In Blackened Maws

x // enlightenment

In the wake of dawn, Archer felt...stupid, for a couple reasons.

The first was that it took him so long to even think about the fact that the trip that initially took him six hours was now taking him literal days, that Xena wasn't exactly being the best navigator. It was obvious she wasn't doing this the best, but Archer supposed he either was totally oblivious, or he was just enjoying Xena's company.

Second of all came the ink herself. From where he stood, fire smoldering now, he could see globs of black that were mixed with silver. He had hurt her. In self-defense, yes, but the sting was still there.

None of this would've happened should he have cooled it. It didn't matter that Xena was the first living being he'd ever divulged his troubles with, that her leaving him made him relapse into the first night without the comfort of his parents distantly in another room - he shouldn't have gotten all paranoid.

Then again, none of this would've happened if Xena hadn't tricked him and led him down to heaven-knows-where. He still wasn't exactly sure why she did it, but all that resentment towards her pacifism didn't do well for his imagination.

Now he was back to being angry.

He needed to get moving. The fire only took a bit of stomping and some drops of water to extinguish, and Archer's destroyed pack only really led him to pocket his dead, beat-up phone, a matchbox with just a single match, and a compass too broken to really point to any particular direction.

He was lucky, though. He had the east-rising sun to help him with cardinal directions, and the river the two had been following was nearby. He could only hope that that would actually lead him anywhere, and he wouldn't be heading even deeper into the now ink-infested woods.

He made sure to avoid the streaks of black or silver leading into some darker part of the thicket, heading down to the river and keeping an eye out for any deep-cut shadows that were likely not shadows on his way downstream.

Archer tried to shake it all off whenever thoughts from last night came to him, humming some showtunes to dispel all the emotions. He hadn't really any experience dealing with so many raging thoughts, it was difficult to start, especially now that his actions might've caused his own demise.

Eventually, the riverside became a very jumbled thicket, one he couldn't make his way down. He sighed, because of course this would happen to him, and glanced around before entering into the forest.

He managed to keep a pretty good eye on the river, hiding amidst the various greenery, before losing sight of it some way in. He had an ear on it, though. Rushing water was the only thing keeping him moving through the treescape whose overhang gradually became obscured.

The forest wasn't kind to Archer. He had managed to make a few crude paths, getting spooked by some bugs and squirrels in the process, but found many of his efforts go to waste when the babbling water grew distant. He tried to turn back around, but confronted more brambles and clutters of leaves.

...Not this again.

Archer started feeling clammy the second the idea that he was right back where Xena found him came to mind, and his movements became frantic. Away was reservation or reverie, he was thrust into the moment and he could not afford to get lost when an actual monster was on the prowl.

Greens and browns he'd grown fond of now pressed in as he flung vines to the side, squeezing past bark and ignoring the cuts that came when he tried to bypass bushes. He'd find his original path every once in a while, a nice little walkway that immediately had him sprinting, but would still eventually be met with vegetative blockades and, more importantly, a complete lack of that telltale sound of water.