3rd day of Sundered Rise, Season of Searing, Year 57 of Age of Steel
[indent=20]The darkness wasn’t the most unsettling part. It was the sounds. The sounds he couldn’t see because he denied himself the light. He had the solution right at his fingertips always.
[indent=20]Open your eyes. But he wouldn’t. And the sounds around him rustled, meaning nothing and everything at the same time. He didn’t know.
[indent=20]Open them! His mind screamed as the sounds wouldn’t stop. His eyelids pressed together even tighter.
[indent=20]Focus, he thought, pushing through the fear pleading with his sense. The tree offer support as Arlen pressed further into it. And the whishing didn’t stop.
[indent=20]Something is here. The fabric of his pants balled between his fingers.
[indent=20]I swear. Something… His heart sped up and he felt the sweat starting to grace his skin. I Arlen wasn’t going to listen to fear the easy way, then fear was hell-bent on forcing its way into Arlen’s mind.
[indent=20]Something… His eyes flew open. His chest swelled. His gaze darted everywhere.
[indent=20]Any minute. Any minute now!
[indent=20]Trees.
[indent=20]Ground.
[indent=20]Undergrowth.
[indent=20]Nothing moved but the leaves up in the trees’ crown and around him in the bushes. Nothing moved but the nature in its rhythm that Arlen had not yet understood.
[indent=20]Then he felt the culprit. It pressed against his skin with determination. It was saying - ‘I am here, stupid’. The breeze climbed up his heated body.
[indent=20]‘I am right here’. It whispered in his ear before it wrapped around the tree and continued on its merry journey. Arlen would have sworn that it was laughing at him as it went. Instead, he let out a shaky breath, his fingers releasing the fabric in their grasp. It was left crumpled but who cared. He was still alive.
[indent=20]Survival instinct and intuition, the black-haired man recalled someone from the tribe say once. Whether it was in the context of fighting, hunting or within a story told, Arlen couldn’t quite recall. Yet, those words now resurfaced in his mind as though they were to become the core of his journey in the forest.
[indent=20]“Survival.” His hand slipped from his knee, regarding the nature with eyes that were growing accustomed to her variety. “And intuition.” The hilt of the anelace he brought from the weapon maker fit into his palm. It was the only weapon he brought, choosing to travel light.
[indent=20]“Survival,” he said again, squeezing the hilt before letting go.
[indent=20]With the sun high in the sky Arlen saw fairly well in the forest. Perhaps things at a greater distance were harder to recognize but then anyone would struggle. Or so he believed. He had not seen any animal yet, though noticed a few marks of them passing by. A heap of poop here, a broken twig there. Yet, he was not the only one in the woods. That was for sure.
[indent=20]“Time to move on.” With resolution, Arlen got up. He spent too long in this place not sitting still. Whatever animal was planning to pass by probably changed its mind at the smell of Arlen and the sound of his fretting.
[indent=20]He wasn’t in the forest to hunt. No, he was too underequipped for that. But he needed animals to move around him so he could recognize them. Then, when hunting in a dimmer setting, he wouldn’t need to rely as much on his sight or light as he did now. After all, something of what Fow threw at him during their last year’s hunt together struck a chord with Arlen.
[indent=20]The man spent the whole day moving from place to place, trying to get used to the sounds of nature when there was no one to tell him what they mean. And having no one tell him this made the time pass incredibly fast for he found himself lost and in awe, sometimes forgetting his purpose of being in the Wild King’s Forge.
[indent=20]By the time he relocated for the umpteenth time, Arlen recognized the difference between the tree crowns whispering above him, the undergrowth answering around him and the sound of his footsteps on the forest floor underneath.
[indent=20]‘Thanks’ to his eyesight, he also never strayed too far from his camp. Instead, he was moving around it in wider and wider circles, always making sure that had the makeshift signpost insight - his change of red silk clothes tied to and hanging from a low branch. Sure, the red did not mesh well with the greens and browns and that’s what he wanted.
