Esk Tales {TWWM-ARPG Writings Collection}

Shifting Seasons- Pruning Pumpkins

- Shifting Seasons Event -
Pruning Pumpkins
{Morrigan & Mara}

.:+:.

This place was always so, so quiet when she came... Uncharacteristically quiet, when compared with Mara's own plot of land full of graves, and trees and winding paths through the rows. This place was so quiet and so empty it was borderline eerie- but it was exactly that quiet and emptiness that she was seeking now.

Fall and the days surrounding the end of the October month always brought with it and increase in the humans tramping through her graveyard, and then Halloween night was about ten times worse than that. It had been hard work continually chasing off the unwanted trespassers and instilling fright in any that dared to walk among the graves late at night- and she was diligent with it, and persistent- but it was tiring still and she needed a break from constantly looking for new souls to scare. So now she was wanting for the eerie silence of Morrigan's Boundary and the lack of humans (or really any living thing at all) just for a bit of respite.

When she got there it was quiet as always, the sun sinking slowly into the distant horizon and the shadows deepening among the trees and the overgrown trails and tombstones. There was little stirring in the fallen leaves and brittle vines woven among the stones, not even mice- what little she heard was born of the slight breeze winding slowly through the trees.

Mara picked her way through the leaf-ridden paths and winding routes through the graves, sticking to the shadows where she could and on the lookout the whole way through. She was looking for any glimpse of the esk who called this place home, a black-furred tail from the corner of her eye, or the scrape of claws over gravel..... Or even the sensation of dark eyes on her back from somewhere unseen.

But several minutes of walking in solitude through the immensity of the cemetery didn't earn her any sign of Morrigan at all. There was no hint of her in the front half near the gates, nor was she wandering along the walls or overgrown sections in the far corners. There wasn't even any faint paw prints dug into the damp earth in any of the normal routes Mara knew Morrigan to take.... And as she headed deeper inside, she still saw no sign or Morrigan out and about as she was used to.

Mara paused at a fork in the rows, debating for half a moment if she would head in toward the furthest portions of the land or veer away from the defined paths and down toward the portion Morrigan had settled her 'den' in. She had never known Morrigan to stay near the makeshift 'den' unless it was particularly terrible weather, and today certainly did not fit the bill.... But trying to find her in the labyrinth that was this place wasn't all that appealing, lest she get lost.

Her tail twitched behind her a little haughtily, before turning left and trudging off the more defined paths and into the thick of the overgrowth and reach of the surrounding woods.

As she grew closer to the 'den' and the surrounding pumpkin patch growing wild there, the more noise there seemed to be in this usually noiseless place. There were creatures darting in and out of the piles of leaves, and over and under crumbling headstones halfway buried in earth and moldy vegetation. And in the trees birds were hopping from limb to limb, chittering and squawking and bursting in.... Anticipation...?

Mara cast them a cautious look and moved a bit quicker, trotting over the obstacles in the way and moving from shadow to shadow where possible.

She climbed the last rise before the land sloped down a bit, the gravestones here all toppled over and more piles of mishapen stone than anything- and everything covered in a thick blanket of thick green vines, and bright orange pumpkins scattered everywhere.