Blackfeather Woods stage 3: bargaining

His running ended when the last of his energy was expended. Collapsing beneath the black spires of trees as a light snow began to fall; empty trees, the forest was soundless around him. A void. All he could hear now was the pounding of his racing pulse and he was lulled in to a stupor.

When he came-to again, Titmouse opened his eye and stared at the white. It was everywhere! The trees weren't black any longer, they stood as if carved of ice, and shining, while the ground was glimmering static. It felt almost peaceful here. It was wrong, though - he knew it as immediately as anything else. As he lifts his head and tries to rise, a heavy force restrains him; a taloned bear paw pins him down. Each digit reaching around a part of his body, hooked and black like a raven's claw, sinking in to the white. He tries to rise again, again, again! Paralyzed, somehow awake and not.

He cries. The only sound in this empty place is the shuddering of many winged things. He is certain they are here, that revenge must be taken. He's given an eye, a voice, a life, a future — but there's always more, always something to be pulled loose and offered up. Titmouse squeezes his eye shut as the feeling persists, crushing weight upon his lungs and then the cough of a raven's call.

He wakes, suddenly, with a punch and kick to the air and a freedom to his body; the world is normal again (or as normal as his mind can make it); and while he does feel watched, the white is gone.

She took the scenic route around the mountains, then stopped for a drink at Otter Creek as she tried to decide where to head next. Towhee felt pulled westward, toward the copse. They needed her the most. But she looked to the north, considering. She could return to The Heartwood. It was aptly named, resting more or less in the center of everything.

A cloud of blackbirds winged by overhead, turning Towhee’s attention west again. She slunk along the bank of the stream, ears pulling backward as she approached the edge of Blackfeather Woods. In all these years, had she ever ventured into them after that day? Aside from one other foray near its borders which she only barely remembered, Towhee didn’t think so.

On nothing but a whim, she ventured forth, orange eyes narrowing as she prowled through the forest like a tigress.

He rolled from his side to his chest, splaying his forelegs through the leaf-litter as if he'd stumbled upon a dragon's hoard and before him was a pile of gold; he burrowed his face in to the pile as it collected between his forelimbs and then, feeling claustrophobic, loosed a cough and lifted free. Bits of foliage and detritus clung to the rats nest of his chest fur, his face, his shoulders. He tripped a little bit and almost face-planted in to it again, and with teetering steps he righted himself.

All the commotion drew the attention of one raven, two; maybe more that went unseen among the trees. They croaked to one-another. One took off, its reaching wings barely making a sound as they sliced the air. Further afield there came a reply-call and Titmouse turned a pointed look towards the origin. It was at this point he thought he saw a figure walking between the trees.

Tall, and dark, with broad shoulders — and a spark of recognition from the scent, somehow. As he mentally scrambled to find a name for that scent, the connection faded and he outright forgot the initial feeling of recognition. He saw the shape again further along among the trees, although he hadn't moved; to Titmouse the figure was in one spot and then his vision stuttered, and they were further to his left, then further again, almost like they were walking a circle around him; rotoscoped.

A low pleading whine emerged from him — not that he was aware he was making the sound himself.

This place gave her the creeps, even after all this time. Towhee shuddered, hastening her step a little as she bisected the heart of the woods. The tip of her tail switched as she realized she hadn’t thought of the Blackfeathers in a very long time. They had ceased to exist, not just in her mind but, it seemed, in reality too.

She paused, eyes sweeping over the eldritch forest, before angling north after all. Towhee continuously checked her surroundings as she aimed for the airy meadow and the great lake beyond. From there, she would follow the river to her “parking spot” in The Heartwood, maybe rest a few days and then check in with her granddaughters.

Her orange gaze caught on something through the trees. Towhee halted and squinted, ears falling back again. It was a wolf, she realized with a little start. She instinctively sniffed the air, trying to catch its—his, she noted when she found it—scent. It was familiar. It took a moment for Towhee to place it. When she did, her eyes narrowed into slits.

