Forever Green

~ 47 ~ In Fog and Thunder

The day had started out pleasantly enough, bringing with it a thick fog that rose up from the valley and brushed a dewy freshness against Lenesa's face. She wiped the moisture from her skin as she hurried through the trees, shoes crunching over twigs and sending pebbles skittering away across the forest floor.

"Audeste! Ralios!" she called out, but was only met with the shifting mist and a distant laughter that echoed against the trunks of the pines around her. Lenesa spun, trying to determine the direction it came from, but the sounds faded until the only noise left was the soft creaking of branches overhead.

Lenesa's breath came out in ghostly puffs that shone in the blueish-white glow of the newly-bonded wisp beside her. After a moment of indecision, the young witch started forward again, determined to win the game they were playing. The others might be ahead of her, but she had a better understanding of plants, and could use that to her advantage in finding a silver toadstool first.

The wisp followed behind her, making a small sound that tripped upward with a questioning lilt at the end.

"This way," Lenesa replied in a voice just as low, her gaze alert as she rushed over to inspect a fallen log, then a lichen-covered rock. The mist swirled with each step she took, drawing back a few paces only to be disturbed again moments later.

As Lenesa continued her search, the looming shape of an old tree gradually became visible through the fog, tall and with a dark hollow at the base of its wide trunk. The air here was heavy with the smell of wet wood and dark moss, and the ground looked as though it had been undisturbed for quite some time.

"There!" Lenesa pointed at the hollow, feeling a thrill run through her at the discovery. "There's bound to be one in there!"

She picked up her pace, encouraged by the pale light now visibly stretching up from the darkness at the base of the tree like reversed shafts of moonlight. When she was close enough, Lenesa crouched down, heedless of what her great aunt would say about dirtying her clothes, and frowned into the gloom.

"I can't see it," she said at last. Even her wisp's light wasn't enough to see all the way down. Lenesa took a deep breath and reached her hand into the hollow, eventually lowering onto her stomach to stretch her arm as far as it could go. Her cheek pressed into the cold, damp earth, while her fingers scrabbled on loose soil and threadlike roots. Any moment now, and she would have it—

A scream pierced the air, startling a crow out of its perch in a nearby tree. Lenesa jolted upright, all thoughts of the competition forgotten as she looked around for the source of the noise. No matter how much she wished it to be, it hadn't sounded like a playful shriek of surprise.

"Audeste?" she shouted, but her voice was swallowed up by the fog.

Lenesa scrambled to her feet, heart pounding, and tried again. This time, she cupped her hands around her mouth to amplify her voice.

"Ralios?

The only answer was the disgruntled cawing of the startled crow, growing ever fainter as the bird flew away. Lenesa worried her bottom lip with her teeth, wondering what had happened. Had one of the twins sprained an ankle, or broken a bone? She should help heal the injury, but she hadn't managed to reach the toadstool yet, and might never find her way back to it if she left now.

The next scream made the decision for her.  This time, it was more than just a mixture of surprise and pain—the sound cut through the air like the violent rush of a blade, full of grief and rage. Lenesa's eyes widened. This wasn't just an injury. This was something much more dangerous.