Vivian
I was soaked.
The towering trees of the forest were shit at shielding me from the relentless, non-stop rain that’d been pouring down since the season changed from winter to summer.
I’d been informed the “Western Continent” skipped spring and fall—those were only found in the “Eastern Continent”—so my new home would be alternating between monsoons and blizzards every fifty days indefinitely.
Lucky me. I was nearly one hundred days into living on Trebianna, and already experiencing my second sweaty slosh season.
At least there wasn’t any thunder or lightning at the moment. When the trees in these woods were struck and fell, it sounded like a damn explosion—frightening enough that I didn’t leave my field during the bad storms. Getting crushed by a freakishly large blue pine tree wasn’t how I wanted to go.
I wouldn’t say the situation was ideal, but overall, I was happy with where I’d ended up.
Once you got past the crazy weather and wild animals, these woods were beautifully and magnificently haunting.
The navy-blue trunks of the evergreens—everblues—peeled with birch-like bark.
It reminded me of the chipping paint of my old front door.
Everything was cool-toned. The green and purple planets in the sky provided some variety to the shades of blue surrounding me, but still, the spectrum of colors didn’t vary much beyond seafoam and indigo.
Most branches were way above my reach, but the water sloshing off their evergreen slopes in distinct streams was a constant reminder of their existence—towering over my head.
I weaved around another pine-scented cascade falling from the sky.
Droplets breaking between the trees were one thing, it was an entirely different experience to carelessly walk through a miniature waterfall.
Despite the height of the branches, the path through the forest wasn’t entirely clear.
Massive root systems grew out of the ground, creating tripping hazards and small refuges to hide in when the rain got a little too obnoxious.
The local animals—although they were giving “ghost” more than “animal”—also took advantage of these shelters. Several of them were doing that today.
An eerie feeling crept over me as I walked past the empty eye sockets monitoring me from the burrows. None of the creatures here looked alive. They were bone shrouded in mist.
The critter currently watching me had black bones and white mist, the opposite of most. It was hunkered within a root system, its head twisting unnaturally on its neck like a curious Jack Russell Terrier—“Scary little fucker want a… tasty human treat?”
As much as the thing may like sinking its teeth into me, its narrow beak trilled in protest when I got too close.
The daytime animals hated the fancy rock I carried around as predator-deterrent.
I almost thought this type of creature was cute. It had little bony paws poking out from its mist, a long beak-like snout, and a flicking bony tail. It was one of the smaller species, and by far the least dangerous looking. That was all misleading.
The first time I ventured from my field, one of these cuties attacked me immediately.
My skin turned pale and dull under the small foot’s touch, and its toothed beak ripped into that patch of cold flesh as if it were starving.
I didn’t feel anything or bleed until I shook the fucker off and then, as color returned to my limb, so did circulation and sensitive nerve endings.
Blood and pain. No longer cute. Definitely dangerous.
It’d taken three days sequestered in my field for that gaping injury to heal.
Later, I was told the native animals of this region drained life before consuming flesh.
They couldn’t ingest anything technically “alive”.
The experience of what “draining” meant varied by critter.
I wasn’t eager to find out what the others were capable of.
That animal hadn’t been any bigger than Nurghle. I’d seen much larger since then.
Venturing out a second time in search of some damn clothes had been terrifying—and maybe a tad stupid—but well worth it.
It was how I’d met Ida, who I was excited to see again now that the mudslides from melting snow were slowing. Six days without a visit was way too long.
I approached her cabin in the woods, grateful to see the protective charms that circled the perimeter undisturbed after being buried all winter.
Crystals like the one in my pocket deterred the daytime monsters.
Hanging jars filled with herbs and trickles of dried blood did the job for the night ones.
These safety measures were tied to wooden stakes with twine, creating a border around the home.
The strange décor fascinated me when I first stumbled upon her dwelling last summer.
I weaved between the ornamented logs and climbed the trio of wooden steps to the front door. Ida said I didn’t need to knock, but I did anyway. I’d rather not give this woman a heart attack.
