The Wicked Walk On Every Side

Chapter 16

Decaying leaves crunched beneath Aster's yellow converses as they walked towards the Forbidden Forest. It was a rather crisp November evening, and the wind was just a inch short or what could be considered 'howling'. Aster cinched their zip-up hoodie tighter around their body in an attempt to block out the cold.

The edge of the Forest was bathed in soft autumnal sunlight, highlighting the oranges and the yellows that painted the trees. With each passing minute that Aster walked down the path towards the forest, the spotlight of sunbeams slipped lower and lower, and by the time Aster set foot on the boundary of the forest, the sun had finally slipped behind the hill. A few tiny, twinkling stars had started to make their appearance in the darkening sky.

Aster hadn't particularly wanted to go down to the Forbidden Forest this late in the evening, and especially not alone, but these turn of events couldn't be helped.

Aster had left their work satchel (not to be confused with their school satchel), which was filled with important notes and pressed plant specimens from around the school grounds, just inside of the Forbidden Forest. If they were to leave it there overnight, all of their notes would be horribly smudged (possibly ruined) and their plant specimens would be damp (which would promote mold and fungus growth, and while Aster did love a good mold or fungus sample, they would prefer to not have them on their perfect plant specimens).

When they had realized where they had left their satchel, Aster had walked over to the Ravenclaw table to ask Wolfbane if he would accompany Aster to the forest, but it had been a no-go. Wolfbane disliked the dark exponentially more than Aster did, and adding a spooky forest to the mix was simply too much. Aster understood and respected Wolfbane's negative response, and had simply resolved to go on their own.

The cold gripped at Aster's bones as they finally set foot inside the forest boundary. Instantly, a curtain of darkness creeped in around Aster. They didn't like that one bit, they chose to ignore that creeping feeling and forge on.

As they continued on, the forest started to close in around them. The once clear path of compacted earth was now covered in waist-high ferns and grasses that swished with the movement of small animals scurrying below them. Aster felt what had to be a small rodent brush up against their ankle, and then continue past them. The branches on the trees hung lower and lower the further Aster went on until they had to crouch almost all the way down in the tall grass to get under the branches. At this point, Aster couldn't even begin to count how many spider webs they had had to brush out of their face. Aster heard a howl in the distance. They walked just a little bit quicker after that.

Aster honestly did not remember traveling this far into the forest earlier in the day, but then again everything looked different in the dark. It was almost as if the forest consciously rearranged itself during the night in order to confuse wayward travelers so that they would stay trapped in the forest forever.

A twig snapped sharply to the left of Aster, and they quickly turned their head to try and see what had caused the noise. Aster knew that centaurs and unicorns reside in the forest. Secretly, they were hoping that a centaur had made the noise so that Aster might not be so lonely on their journey. Centaurs were very intelligent, and they knew their way around the forest. Maybe one of them had seen Aster's bag? There was no such luck to be had, however, seeing as the branches as well as the darkness obscured Aster's view so much that they could barely see past the end of their nose.

Aster was never going to find their bag at this rate, however it was imperative that they did. That bag had over ten years worth of notes that Aster had handwritten, as well as illustrations of different plant specimens that Aster had spent countless hours perfecting. Quite literally, that bag was irreplaceable.