Stranger in the Woods

Chapter 4

Here is a box of tomatoes you can throw at me ok? I'm just going to take the time that you're reading through this chapter to use as a head start.  I'm a horrible person, I'm SOOOOO sorry this took so long.

As she lifted the lid, she was overwhelmed by the cedar smell that came out of the chest.  With the smell came a flood of memories.  Elethia gasped as they came back in a rush.  Her father taking her and her mother to the clearing, blindfolded, to show them the new hut he’d built for them in the woods.  Making her tree house with him when they still lived in town, the day they were driven out of town.  All the times she’d be exhausted from the magic her mother made her practice and he’d carry her to bed and tuck her in.   Elethia had loved her mother deeply, but she was a daddy’s girl through and through.  She’d made him teach her how to shoot a bow, throw knives, sword fight, track, leave no trail, and survival skills.  Her mother had disapproved because she didn’t see the point when you could do everything so much easier using magic.

What Elethia could never bring herself to tell her mother was that she didn’t like using magic for mundane tasks because it made her feel different from everyone else.  At school, the other kids liked it when she would lift them into the air or cause a breeze to come through class and blow the papers all over the room.  However, when her mother taught her how to make words appear on paper using magic, they resented her for it.  Why didn’t Elethia have to actually write, but they did?  Eventually, it got to the point where she stopped using magic in school at all.  These experiences led Elethia to shy away from using magic for everyday tasks, led to her wanting to be normal. 

 Her father had understood though.  He comforted her whenever she had had a particularly rough day at school or couldn’t perform a spell to her mother’s specifications.  Elethia’s mother had very much been the strict, teaching parent, while her father had been the comforting, fun parent.  There were times however, when her mother would let go and play with Elethia, and those were the days she lived for.  Elethia knew both of her parents loved her though, her mother had more than proved it….

 Elethia shook herself out of her trip down memory lane and shoved the memories of her parents to the back of her mind.  She had a lot to do, and not a lot of time to do everything.  Gently, lovingly, she pulled out two pairs of her father’s trousers, four tunics, and undergarments.  Killian still had his boots, but she wasn’t sure how much clothing he had with him, she hadn’t seen a bag in the clearing.  What had he been doing in the clearing?  What quarrel could he of all people, have with bandits?  She made a mental note to try and broach the subject with him.  Something told Elethia getting information out of Killian would be rather difficult.  He didn’t seem the type to open up about himself or anything for that matter. 

 While her mind had been mulling all this over, Elethia had rolled her father’s clothes up tightly and put them in the saddlebag with her clothes.  Her father had been taller than Killian, but Killian was more muscled than her father, so hopefully the clothes would fit.  A large yawn escaped her mouth, and she realized just how tired she was.  All that was left to pack was emergency potions and weapons.   Crossing over to the potion cabinet, she wearily took out a numbing, blood loss, memory erasing, and miracle potion.  Those were the only ones she could think of that weren’t extremely volatile and would prove useful on their journey.  Elethia realized she was packing for much more than a simple retrieval trip into the woods for weapons.  Something deep in her gut told her this was going to become quite the expedition.  As her mother always said, ‘Trust your gut, if you’re ever unsure of anything, even a person’s true identity, trust your gut.  A sorceress’s gut never leads her astray.’  Elethia counted that as the single most important thing her mother had ever said to her regarding sorcery.