Of course he wanted to run, but he did not know where he would run to. His gait was hesitant. If he pursued the stuttering shadowform he might find his way out, or he might find danger. Before he could reach a conclusion to his meandering thoughs Titmouse was ambling along, and then freezing as the stranger stared at him. He saw their eyes - bright at first, then slivers - and the shadows coalesced around them.

There was something familiar here. Something intimately dangerous; but again, his mental faculties being what they are, Titmouse could not fully grasp who it was he had encountered. It was a vague sense of dread that seeped in between them: a fear that had been prevalent but easily swallowed, now clawing its way up his throat. He cried again, that pitiful sound of a confused old man.

Was this only his shadow? He lifted a leg as if to take another step closer, watching if the figure did the same. They didn't, and he cried again, and looked wide-eyed to the trees, the sky, the figure, seeking clarity but so, so afraid. His long and ratty white tail gave a curious flick before tucking tightly against his belly.

She looked at him with disdain, though Towhee made no move toward him. She hadn’t seen him since the caldera’s final days, when they’d been forced to cohabitate for the sake of Phox’s—not theirs, she thought savagely—kids. Although she could seethe over all the treachery and lies involved with that entire situation, Towhee did not dignify them with more than a passing thought.

Anyway, Titmouse didn’t seem to be in his right mind. She watched warily as he made several abortive movements, crying all the while. Was he ill? Or injured? Hopefully, Towhee thought meanly, feeling absolutely no pity for her wayward litter mate.

When he tucked his tail, it triggered an instinctive reaction despite herself. Towhee raised her own and bared her teeth, feinting in his direction as if she might attack. But she wouldn’t. It wouldn’t do any good anyway. Titmouse was a disease that could not be cured… possibly literally, now.

His display was matched by her own. A flash of familiar teeth that grew in his minds eye to the size and shape of a bear. Around him the shadows grew and swarmed, and in an instant he stood in the darkness of a winding cave - and before him was @Shardik. He knew it wasn't real. He knew it. But those teeth! That glare! Coupled with the half-remembered fear that his brain had fixated upon, his time being chased underground was overlaid by the half-memory of Towhee's teeth at his throat.

Apropos to this, the old man backed up and cowered low. The strong scent of urine and its warmth flooded the dirt beneath him. His one eye was wide enough for the white to show, and his pupil dominated. Was he high or was this a flashback to his earlier abuses? It didn't matter.

He didn't want to die.

Pl-please no, no nono, n-not again -- he verbally scrambled. More pleas fell from his lips, flattening, rolling, soiling himself. A flash of a yellow belly, tongue flicking snake-like and reaching for her chin. 'm so sorry.

What had he done? He didn't know, not really, not now; but he would do anything to make it stop.

He flinched backward, the hiss of urine unheard but its pungent smell filling Towhee’s nose. Her head reared back as a look of disgusted surprise flashed across her face. When he pleaded with her and rolled onto his back, exposing his soiled underside, Towhee bared her teeth again but recoiled.

Pathetic, she murmured under her breath, likely too quietly for him to overhear. Louder, she said, Do the world a fucking favor and go die in a hole.

She began to withdraw from the scene by way of a backpedal. Despite his prostration, Towhee couldn’t bring herself to turn her back on Titmouse. He was nothing if not unpredictable. What if he leaped to his feet and tried to aim for the back of her neck?

Scowling at the thought, she continued her retreat. Towhee wondered why she’d ever thought to come into this godforsaken forest. She would never make that mistake again.

His pleas were met with staring.

Towhee spoke but to Titmouse, who only saw shadows and the giant bear face before him, he heard nothing.

Gradually as his sister retreated, the sound of tree branches catching on one-another penetrated his mania. Then, as Towhee became only eyes in the dark, the bear diminished, and diminished, and -- became her, as she left him.

He wasn't all there, still. Titmouse remained addled; but the moments passed and he realized he had won, for once. He was alone and the bear hadn't eaten him. The shadows remained flickering around him, licking like flames.