Embedded Emerald in Gold fire

Life unknown - 2

Day after day Kara found nuts, fruits and plants to eat. Night after night she found a place to sleep, often accompanied by an animal or more, keeping her company and warm, keeping the loneliness from creeping back into her thoughts and heart. The moon grew and became smaller again, the leaves changed their colour and cold winds forced Kara to seek warmer places to sleep.

Soon her breath was visible in the morning and at night and not even a deer could keep her furless body from shivering in the cold. The plants she ate were harder to find each day, her stomach growling with hunger more and more often. The water from the spring was ice cold each time she stepped into it to wash herself and her hair was almost stale when wet.

Soon there were no fruits left for her to pick, the food from the bag long gone and she managed to only find small handfuls of nuts or mushrooms. She saw her arms getting smaller, could easily feel her own ribs and felt weaker every day. Her parents had not come yet and Kara knew she could not stay for much longer or else she would not survive. The winter and the snow it carried would arrive any day now and the small blanket was not enough to protect her from the cold even if she manage to find enough food.

Sitting in the ice-cold cave, looking at raindrops falling through the leaves outside Kara remembered the cosy fire they had had in the cabin back home. The flames would make lovely sounds, the heat warming the whole room while her mother and she would bake bread and make stew. Her father had come in with rain in his hair, logs of wood in his arms and a smile on his face. "My beautiful girl" he had always said, love so radiant in his eyes it brought tears to her own now. A small sob escaped her as her vision blurred and she remembered the flames eating away their cabin, their home.

Days later she found herself wondering through the forest, not paying attention as her feet carried her along a thin path she had found. As the trees thinned she looked up and saw smoke in the distance. Was something burning? She walked towards the smell of coal and ash and came to a halt at the edge of the forest. Never had she left the forest, never in her life. She kept staring at the village in front of her. It was so different to the village of the welodas. The houses were made of stone and not wood, pathways were covered in flat stones and there were almost no trees.

The village was not build in a clearing, but a large valley. Fields surrounded the collection of houses, they were empty now, the ground hard from the cold. Kara looked at the village with awe. Were humans living there? Were those the villages of creatures who captured welodas? Smoke coming out of holes in some roofs told Kara about small fires burning inside the houses, keeping the inside warm and cosy. She shivered, remembering evenings at home again. Her mother had lit a small fire place and the three of them had cuddled together with warm juice from sweet fruits when the days had been cold like this.

Tears threatened to spill as she remembered her parents, missing them more with each day that passed. "Hide yourself" her mother had said, "hide your eyes, ears and hair". Kara set down the bag and searched through a small pouch with many crystals and stones. She had to transform quite a few before finding what she had been searching for.

It took her all day to find the herbs she needed either in her pouch or in the forest. She mashed them and mixed them with water, using her magic to create a clear liquid out of the cloudy mixture. The elixir should help dull down her eyes to a cloudy green. She applied it and looked into the small river she was kneeling at. She smiled at her reflection when she saw it had worked and her eyes did no longer glow with gold. Spotting her sharp teeth she sighed and tried to keep in mind not to show them. She lit a small fire and used the ash to rub into her hair, hiding any red glow to give away her identity. At last she took the knife and cut her furry eyelashes to be short.