As Dark as the Forest

Chapter 8

Ori

Ori's favorite part of the city had always been the market district. Rich with the culture of merchants and traders from all walks of life - the market district had so many colorful sights and sounds. Built on the banks of the Aragain River, the merchant vessels could load and unload their boats immediately after being granted passage into the city.

One of these vessels would take Ori, Pit, and Flor out of the city in two day's time. Pit had explained, that they'd make stops along the way before setting off on foot for the last leg of their journey to the Quercian Forest.

For now, Ori was determined to get back to the Nest. Slinking through the Market District in cat form gave her a different perspective. In cat form, she didn't wrinkle her nose as she passed by the fishermen's stalls. Instead they smelled good. She stopped to beg for a bite to eat and was thrilled when one of the fisherman obliged her, by tossing a fish her way.

"That's a good kitty," He crooned at her.

As Ori lept away with her spoils, she heard his wife chide, "Don't feed the city cats! They'll get too lazy to catch vermin if they can come to you for free handouts and a full stomach!"

The sky was grey with the threat of rain, and she hoped it would hold off long enough that she wouldn't have to skulk through a downpour and weave in and out of puddles.

Ori was nearly to the back door of The Nest when the first big fat drops began to fall. As a human, Ori liked rainy days just fine. The gloom suited her. Getting her fur wet as a cat didn't much appeal to her though.

Ori would need to find a private place to change herself into a mouse. It was the only way she would be able to get into her room to get the things she needed. It would have been simpler to travel in mouse form the entire time - and less of a risk on her magic reserves - but traveling across the city as a predator was much safer than traveling as prey. Part of the art of shifting was being tactful about what one shifted into and when. If she died as a cat's meal in mouse form, she'd be quite dead in human form too - though there wouldn't be a body to recover.

Ori hid behind a stack of empty wine barrels that was kept behind the building to return to the wine merchant. She shifted into a mouse, and took stock of her current magic reserves. Early on she had learned meditation techniques as a way to feel for her magic. Her reserves were lower than they had ever been outside of a controlled training situation with Asher. She was sure she had enough remaining to change into a human, get what she needed, and then shift back to a mouse - but she might have to make the journey back as a mouse unless she could find a safe place to sleep it off until she had the energy to shift to a cat or crow again.

Ori tried not to let the anxiety get to her. She'd cross that bridge when she came to it - in mouse-form if need be.

****

The smells of the kitchen were alluring, and Ori wished that she could sit down at the table with Cook just one more time before she left this place. She didn't know how long she would be out of the city - possibly forever if the situation with Remo was never resolved. And she certainly wouldn't be returning to The Nest once she left it, even if she did return to the city.

Ori made it to her room without a problem, though her little mouse-heart was beating rapidly. She'd had a run in with one of the cats that roamed The Nest - it's job to catch vermin like her current self, but she'd been able to escape by squeezing herself through a small hole in the wall.

Ori paused before scurrying under the closed door to her mother's suite. Partly to make sure that her mother was not waiting on the other side. And partly because she was afraid of what she might find once she entered her bedroom. Had Remo and her mother trashed it, looking for clues? Had they already wiped it clean of her, and repurposed it into something else, as if she had never existed? Somehow that seemed worse than if they had simply turned it upside down.

Once safely inside, she scurried quickly to the closed door of her own room. People normally didn't see mice anyway - they moved in a blur of speed, there and gone before they even registered that something had moved.

Ori stood as a human again, and moved a chair to block the door so that she would have time to get away if need be. Her room did not seem to be in any state of disarray. In fact, it seemed wholly untouched. Unexpected - but then again, the instance with Sylvonna where Remo had acted so rashly had been a rarity for him. Ori swallowed back the bile that rose in her throat at the memory of that moment when she had watched the life drain from the Quercian's eyes.

Get ahold of yourself. Get what you need, and go.

Ori took a deep breath and went to her desk. She snached up her leatherbound journal - the one that she had turned into a quick reference-guide of sorts, for nearly every creature she had studied to some degree. She also snatched up a charcoal pencil, and a set of wax coloring tools, shoving them hastily into her pack. She could purchase a new empty sketchpad, but she had a half used one here that she might as well use the remainder of.

Ori scooped up articles of clothing, loose coins, pawned jewelry, a lock-pick, and various other items and tucked them into compartments in her satchel and pants. She put on her favorite pair of gloves, a dark hat she used to hide from the sun, and belted a dagger and a set of throwing knives to her waist. With a deep sigh, she glanced around the dark room one last time, wishing she could take her artwork with her to decorate the walls of wherever she ended up permanently. With a pang, Ori wondered if she would ever end up anywhere permanently, or if she was now cursed to have a life on the run - to wander forever from place to place, never really having a home.

Ori removed the chair from the door - best not to make it obvious that she had been here at all - and heard someone enter the outer room. She froze, listening.

"You drove her away," She heard her mother hiss. "What did you expect to happen? That she would happily go along with your plan to kill someone? She's never done anything like that. You raised her to be a spy, not an assassin."

"It was the only way to get those stones." Ori heard Remo rebuke, voice low. "They only allow royal blooded Quercians to access them."

"There are other ways of convincing people to do what you want," said Isyrria. "I would know."

"And you think she would do that?" Remo laughed.

Ori felt anger for her mother. Remo had never made that kind of comment on sex work. He'd always been supportive. Afterall, he was making money off of it.

"Our daughter is too wholesome for that. She's too wholesome for all of this. I misjudged her."

Our daughter. So now he was going to lay claim to Ori? Now that she was gone? For years Ori had wished that Remo would acknowledge her as his own. It was ironic that the bastard-born son of a royal who had made it his life goal to rise from that abandonment and lack of acknowledgement had refused to label Ori as his own up until now. Now that she wanted nothing to do with him...

It was because he wanted ownership. In his eyes, she had been provided with everything she needed to succeed under him. And then she had failed his final test.

She heard someone approaching her door, and in a panic transformed back into mouse form.

Everything became blurred and so heavy. Her small mouse body, usually nimble and quick felt as though it was moving through sludge. Her little mouse eyes could barely be kept open. Perhaps it won't hurt to sleep, just for a short time. Ori thought, as she buried herself under a pile of blankets on the floor beside her bed.

Ori had overestimated her magical reserves.