave it at the base of the tree and he could get it later, but then he started climbing down. Her eyes practically bugged out but she stayed quiet as he climbed down, not wanting to alarm him and have him accidentally fall. To be quite honest, she'd had enough things fall on her head today. She gave him ample space for his landing, stepping backwards while clutching his book to her chest. But not even she could resist a gasp of protest when he stumbled on the landing.

What this child did was none of her business, but she could see now that he was very much still a child. Well, in a sense. He was near marrying age in the human's culture, if she could recall correctly. Maybe she was off a few years. Even then, she felt something of a maternal instinct bubble up in her chest as she stared wide-eyed at this child, not even phased by the injuries on his person.

"Y-Yes, of course... Here, come here." She said assertively as she withdrew a clean and pretty white handkerchief from a pocket in her dress. "You're going to get an infection if you leave all that exposed. What were you even doing up there?" She clucked as she placed his book in his hand promptly, then motioned him to stay where he was and kneeled down.

That was when she remembered herself, and looked up at him. "May I? You've got quite the cut here."

[brendan]

Infection? Brendan checked his arms, rolling them to see. When he found none, he looked down at his legs and found blood on his calf. Oh, it didn't really hurt but it had bled a bit. It was no surprise she was alarmed to see it.

He didn't have the chance to say anything when the woman suddenly knelt down. Upon getting the tome, Brendan intended to apologize again and jog away but he found himself awkwardly stuck in place. Watching after the woman's action, Brendan quickly realized it was a mistake to do so from his angle and tore his eyes away immediately from the woman's exposed skin that seemed to glow in the day. He had no choice but to let her do what she wanted while he took a sudden interest for his surrounding. He offered a goofy, embarrassed smile instead of an answer, not realizing she probably wouldn't have seen it.

"Uh, yeah," Brendan said automatically, glancing back at her and briefly meeting her eyes before looking away again. After he'd given his answer, it was only then that it registered to him that she was asking for his consent to clean off the blood. Well, it didn't really matter but she was going to get her handkerchief dirty.

The trees sure looked much taller. He must have been really out of it to climb that high without thinking how difficult it was. He suddenly remembered his hunger; he felt weak but some sleep had given him the reserve energy he needed.

Yaesa

[Yaesa]

brendan

She quickly mopped up some of the blood trail with a corner of the handkerchief, and then bound the handkerchief around his ankle like a bandage. She wasn't exactly worried about it- she had plenty of them, there wasn't a lot to do other than sew when you were alone in a cottage. She straightened up and smiled down at him, scanning him from head to toe.

Now that he was closer, she was definitely alarmed. The way that he slightly swayed from side to side, a side-effect that was unavoidable from severe hunger, the cuts and dirt all over him, and the fact that he had been up in a tree were definite indicators of neglect. She didn't want to ask, she really didn't want to get involved, but frankly if the boy was in trouble and needed help, she didn't want to live without knowing that she'd at least offered.

"That's better. Don't worry about the handkerchief, I've got plenty at home. Are you alright? You... you don't look too well." Understatement number two, thy name was Yaesa. She kept looking him up and down, before she finally just decided that it needed to be said. "Have you been out here alone? Where is your family?"

She'd probably let loose some kind of floodgate of sad stories and trauma, where she'd probably take him back to her house for a good meal at the very least. Already she was planning what she would do in her head should he say he didn't have any support connections. At the very least, he looked like he could use some food, if not clean water and a bath. She kept a kind smile on her face while she asked him though. She didn't want him to feel under pressure, nor that she was being condescending to him.

[brendan]

He brought out the goofy, embarrassed smile again, this time for her to definitely see.

"I'm fine." Another automatic response. He was hungry, but he'd kept himself hydrated. "Thanks," he added. He didn't squirm under the woman's scrutiny and just waited for what she intended to do, or not to do. He could read in her eyes that she was debating over it with her good conscience. Brendan hoped she would choose to ignore him and walk away. She'd done enough to help. But her lips parted and she dared to speak what was bothering her.

"No, I'm meeting my dad." It was an easy lie: a half-truth. It didn't really answer her questions completely but it was an answer regardless. Brendan continued to smile and he didn't even need to fake it. It came naturally when trying to cover up some blunder - stealing, getting caught, fighting, landing in a foreign land. He never got into trouble this serious but as long as he could get back to Plegia and find his father, it'd be fine. Having a clear goal helped him feel like he had control over his situation.

