Blackfoot Forest demons of the dark

dated before this

In her life, Kila Gallagher had known and done quite a few scary things—facing off against known murderers at the command of her father, stealing from very well-guarded food caches, wading through crocodile infested bayous, and spending nearly every night sharing the same den as a madman, just to name a few—and yet even she, despite being the toughened soul she was, still held a generous amount of fear in her heart when it came to certain situations and circumstances. One of them, as childish as it may seem, was a fear of the dark, or perhaps better yet, the unknown demons that liked to crawl around in it.

Yes, she believed in spirits, both good and bad- she'd grown up in the company of seafarers after all, and if a pirate could be counted on for anything aside from pillaging riches and drinking rum, it would be their innate ability to spin a ghost story. Granted, most of those ghost stories revolved around wrathful sea spirits, those that liked to drag unsuspecting swimmers to the bottom of the deep blue and swoop down upon nighttime beach goers like possessed seagulls, which had nothing to do with a forest such as this, so ideally she shouldn't be that concerned... Yet her superstitious mind wouldn't put such images to rest, instead choosing to conjure fantasies of some two headed beast stalking her from the mist, or of the shadows she saw flickering out of the corners of her eyes actually being red-eyed demons waiting to set themselves upon her and do their worst. It also didn't help that there were soft yet distinct and eerie wails echoing around her in the forest's far reaches- foxes, any landlubber might know, but she did not, having not had many of them where she came from, therefore being unable to recognize their ghostly call.

So, regardless of her common sense and logical mind, Kila moved through the dark forest with stiff muscles, raised guard hairs, and a hardened expression, brows furrowed and lime colored eyes staring intensely at whatever shadow seemed to move next. She was careful not to appear frantic or frightened, out of caution to the idea that a wolf might roam this parts and might decide to take advantage of her being in such a state, but anyone could tell she was by no means eat ease with this environment. The lass couldn't wait until she freed herself from this forest, or until the sun rose up over the horizon once more- whichever would come first.