Guardian of Elements

Chapter 17 - Interlude

Back in Kate's forest, one calm night was passing after another. The Guardian's absence remained unnoticed for some time. Animals continued their daily lives without being aware that their protector was gone. But the Guardian's valley wasn't abandoned. As every midnight, a soul came there.

A white, cat-resembling spirit looked around herself. Thin rain was watering the land decently. The valley was calm and undisturbed. She stretched her legs and went outside to check on the forest.

When she began going out like this, many animals were afraid of her. Although they couldn't see her, the feeling of the presence of someone from the other side was frightening them. At first, she was sad about it. In life, she loved to interact with them, but now, they were avoiding her. But she got used to it. Her duty wasn't to befriend the animals that used to be her friends long ago, but to protect the forest from threats in Kate's absence.

Not that it was very needed. The forest of Elements was farthest from the Guardian of Hearts' domain, and the last time any humans were living here was before all this began.

All this... She was in hiding since the events three years ago. It wasn't easy, to be so near to her closest one and couldn't show herself. But she knew it was the right way. Even if it would be possible for her to appear to Kate here, she knew that if she did, Kate wouldn't let the past rest. At least she could watch over her during the day, and over her domain during the night.

She arrived at a small pond. She continued along a small stream that coming out of it, so quiet and calm. As a spirit, she could see the world in a different way. She felt emotions of other animals, she could tell the age of a tree or origin of a rock in the water. Some benefits of being a spirit, came to her mind as often, but only to cover her sorrow.

Her mind was slowly drifting away as she was walking through drenched moss. Although her legs were moving, they weren't touching the ground, and even if they would, she couldn't feel the cold moss under her feet. She was unable to touch anything, to feel wind ruffling her fur, or rain falling through her. She never had, since...

"Enough," she told herself. Her lips didn't move when she spoke, and her voice sounded heavenly, but here, it was a voice that only spirits could hear.

She had to stop thinking, stop spiraling down into depression. She jumped forward several times and then leapt high up. As she was ascending, her body lost its shape and transformed into a white ball of shimmering light. Like this, she could travel much faster and her mind almost left the place, staying only enough to sense her surroundings.

She flew through the branches of treetops and continued up against gravity, which had no longer any hold of her. This was the only real joy she had in the afterlife: freedom. Freedom of soaring through the skies like a bird, going wherever she wanted. But right now, she had a job here. She couldn't allow herself to get distracted like that.

She stopped her ascension high above the trees and regained her corporeal form. From here, she could see every part of the forest that used to be her home, all the way to the ocean surrounding it from all sides except east. The night was dark, but that wasn't bothering her. Even from this height, she could see individual leaves of the trees below her or straws of grass on the ground.

She looked down, at the river that was springing in northeast as a little stream and running south, getting wider, and then flowing into the ocean at the southern shore. She morphed into a wisp again and darted down, like a white comet falling from the sky, and stopped right above the spring. Then, as a cat again, she began sprinting above the water surface at great speed.

When she was about a quarter of the river's length to its end, she looked to the right. Through the trees, she could see the great cliff that was pointing to the sky. She knew what was under it. And she had sworn she would never return to that place.

Instead, she left the river and turned left, slowing down a bit. Some time later, she arrived at the border with the Guardian of Wisdom's fields. She hoped that her old friend was fine. She hasn't seen him for three years. If only things would turn out differently that day.

She turned back to finish her patrol, but then, she heard the call of her own Guardian.

"Andúril, I summon thee."