“Vivian! There you are!” Ida called from her rocking chair across the room, grabbing the padded arms to lift herself.
“You don’t need to get up, I’ll come to you,” I insisted, setting my satchel on her wooden table and hurrying over.
“Oh, I needed to stretch my leg anyways,” she dismissed as she moved towards me, a crutch made of branches tucked under her arm. Moving around looked awkward and frustrating as she re-learned how to walk. The makeshift mobility aid didn’t seem to be helping much.
The elderly Pyran—her species name—lost a leg to one of the life-draining critters days before I met her.
She didn’t like to talk about the details of the attack.
Even as I treated her infected wound, she brushed off my questions.
I couldn’t tell if it was denial, anger, shame, grief, or trauma preventing her from sharing.
Maybe some mix of all those things. She’d muttered something about “seventy-eight years on this damn mountain and not once”, then cut herself off and said “shit happens” before changing the topic.
I knew this: there was an attack, her leg was lost, and she’d used Pyran fire from her palms to cauterize the amputation site. That quick thinking and special skill prevented her from dying of blood loss, but she was still at risk of sepsis. That was when I stumbled across her cabin.
Frankly, I didn’t believe I had “demigoddess healing powers” until I watched her swelling go down under my hands.
She survived, but that didn’t mean she was “fine” now. She struggled with movement and was clearly still devastated by the loss. Not that she wanted me to acknowledge either thing.
The topic of her attack only surfaced when she was demanding I be careful when I traveled between our homes so I don’t die to “the beasts or the elements”.
She said those words a lot. Or at least she had once.
We’d started skirting around that conversation too, ever since the night I found that… man.
The man I left to die.
“I brought you more berries, but we’ll need to go to town for food soon,” I stated, blinking away the unwanted memory.
I used “we” in hopes of avoiding her objections that she was fully capable of the journey.
After all, she’d made the trip to Drifael successfully for seventy-eight years.
With three winters and three summers per year that was…
what… almost five hundred seasons lived?
But as I watched Ida—fierce as her spirit may be—reposition her crutch with a huff of frustration, I knew that was no longer a safe option.
I’d need to start going to get supplies for us soon—on my own—whether she agreed or not.
Ida insisted I stay away from the more populated parts of the world but never explained why.
Surprising, since she spoke so fondly of the town down the mountain named Drifael and her resident friends.
I really wished I could get her there, somewhere more accessible with the community she loved, but the trip would be too dangerous.
And who had the money to get her a place in town? Not me. Not her.
She scowled. “These berries are perfect! There’s no need for you to go the extra distance.”
“We only have forty-four days left to stash up for winter. I should get familiar with the town now. Plus, it’s going to take several trips to get everything we need.”
My first winter on this strange planet called Trebianna was brutal.
I made a trip to visit Ida every few days to bring her necessities—a full-day journey trudging through mounds of snow, hoping her cabin wouldn’t be buried when I got there.
She used fire to melt her home free every day; a normal chore for the region, apparently.
I was always relieved to see her chimney smoke in the distance, but it was a short-lived respite before I slipped across the ice rink to her front door.
The winter trips were exhausting, but I could never stay at Ida’s long.
My field was the only thing that healed my Earth poisoning, as I’d learned during my brief chat with my mother and her assistant.
The leather-bound guide I’d been given reinforced that advice.
I was really sick of throwing up and passing out, so I stayed put most days.
Nurghle stayed behind when I traveled, for his own safety. The guide said nothing that “intended to kill [me]” would be able to enter the field, and that held true so far. The skeletal-mist fuckers gave up on trying to get through the wheat border after a few days. My kitty was safe there.
Limited options meant I did what I had to. I wouldn’t abandon my field, but I also wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I didn’t check in on Ida regularly. People died in these kinds of winters.
Like that man in the snow. Maybe the cold had killed him before a wild animal could...
My eyes welled immediately, lips twisting to the side in pain.