Seeking Forgiveness (Jellal x Reader)

Chapter 2

One Week Later

Humming, you casually stroll through the forest outside your village. Today you were picking berries, as a thank you to the elderly lady, that was letting you stay at her house. A few months ago you travelled here, with no money, food or a place to call home. She took you in and you have forever been grateful.

During your short stay you'd never been in the woods. But there was this desire to go, to be there today, so you ignored the superstitious villagers warning and went into the forest. It was supposed to be full of flesh eating monsters, but you hadn't encountered anything so far. In fact, the forest was overly peaceful, not even the birds disturbed the silence. Most people would take that as being eerie, but you thought that maybe the birds were superstitious too.

You used to pick berries a lot as a kid, so you knew what were and weren't poisonous. All you had to do was find some. Your small basket wasn't even slightly filled; it would be a bad gift to give the little old lady, no more than 20 berries at most.

"Excuse me," a young voice called behind you, you turned to the voice to see a young girl with pink hair and headphones. You smiled at her and she took it as a sign she could continue, "have you seen a man? He's wearing a cape and has blue hair?" Her eyes looked hopeful but you couldn't give her the news that she desperately wanted.

You shook your head, your (H/C) hair shaking into your face, watching as the hopeful look in her eyes turned to a hopeless look, "I'm sorry, I haven't. I can help you look if you want?"

This time, she smiles at you shaking her head, "oh no, it's fine really. I'm sure I'll find him soon!" Waving goodbye, the girl turns and runs away, leaving you confused. She looked too young to be running around the woods on her own. Forgetting your berry quest, you decided to run after the girl. What if she lost her dad? Or her brother?

"Hello," you call, "are you sure you don't need help?" Running in the direction you saw the girl heading, hoping to run into her soon. You ran in a straight line, looking out for any broken branches or foot prints to find there was no trace of the girl. After a while you slowed down, tired from running and confused as to how the girl disappeared.

"Hello," you call again, the trees started thinning out and you thought you had reached the town. Only you came to the bottom of a mountain. The village was close to the mountain, during the winter it was cold, but, it was protected in the summer and was a popular tourist destination thanks to the luscious hot springs. "Girl with the pink hair?" You shouted, cupping your hands around your mouth in an attempt to make your voice travel further, only that was a huge mistake.

As soon as your voice travelled, a band of white, furry monsters jumped down from the mountain. You recognised them from a book you were reading, a Vulcan. They were a group of Vulcans. It had a large, muscular top and strangely small legs, with a Pokka dot pattern covering its body. You knew they lived in mountains but you didn't know they lived in this mountain. You froze on the spot, but quickly decided that if you were nice the monsters, maybe they would leave you alone.

"Hello," you wave, gulping as the monster eyed you confused, "have you seen a girl?-"

You never got to finish your question, as the Vulcans broke down. The word 'girl' seemed to trigger something and then they realised a rather critical bit of information. You were a girl and standing there. Hearts formed in their eyes as they stared at you, and slowly started moving forward. One of them started to move faster than the other and you quickly had a band of Vulcans stampeding towards you as they shouted, "girl!"

Letting out a shriek, you turned, dropping your basket and running for your life, while the beasts behind you started begging for you to come back. Still tired from running after the girl earlier, you knew you could only keep running for so long. Sweat started to run down your forehead and the beasts seemed relentless.