Friday, January 21, 2022

Quest Calendar 4: Into the Woods

Fruitsday, Winterwary 21

As I surveyed the surrounding area, I determined that whether playing or taken, the place with the greatest probability of finding the children was the nearby forest. The woods were thick and dark as I searched around in them. The darker the woods became, the more they felt like a metaphor for my own mind. As I searched for the children, a task that increasingly seemed to be in vain, it felt like searching for my memories, a potentially equally useless task.

It became evident to me that I had failed, and that I was not going to find the children. But an odd feeling crept over me as I was about to give up. I didn't have to fail. I had a feeling that somehow I could tip the odds back in my favor. I cast my hand in a swinging motion like how one would roll dice. I didn't know how I knew to do this, but it felt remarkably familiar. For but a moment, the forest around me seemed to glow and shift in a yellow glow. Then it was gone, and it seemed as though I were a few paces back from where I had been when I'd had the odd thought and feeling.

Near me, on the ground, I saw a slight glimmer, shining in the merest ray of sunlight that somehow made its way through the tangled branches above. I knelt to investigate the out of place shimmer, and found a gold coin on the ground.

"Can never have enough of these," I muttered, slipping it into my coin pouch. Near the footprint, on the ground, was a footprint. A child's footprint. I was on the right track at last. But the child's footprint wasn't the only footprint on the ground. More recent than that are the footprints of wolves. I knew I would have to be ready for a potential ambush from these lupine threats.

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