But he didn't calculate his every step. Instead of ending their conversation and excusing himself to meet with his dad (a hundred kilometres away somewhere in Plegia), Brendan looked at the woman with child-like curiosity.

"How about you ma'm? You're travelling alone?" He glanced at her hands, waist, and hips. "And you didn't bring anything to protect yourself with. That's dangerous."

Yaesa

[Yaesa]

brendan

She got the distinct feeling that she was being lied to. Most children would start talking about their father being just a little while further if they were telling the truth. They were very open in that way. She raised an eyebrow to indicate that she didn't believe him for even a minute, but then he started asking her questions that she wouldn't be able to tell the entire truth on. She pushed a strand behind her pointed ear and smiled sheepishly.

"Oh, I'm alright. I've got my own... erm... kind of magic. I'm able to defend myself." Again, like in his case, it wasn't the entire truth. It was a kind of magic, and she was able to defend herself, but how did you explain to a strange boy that you could transform into a dragon without terrifying them? Manakete were still sometimes viewed as nothing better than an animal, and so she tried to let people adjust to her before she revealed anything about herself.

However, this conversation was making her feel very conscious about the fact that she hadn't brought her cloak with the hood. She honestly hated the hood, so she went without it when she could. She smiled awkwardly, and thought about leaving again, but then she stopped.

"Well, how far is your father, anyway? You looked like you were having quite the nap up there." She commented proddingly.

[brendan]

Vaguely mentioning a kind of magic to someone who clearly possessed a tome might not have been a good idea. But then again, she might not have thought it was his to use. Brendan knew she was hiding something but, unlike her, he took her answer for granted and hummed and nodded. He looked like he had believed her, or didn't care enough to bother about it. A strange, almost sure sensation in his chest told him if he asked a bit more, he would discover the truth himself. The answer was already somewhere within his memory.

The woman appeared too uncomfortable to continue the conversation to Brendan's surprise and, partly, guilt, though an early parting was what he wanted in the first place. He waited for her next move. She decided to ask another question.

"I'm not sure, but I know where to find him." He was in Plegia. Somewhere in Plegia. "Taking a nap on a tree isn't a smart idea. I wouldn't recommend it."

Yaesa

[Yaesa]

brendan

Yaesa's gaze flickered up to the tree tops once again and she hummed a little behind closed lips. “Well, I had no plan to do so, but thank you for the warning.” She said with a bit of humour behind her tone. The pause that followed was a very heavy one, not too long but full of insecurity and confusion. She was standing in the middle of a forest with a young boy, one that looked terribly worse for wear if his father was close by, and at the very least probably needed help even if he didn't care to admit it. She gripped her basket tighter and sighed, letting the breath blow a strand of her bangs out of her eyes. Well, regardless of the answer she was probably going to get from him, she may as well offer. It was the responsible thing to do, right?

“Well, let me see.” She let her gaze fall back down to him- although now that she noted it, 'down' wasn't quite as far as she first anticipated. Was she just short? Probably; most humans she met were as tall or taller than herself. “I can walk with you to him, just so that you're not alone? You're right, it's not the best idea to travel the forest alone, and we can probably help each other out. As long as you don't mind me stopping for mushrooms along the way- do you like wild mushrooms? They're the best when they're freshly picked; some species you don't even have to eat cooked, you can just eat them raw. Very nutritious.” She rummaged about in her basket for some of the ones she had picked already, and handed him one of the mild milkcaps she had picked at the base of the tree.

“You can have this one, if you'd like! So what do you say? I'll help you find your dad, if you let me?” She asked with a beaming smile.

What she didn't hear was the crack of a tree branch behind her.

[brendan]

Brendan joined in the moment of awkward silence, his jesting smile turning to a look of concern as he waited expectantly. He knew she knew his lies and he didn't want to hurt her too much about it. Brendan had given his share of lies before. Harmless lies to strangers who could care less. A woman once asked him about a bleeding cut on his temple. Someone threw a pebble on him. It wasn't anything important; kids would pick out strangers and do what they believed was harmless to get attention. He told her he hit his head and she'd just pulled the ends of her lips down and her eyebrows up, and shrugged. He didn't think she was concerned. Much like that kid who threw the stone at him, she was just bored.

