Totoka River It’s Not Much, But It’s Honest Work

✹☾❂

 

Her mother had told her great stories of these woods. Olive had always had a fixation with the bleeding timbers, to a level that she had really only seem with Elysium and their trove of weeping willows. It was a long story, something about her older brothers and sister, and a pack of which she was the beta, and how they were ousted from these woods by a rival pack who hated them because of mama’s first husband? It was a whole lot of drama, and Olive had only truly spoken to her about it once, so the details now escaped her, but… Eleuthera still felt drawn to these woods, mesmerized by whatever unfinished business lingered in this place. 

But as always, time marched ever onwards, and the history of Ravensblood Forest compounded, grew more complex, almost until those complexities erased her mother’s story completely. Was this the case in every place, every pocket of the earth? There were a million stories that all coalesced in one place, existing all at once, and no one was ever the wiser to the magic that happened upon the ground where they now stood, breathing the air they once breathed? vibrating with the same energy, time and time again?

Packs have taken up residence here since her mother had lived here, all those years ago — many of them, if Eleuthera were to guess correctly. There was there one now, she scented, although small and their numbers few. Yet their scent was strong, so Eleuthera prowled outside the forest’s periphery, very much a part of the shadows that grew long in the lateness of the day. She gazed upon the trees, but she could not penetrate more than several yards in the treeline so whatever was inside, was likely to remain a mystery to her. What she was expecting to find only existed in the memory of the dead, anyways. 

So Eleuthera continued on and felt somewhat overheated from the efforts of circumventing the diameter of no small forest. It was becoming a summer habit, to take up residence in a cool body of water whenever she felt exhausted or travelworn. She was no waterwolf, but even she could admit there were few things more relaxing than a dip when one was without company. The lilac sprite trotted towards the chiming of running water, running faster yet when it came into view, and (unlike the man who so stealthily stalked his prey) she burst through the underbrush and prepared to leap into the waters —

until she suddenly caught sight of a wolf-bear, already well within her trajectory on the way down! Eleuthera did her best to stop her forward momentum by pushing her pointed paws into the earth, but the soft summer mud did nothing to slow her tumble forward, so Eleuthera bit down and prepared for impact with the obelisk of a stranger.