Have you ever wondered what it feels like to not fit in?
To try your best but never be appreciated or even seen!
Nina nader's life was like that. Born to black parents but albino. She was not seen by anyone, that was until she discovered her assign...
We all woke up early, thanks to Martha's cooking. I never knew that bread and salted ham could taste so good. While eating, I heard Martha's voice:
"Guys, we're about to actually enter into the forest, the Britonde forest is known to be treacherous. Not everything is as it seems, my grandma told me that some animals in this forest are not really animals, and some humans are not actually humans. There are werewolves, vampires, vengeful spirits living in here. There are also other creatures that I don't even want to think about."
August cursed in Korean, while running his hand through his hair. I had already heard rumors of the forest, Martha's explanation made it sink in more, and I think it had the same effect on everyone else.
"can't we go around the forest?" Cornelius blurted out
"The only way around the forest is through the forest. The sides of the forest are bordered by water. There are even more treacherous creatures in the water. I'm sure you've heard of the leviathan?" Leon explained. The look of terror on Nelly's face, and the loud gulp, told us that he knew the answer to Leon's question. We all agreed the Forest was the safest route. We packed up our tents, and all our other belongings into the cart, and entered the forest.
At first, there was an eerie silence, we looked around, saw deep markings on the trees. Markings that could not have been made by an ordinary wild animal. I gulped. We walked for about two hours with nobody saying a single word, even our horses seemed to understand as none of them made a sound. Suddenly, we heard a loud shrieking sound,
"DUCK!" Nelly screamed.
"Why" Festus groaned.
"SHUT UP AND HIDE!" Nelly said while dragging Festus to hide behind the closest tree.
Luckily for us, there were two Beech trees near us, we ran towards each tree. Festus, Cornelius, and Martha were under one, while Leon, August and I were under another.
"Does anyone care to explain why we are hiding?" August whispered.
"That bird is a Roc." Nelly answered. We looked up, and saw a gigantic bird sitting atop one of the trees in front of us, rotating its head. It looked freaking scary. I wasn't really scared; birds don't eathumans right? I thought
"care to explain what that means Nelly?" August fired back, tearing me away from my thoughts.
"MY NAME IS CORNELIUS!" he whisper-yelled, before responding to the question;
"The Roc, is the strongest bird known to we archers. It looks like an eagle, but it's as big as a castle. This is the second time; I'm seeing it in real life. The first time, the archers in the army were going hunting, we were about to catch an Elephant, but this bird suddenly came from nowhere, lifted a fully grown elephant in the air and flew away!" Cornelius whispered. Now I was really scared.
"We've got the best archer in the army here with us and you're telling us to hide from a bird?" Martha grumbled
Nelly's eyes popped out; "DO YOU HEAR YOURSELF MARTHA?! YOU WANT ME TO RISK MY LIFE TO KILL A BIRD THAT CAN KILL AN ELEPHANT?"
Martha gave him a bored look. The bird shrieked again.
"why does it keep shrieking?" Martha grumbled.
"It's announcing its presence. It's challenging any animal or stupid human to challenge it" Nelly explained further giving Martha a look.
"scaredy cat" Martha mocked while sticking out her tongue. Festus and August laughed, Festus grunted; his own version of a laugh, leaving Nelly red-faced. I couldn't laugh. We just started our journey, and our first experience after leaving England was an enormous flesh-eating bird? YIKES.
We waited for about two hours under the trees, with the Roc shrieking every thirty minutes. Everyone was tired of doing nothing, Martha seemed to be chewing on something, Cornelius kept checking on the bird, August was pretending to read a book while sipping from a bottle of wine he thought he was hiding perfectly, Leon and I were studying directions on the map while, Festus being Festus, was fast asleep beside me.
We waited for another hour, my eyelids began to close. Suddenly Martha's horse neighed really loudly, broke free from his nozzle and ran in front of us, Martha ran after it with Nelly behind her. The horse stopped suddenly, looked at Martha before being whisked away by the Roc
"NOOOOOOOOOO! PHIDELITY!!!" Martha screamed and ran towards the direction the horse was taken. Nelly held her back.
"LET ME GO! LET ME GO!" Martha screamed.
"I cannot let you go! I forgot to add this earlier; Roks like the taste of human flesh the most, rumor has it, that it plucks out the eyes of it's preys immediately after catching them, then proceeds to the other sense organs before finally tearing it's prey apart. When it sets his sight on its prey, it never lets go, it would follow you to the ends of the earth if it has to. I didn't add this while explaining earlier because I didn't want to scare you" Nelly responded. His explanation seemed to sink in as Martha stopped moving. Everyone ran to her side, trying to comfort her, but she was inconsolable.
"She had been with me forever, my parents bought her for me on my fifth birthday" she said amidst tears
"I'm sorry, you can have my horse" I told her.
"IT IS NOT THE SAME" she countered.
"I will kill that bird" she said lowly. She then stood up, and went to the other side of the tree, with Nelly tailing her. No one knew what to do anymore, after about forty-five minutes, we didn't hear anymore of Martha's sniffing. We tiptoed to where they were, Martha's head was resting on Nelly's shoulder, while Nelly's head resting on Martha's head. They were sound asleep. The rest of us looked at each other smiling.
The sun was setting already, we decided to call it a day. We set up camp, I got a fire going, and served everyone dried fruits. I went to wake Martha and Nelly up; their postures had changed; they were both lying next to each other with their faces inches apart. I woke them up, then stared at them smirking. Martha sat up, looked at me, looked at Nelly who was still sleeping beside her, she then shoved him away from her, "stay away from me!" she said, before walking towards the fire leaving behind a now awake and confused Nelly. We joined the tents, to form a big tent, because Martha insisted that we couldn't sleep separately in this forest. Nelly and Martha were chosen to keep guard first, because they had slept previously.
"Festus slept too" she grumbled. We all took a look at Festus, he was asleep already.
Augustus:
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