It was rare to run across people who did care. He wished he could apologize but he couldn't give her the answer she would like to hear.

Brendan's eyes twinkled with interest again. His curiosity was not limited to some vague, tome-less magic.

"Mushrooms?" He'd never had a mushroom but he knew that some could be safely ingested. But in Plegia, they were too small and few to take satisfaction in. Brendan hadn't been on the lookout for them. Did the forest had giant mushrooms the size of a rabbit? If they could be eaten raw, were they like fruits?

Brendan stared at the mushrooms in her basket and eagerly accepted the mushroom. It almost went a beeline to his mouth - hunger had suddenly awoken from his stomach but Brendan saw from the woman's smile that by eating this mushroom, he would be accepting her contract.

Brendan used his tome and threw it at her. It zoomed past her shoulder and forced the man behind her to shield his face, a sword suspended above the woman's head.

"RUN!" Brendan snatched the woman's hand and dragged her away quickly. The mushroom she'd given had fallen off from his hand. He wondered if he had thrown it at the man too. What a waste of good food.

Yaesa

[Yaesa]

brendan

The boy's sudden change in behaviour startled Yaesa, and when he threw the tome at her, she automatically ducked. Before she could reply with protest, she saw the boot of the man beside her. Her gaze trailed up to his face in what seemed to be an exhaustingly long period of time, and her hand automatically caught the tome again. She again caught it by the spine and slapped the book shut. Then, before the assailant could attempt to strike her a second time, she was dragged away by Brendan and they ran like a bat let loose from hell.

Her longer legs made it so that she was running beside him instead of behind him in good time, and as they ran, she held out the book to him. “Hey! You'll need this if we get caught!” She called, and she realized that she didn't even know the boy's name. It hadn't even occurred to her, and now the both of them were running for their lives. She went over the options in her head. They didn't know how many people were after them, they had only seen one so far. They couldn't run far- the boy was exhausted and she couldn't support him on her back. Not in this form anyway. She looked down at the boy, her mind racing. Did she have a choice? If they got caught in a fight, she'd have to transform anyway. She grunted in exasperation and bowed her head, shaking it.

“Never mind, we're not getting caught, not today. Cover me!” She exclaimed and she stopped at a dead halt. Out from underneath her dress' neckline came a green stone on a rawhide string. The gem glittered a bit in the light before she grabbed at the stone and tugged the rawhide until the knot at the back was untied and the gem was in her hand. Her pupils contracted into slits and her green eyes were illuminated with a green glow, before she knelt down to the ground and a cocoon-like substance formed around her, encasing her completely in a shape that almost resembled tulip petals.

What emerged from the cocoon was not the woman that went into it. An emerald green dragon emerged from the cocoon, flapping its wings to keep levitated off the ground. The scales on its body were a whole slew of colours, varying from green to white to even yellow. Some of the scales were duller than others, and on some parts of her body, there were even unique patterns, almost as if it were as unique as a human's fingerprint. The eyes were now completely green orbs, and the head of the dragon now pointed towards the human boy.

“Hop on, it's okay!” It was definitely the same voice, but it was distorted by something within the dragon's voicebox. Yet, it was still the same warm voice that had come from the woman and while Yaesa knew it was likely to be a shock, they also didn't have much time. She settled to the ground and waited for him to either climb on or.... well.... run away screaming... that was also an option.

[brendan]

Brendan had already resigned himself at the lost of his one and only tomb when the woman had pulled it out and returned it. He scrambled to receive it. "Oh - yeah - thanks!" Thank the gods. The prospect of fighting with a tome alone still made him uncertain but it was better than having no weapon at all. Although if they were trying to escape, Brendan thought he was more likely to throw the tome again than use it. He would have no time to chant and less strength to carry it while running around.

He tried to come up with a plan but he found that most of his attention was focused on keeping himself from tripping and slowing down. He didn't feel like he was pulling the woman along. Yeah, that's right. If Brendan could distract their attacker, she could escape on her own but what if the man wasn't alone? He decided he wasn't going to let go. He didn't want her to die.

Brendan squeezed her hand but he suddenly found the hand gone from his grasp. He skidded to a stop, whipping his head around. What was she planning? Even without her saying anything, Brendan was left with no choice but to try and fend off their attacker. He leaped in front of the woman and flipped open the tome, no time to look over his shoulder and see what she was up to. He caught movement on the right and saw the glint of an arrowhead poking from the bushes. In front of him, the swordsman was fast approaching.

