There are laws we must obey, certain ways this story goes... [Closed: New Arrivals]
Waking up in the Woods for the first time is never a pleasant experience, but this time may be just a bit more unpleasant than most. The tangled branches overhead block out the sky, and most of the light - it could be midnight or high noon, but this part of the wood doesn't seem like it would notice the difference either way. It's bitterly cold
( Read more... )
That's not it at all, said her Second Thoughts. It was over long before now. You knew that. This something different, something wrong.
Not one to ignore her own Second Thoughts, Tiffany rubbed her eyes and sat up, brushing the detrius of the forest floor off her dress, before she straightened herself, and her hat, and surveyed the group.
"Well," she said. "This isn't the Chalk." There was no Chalk beneath her feet, no flint further still. No, it was cold and it was wrong and it was-- she was certain-- that this was part of the Faerie world, some place not of her own.
How she'd gotten there, she wasn't sure. But she had to find a way home, post haste. There was a school to raise, and Preston would need help. She went looking for life, picking up, as she went long, small stones, twigs, and leaves, and a bug if she could find one. She might need a shamble soon enough, to tell her more about where she was, and where she might need to go.
Reply
Then she wakes up on the leaf-covered ground of a forest, with a root sticking in her ribs, and very cold. It's no colder than being dead, but it feels different, as she comes to, and then she's struck by the realisation that... there's a root sticking in her ribs.
She sits bolt upright, and groans as her head decides to protest this sudden movement pressing the heels of her hands to her forehead for a moment to let it clear before taking stock of her situation.
She's in a forest, that much she knew. It's very cold, as evidenced by a thin coating of frost everywhere. There are other people, some conscious, some not, scattered around in her general vicinity. And she's in her prom dress. Her sleeveless, thin prom dress. And judging by the fact that her breath is clouding in front of her face and her body's already shivering without any conscious decision on her part, she's alive as well. Alive with no coat, in a place she doesn't recognize.
"Oh great," she mutters to herself, teeth chattering. "Did Halloween come early this year?"
She pushes herself to her feet - despite the shivering, the cold isn't bothering her as much as it would if she hadn't grown accustomed to the constant cold of death - and glances around at the scattered people, brushing pine needles from her dress and hair as she does so. One girl calmly collecting little bits of the forest catches her eye, and Rose calls out, hoping that the relative calm might mean a familiarity with where they are.
"H-hey, do you know where we are?"
Reply
That is probably not the answer that Rose wanted, however.
"I am Tiffany Aching, Witch of the Chalk," she added. "And this is not the first time I have been in Faerie. For now, please follow simple rules if you wish to extend your life, miss: eat nothing you're offered by anyone you don't know -- myself included -- and don't accept any gifts. If it's too good to be true, it probably is, and you might want to run away from it."
Reply
Rose doesn't bother to hide her dubiousness at that suggestion, but... does it really make any less sense than her suddenly being alive instead of a dead girl on the edge of the Atlantic Highway?
And this Witch - not a routewitch, but Rose doesn't pretend to know everything about the supernatural and the Twilight, so maybe she is a witch - seems sensible enough. Her advice isn't bad, if they really are in a place like the 'Faerie' of old myths.
"That'll be a change," Rose murmurs dryly to herself at the mention of not eating anything offered by a stranger. She smiles a little and tries not to let her teeth chatter when she talks. "I'm Rose. I don't have a fancy title or anything."
Reply
Finally, a beetle. Cold, miserable, under the earth, sleeping. It is not going to appreciate being woken up, nor worked into the shamble, but it must have something living -- though it shan't be hurt.
She reached up to take out one of her hatpins, and slid it into the shamble-- it passed through the bug as it it were nothing, and -- she focused, for a moment, the mess cradled in her hands.
And then it abruptly flew apart, the beetle unfolding it's wings and flying away.
"That is not what I expected," she says after a moment. "We must be deep within Faerie."
Reply
She watches Tiffany curiously - she's never seen anything like this, and she's not really sure what it's supposed to do. She's not close enough to see the hatpin pass through the bug, but when the shamble flew apart, Rose yelps involuntarily, and jumps back a pace or two.
"What was it supposed to do?" Rose asks, a bit bewildered. Far be it from her to assume a clump of various forest bits can't be used to work some sort of magic, but damned if she knows what it's good for. She knows the ghost roads and their twilight, not faeries and witches with hatpins.
Reply
She rose then, dusting her hands off on her dress, and gives a look over the landscape. "We should keep moving," she finally said. "Only prey sits and waits to die."
Tiffany has no intention of being prey.
Reply
Which is stupid. Tiffany's right, about moving, despite the prospect of potentially getting more lost in this freezing forest. The longer people wait here, the more likely that whatever strange noises she hears in the woods are going to pounce on the easy pray scattered around this area, and if she's here, she'll likely get pounced, too. It's not like she's in particularly good shape, if this is anything like the dreaded Halloween hunts.
But Rose is, unfortunately, a bit of a hero-type from time to time. Much to her chagrin. She can't just leave these people to be potentially mauled...
Reply
Moving to go kick a few people and get them upright and moving in a group, certainly. That'd be the safest option, providing they're not like Roland, or worse, the little man who LOVED being in Faerie because his world had changed so much, or simply like Roland-- to afraid to move.
Reply
She would kill for a burger right about now.
Reply
Leave a comment