𝐀𝐕𝐀𝐓𝐀𝐑 - MCU

II. THE SPIRIT WILDS

II. THE SPIRIT WILDS
__________

Luna's legs were aching and more than anything she wished she could fly through the trees. Every shadow seemed like it was watching her, or maybe it were the things hiding in the shadows. Whenever she tried to rest, the forest got darker, the shadows nearing. God, it's only been a day.

T'Challa and Shuri had warned her about what crawled around on the ground, so as soon as it got dark she climbed a tree as high as she dared, hidden between the greenish leaves and hanging vines. She kept her heaphones in, She would rather not listen to every little sound in a dark, jungle-like forest in the middle of the night.

Luna startled awake when a growl crept its way between the loud beats coming from the tablet. A wave of cold dread washed over her and she went rigid, not daring to make a move. Slowly, she paused the music and pulled out the headphones. She could barely see the colors of the sunrise through the trees.

After it was deadly quiet for minutes, Luna finally went back to breathing normally. She unfastened the ropes that secured her to the tree and climbed down, put everything back in her bag and continued her long journey.

It was a minute into the walk when the bushes right to Luna rustled. She stopped walking. A strange noise came from it. A frown spread across Luna's face as she carefully approached the bushes. Another noise, squeaky and high. This time she saw the bushes move.

Luna opened the flask at her hip and bend the water out, holding it like a weapon. Then, a small animal, the size of Luna's head jumped from out the bushes and grabbed onto her face. Any thought of bending went out her mind as she let out a high-pitched shriek and tried to pry the beast off of her.

"AAAH! Gerroffme!" Finally, she had a tight grip on the animal and threw it off her and onto the ground.

In seconds, it was up-right and looking at her with its big eyes. It had black and white fur, with a purple glaze and ears almost bigger than its body. The space between its body and arms were connected with wings and its long tail was flapping wildly. It looked almost... cute.

"Whatthefuckwhatthefuck." Luna caught her breath as she kept her eyes on the creature. "What the hell are you?" She knew she'd seen it somewhere before, it was on the tip of her tongue but she couldn't quite get it. If she looked closely, it kind of looked like a lemur.

The creature purred at her and tilted his head to the side.

Luna had to stop herself from awe-ing. "Wait. Lemur plus wings..." she gasped in realization, "You're a winged lemur!"

The creature squeaked in, what Luna could guess was, agreement. She walked forwards and immediately the winged lemur jumped into her arms. "Oh okay, hello. You want to... come, with me?"

The winged lemur squeaked again.

"Well, nice. But I can't keep calling you 'creature' or 'lemur,' so..." Luna looked around as the winged lemur casually perched on her shoulder. Finally her eyes landed on the bush the lemur jumped out off, "Bush...-y? Bushy?"

The lemur shook its head.

"Okay, fine, that was bad. You kind of look like a taller Maurice. Or maybe Mort? You know what? Fuck it. Imma call you buddy. Because I'm not creative and I own that. So, hi buddy, my name is Luna. Nice to meet you."

Buddy purred and flew off her shoulder and into the air.

"Oh, so you can fly but I can't? How is that fair?"

• • •

"Okay, buddy, it's getting dark. Let's eat and go to bed." Luna sat down on a fallen down tree and rummaged through her backpack, "We got some weird-ass berries Shuri swears are good and... beef-jerky." She fished the jerky out of the bag, "Sorry, Shuri but I want me some jerky."

A sudden movement caught her attention. A dark shape along the tree line in front of her. "Stay here." Buddy simply looked up at her and bit into one of Shuri's berries.

Luna grabbed her dagger from her boot and held it in front of her, "Whatever you are, come out now. I'm armed and... very dangerous." She nodded to herself. Dangerous, yes.

"Oh, I'm sure, human."

Luna turned and looked at... something. The thing that spoke was taller than her and had the characteristics of an animal, but it stood up straight like a human. "What are you?" Suddenly the thing disappeared.

"Oh, you're just as stinky as the last one." It was suddenly standing behind her.

Luna turned again, and stared at them with wide eyes, "You're a spirit." Suddenly her mind raced back to a book she had read, "The aye-aye spirit?"

"Hmm, yes." They looked Luna up and down, "Not as impressive as the first one, are you?"

Luna put her dagger back in her boot, "The first one?"