"Which one?" He wasn't going to reach the archer. Brendan cast the spell against the swordsman, catching him by surprise and knocking him off his feet. He heard the arrow fly from its bow - Brendan's heart dropped as he turned around.

The arrow snapped in half.

The woman was gone. In her place was an emerald dragon with lustrous scales incomparable to the clearest diamond. He found it hard to breathe. Brendan could feel the size and majesty of the creature pinning him as if a boulder had been dropped on top of him. A dragon! A...She...The woman...

A long, glossy nail traced the words across the page. As Brendan followed with his eyes, he could hear the voice and feel the warm breath of his grandmother behind his ear. At one side of the page sprawled strands of her long, grey hair. He remembered being distracted by it that everything around the memory sounded more muffled. She lightly chided him, tapped the page with emphasis, and repeated the portion of the paragraph again... He listened this time and he was able to pick out the words she'd told him.

Brendan could see his reflection on the scales staring back at him. He looked up at the dragon, its head looming over him like a giant cloud. Somehow, he knew it wasn't going to eat him. It was her, wasn't it? This was what she was talking about earlier.

Brendan scurried over and did as he was told. He wouldn't have known until today how easier it was to climb onto a dragon's back than it was to climb a tree.

Yaesa

[Yaesa]

brendan

Yaesa would smile if she could in this form. The wonder that had overtaken the boy's face was precious, and it couldn't help but tickle her heart. She tried to make his ascent onto her back as smooth and simple as possible, and once she was sure that he was secure, she lifted off.

Flying, no matter if a woman had amnesia or not, was very much like walking; once you learned, you rarely forgot how to do it. It had taken her several months to become re-accustomed to the process of flight, but once she had relearned it, she enjoyed it and was even good at it. She curved up into the air in an upwards incline, until she broke through the treeline above. Then, with nowhere else to really fly to, she started to fly towards her own home on the edge of the forest, in the direction of Ylisstol.

She tried not to ascend too high, so as not to scare the boy, but at the same time, he didn't seem like the type to be afraid of heights. He had been in one of the tallest trees in the woods, after all. A small laugh sounded from her, which in the form of a dragon, sounded as if she were rumbling in a way that resembled a chuckle.

“Tell you what. We're going to fly to my place, we'll get you cleaned up, wait for those bandits to clear, and then we can go find your dad. So long as he isn't in danger, that is.” She paused, as if she were thinking for a moment, and her head slightly turned so she could at least see him out of the corner of her eye. “You never did tell me where your father was... or your name, for that matter. I am called Yaesa.” She introduced herself.

[brendan]

Brendan could just roll on his back and lie down. Did it matter if it were the back of a dragon that he would be lying on? The rush of relief had almost made him forget what was going to happen next: flying.

Brendan dropped on his belly and flattened himself down. He pinned his wind tome under his arm, not wanting to lose it again. He didn't know how flying was supposed to work. All he could feel was a lot of shaking and movement that threatened to throw him off and send him splatting on a tree, but Brendan knew that wasn't what the woman was trying to do. He lurched forward despite his best efforts to stay rooted, a strong gust of wind popping both his eardrums, the muffled chaotic rustling of leaves buzzing, before his voice dropped to his stomach as the dragon took off from the ground. Brendan watched them reach the trees in seconds and be gone from the forest in a blur. He made the mistake of rising on his knees to see the ground, having underestimated the wind from the dragon's powerful wings that pushed him over to his back and made him roll three feet away from where he originally was. The space was wide. Brendan didn't need to worry about falling off even from a blunder like that. He peered more carefully this time from this new location where he better saw the maze of trees that was but a patch of grass from above.

His attention was taken away by the rumbling of the dragon's voice. Was she chuckling? He could feel it shaking all the way to her back. Brendan scooted closer to her head, feeling the vibrations of her voicebox stronger.

“I think you've sent those bandits to never come back!” Brendan shouted. He didn't know if a dragon could hear a creature that was an ant to her. “My name is Brendan and my dad is fine! He's...he's somewhere close! Really close for you since you can fly! And I know it's a bad time to talk, but are you a manakete, Yaesa?“

It wasn't a question. Just from his tone, it was obvious Brendan already knew she were but he seemed to ask out of the desire to say something more about it.

Yaesa