Flight (new version)

Chapter 16: New Friends

Over the next few days, Fern's wound healed enough that she barely had any pain when she walked around.

"I'm so bored!" she complained through a mouthful of fruit as they ate lunch together in the dining room. "I'm so glad Meadow isn't making me stay in bed all day anymore."

Griffin laughed. "I can imagine." He finished his last bite and stood up. "Come with me."

Fern grabbed one more berry then followed Griffin outside. He continued into the forest, taking her down the trails he'd already explored. It was a bit windy, and autumn leaves tumbled and whirled in the air as if a dryad were causing them to dance. Eventually they reached a small ravine. The trees seemed twice as tall from where their trunks began, several feet above their heads on the edges of the ravine.

Fern gazed around, honey-gold eyes almost sparkling. "It's gorgeous here. Look how big these trees are!" She ran up to a fallen tree that cut horizontally across the ravine and jumped on top, wincing a bit at the movement. She quickly waved away Griffin's concern and walked across it. "I wonder if there really was a dryad named Tepora who created this forest?"

"Maybe you could add your own plants to the forest," Griffin suggested.

He smiled as Fern immediately dropped into a crouch, hands turning green as she placed them on the dirt. She glanced up at him and laughed. "I have no idea what I'm doing."

"I'm sure we'll figure it out." He summoned his own magic to his hands. "And speaking of magic, want to see something cool?

Fern picked up a maple leaf and began twirling it absent-mindedly. "Sure! What is it?"

"Watch."

Griffin stepped into the shadow of a tree and drew the shadows tightly around him. Blocking out all outside noises and distractions, he concentrated on the coolness of the shadows around him and held as still as possible.

Fern gasped, breaking Griffin's concentration. "You disappeared for a second!"

He grinned and stepped away from the tree, dry leaves crunching under his boots. "Isn't that cool? It's called a shadow cloak. Flood heard about it in a story and I tried hundreds of different things to try to figure it out."

"And you got it!" Fern exclaimed.

"Well, more or less. The only way I found was to stand extremely still in the shadows. I'm not sure how to keep it going when I move."

"I'm sure you'll figure it out." Fern touched the leaf under the ribbon in one of her pigtails. She sighed happily. "It's so nice, isn't it? Being free to go wherever we want, do what we want."

"Yeah." Except where the humans are. He glanced up, trying to see where the sun had sunk in the sky. The light was getting dim. "Should we start heading back?"

Fern nodded and they retraced their steps back through the ravine and up to the deer path they'd taken through the thick expanse of maple trees.

"You know, it's weird," Fern spoke after a while. "Meadow said I healed this quickly because of the magic in my system. But I got hit by an obsiterite bullet, so the magic shouldn't have been working. Right?"

"Maybe it was just a regular bullet?"

Fern shook her head. "Meadow had to pull it out since it was still in me. It was definitely obsiterite."

"That is weird." He held aside a low-hanging tree branch as they squeezed between two trees. "Maybe we have a stronger tolerance to obsiterite than our parents had."