« Don't need to tell you but your arrow's made of stars,
and the shot that you've made punched it straight into my heart.
It's a little ignorant but everybody's saying that forever is the place
where you and I were made. »
Started: November, 2020
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[ The woman didn't move, she chose to stay seated until she finished her meal and a little bit after as well, looking at the moths that were eating away the wood on the table. ]
The witcher and the bard left town not long after like they said they would, without saying goodbye. Darrene hadn't expected them to maintain those kinds of formalities. She didn't change her mind and ended up finding a sweet old couple who let her stay in their house, they said, for as long as she needed.
The fear of the imminent coming of the bandits was constantly flooding her mind. Every loud noise of the hooves of any animal would make the hairs on the back of her neck stand like the spikes of a hedgehog, her heart picking up its pace, and drop whatever she was doing to make sure she wasn't in danger.
Darrene stocked up on herbs and carved some more arrows. She worked for the old couple she lived with, and helped around so she could get a bit of money for when she would need it. Better to be safe than sorry, she kept a constant reminder of that.
The couple told her tales while they dined together, she found them ordinary, boring, the same thing over and over. They had never left the small town, they didn't know much about what was happening outside of it; as if they were living in a small bubble that no one could burst. She decided not to do it either, if they had a lot of time left or little, she decided it was better for them to stay oblivious.
The day they finally came, it was nighttime. The sun had set perhaps an hour before and Darrene was asleep. It usually took her a long time to fall asleep, but strangely enough, not that day. The hooves of the horses woke her up, both the sound and the shaking of the ground while they rushed past the house. She quickly grabbed the knife she hid under her pillow and stood up. She had picked up the bad habit of sleeping with her daytime clothes in case the bandits came in the middle of the night, so she wouldn't have to worry about comfort while riding her horse or getting cold or sick due to being out while it was still dark. She also kept a bag with all the things she needed if she had to flee fast.
So that's what she did; as soon as she was startled awake, she grabbed her bag and her bow and arrows and threw them onto her back, putting her knife on its scabbard. She walked out of her room and peeked into the old couple's room, their door half opened. They were still asleep and didn't show any signs of waking up anytime soon; they looked peaceful, with no worries on their minds. Darrene left the house without a second thought. Her horse Eben was startled by the bandits as well, nervously moving from side to side, trying to unleash the rope that tied him to a tree. He thankfully wasn't making too much noise and Darrene calmed him down in no time, quickly freeing him of the rope, and jumped to mount him. She had to ride him bareback, she had no time to saddle him.
Darrene held onto the mane of the horse, tilting her body forward while her eyes didn't adjust to the dark, that way she wouldn't get hit by a branch or any flying animal. The forest was so dark she thought that they might crash into a tree, but somehow they didn't. She didn't look back but the lack of light and the silence made it clear that she had left the town far back.
The next thing she noticed when her eyes finally adjusted to the lack of light was the shift in the terrain below her. Eben's hooves weren't on solid ground, they were sinking. The horse had stopped on its own, Darrene kept her strong hold on his mane but hadn't made any motion to make him halt. The woman lifted her body and her head from the back of her horse, trying to look around. A sudden movement scared the horse, driving him to neigh loudly and stand on his two back legs, throwing Darrene off. The water was dense, and when she put a hand on the ground to help her get up, it sank the same way her horse's hooves had done just seconds ago. After some effort and some slips, she finally got up, coughing up dirty water. She cleaned the dirt from her hands on her dress to rub the water out of her eyes. She felt the water move again, this time a creature erupting from it. She couldn't get a good look at it, too worried about dodging when one of its legs came down directly at her, barely missing her. She unsheathed her dagger and tried to stay still in the distrustful terrain; when another of the creature's legs came down, sinking into her dress and dragging her underwater. Darrene couldn't do more than plunge her dagger into its leg while trying to break free from its grasp.
