RO travel thread.
Titmouse couldn't remember the world becoming shades of red and gold, he was far too young. He had been born in a time where winter still had a firm grip, and from there everything seemed to get easier. Life bloomed, snow melted, colors shined bright. Now though, it was like the world was devastated by some unseen sickness; the trees had transitioned from bright and lively to dull, cracked, dry, and shades of brown. The leaves collected everywhere, stinking up every inch of everything, and Titmouse was easily convinced that autumn was his least favorite season. He didn't like the smells. The colors seemed wrong to him. Death appeared everywhere.
Of course, he glossed over most of this stuff as he marched; his assumptions and decisions were interalized, with nobody to talk to, and soon forgotten. The boy still carried the skull with him, content and amused. Occasionally he'd toss it in the air - watch it flip, catch it again - sometimes it would be just out of his reach and he'd scramble after it, but he'd always find it nestled among piles of leaves without a single tooth missing.
He played as he travelled, keeping himself in good spirits for as long as he could. Hunger was prevalent but Titmouse knew he'd be free of it soon. Either he'd find something to eat, or he could munch on the cat skull for a while. Maybe he'd discover Liffey somewhere and they could go for a hunt? But this place he now found himself - a grove of strange trees and darkness - it was so far from familiar that Titmouse soon forgot about her. He threw the skull up, and felt the satisfying tooth on bone feeling as he caught it again, and again.
And then he missed it, and it went tumbling. The boy didn't race after it as frantically as he had hours ago, but he pursued all the same - in to the dark, through clusters of shadow and detritus, and then he saw the skull: illuminated as if by stars, but they moved like a flock of birds out of the way of the tumbling reliquary. With a burst of energy the glen was filled with many lights spilling from the recesses of a fallen log, where the skull had come to rest. Titmouse lingered back for a few seconds to watch the lights - he was mystified - and when they died out, remembered the skull which had led him here.
As soon as the boy discovered the fallen log and begun to wedge his sharp-shouldered profile inside to grab at the skull, he felt a sudden wave of sleepiness overtake him. The boy's body blocked the light as he got closer and closer to the prize he so coveted, and before he could grasp it or try to pull it out from the log's depths, Tit was stretched out and asleep. He'd make up ground in the morning.
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