[open quest] if you go down in the woods today...

[Rare]

it’s a lonely road, I know,
and nothing ever stands between a bullet and your soul --

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” she says, startled, to the girl that is looking at her mouse ears. Leave it to her to pick out the one thing that actually belonged to someone else. This is exactly why she never leaves home.

She is about to figure out a way to rub the headband off when she suddenly feels….different. Her entire body begins to shift and contort, her once long, flowing tail turning into something much more rodent like. Her eyes widen as her hooves transform into paws, and when the transformation is complete, she wonders if this is what her parents felt like when they shifted into dragons.

Somehow, this does not seem nearly as magnificent.

She looks again at her paws, and glances back at her tail as she lifts it, and then tries to roll her eyes upward to look at what she is sure are mouse ears. But she was still nearly horse-sized…..wasn’t that an unusual size for a rodent (lol)?

Reluctantly, she begins to walk into the forest. Her steps seem lighter, she notices, but she does not have much time to think about it when the trees around her begin to tremble and groan, and the sound of cackling bounces back and forth through the forest. Something rushes by her extremely close, close enough that she feels it against her shoulder, and the surprised squeak that comes out of her mouth startles even her. It is then that a pine cone hits her on the side of the head, and then another, and then another. She starts to run, a torrent of pine cones being pelted against her, along with that same chorus of cackles. She can’t tell where the pine cones are coming from—she almost swears she sees a tree itself hurl one at her, but that can’t be right.

I wish I was the size of an actual mouse, she thinks to herself, and suddenly she is somersaulting across the forest floor, and when she finds her footing she is much, much smaller. Without pausing to consider what had just happened she scurries her way through the underbrush, finding it easier to dodge the pine cones this way, and she is just about out of the forest when a tree root lifts up, the force of it managing to fling her through the air. She hits the ground with another loud squeak, returning back to her unusual size.

When she sees a cave up ahead she does not even think twice. She sprints towards it, desperate for a way to outrun the witches and their pine cones.

-- rare.

I did not have the energy or motivation to write a good post so I did you a favor and left this as short as possible

[Cyan]

There were stronger beings at play here; doing strange things and concocting tricksy things.   It was unsettling to feel that kind of hum in the air, that power building and churning. 

He loved it.
He hated that he loved it.
He’d never admit it.

By some means his transformation is lacking if compared to others in the same predicament.  He got a fizzly sound and an annoyingly persistent tingle, similar to the feeling of limbs falling asleep from being in a position too long.  Except this took forever to go away.  And when it did fade, he found himself toppling over too upright normal type legs and finagling two dangly, claspy type legs that hung at his sides.   He used them to pat his strange new physique, running his hands over his weird flat face and his well groomed mustache.  Because he was Sexy Jake after all.

And he was still in red and brown fabric.  Oh good, he was super duper worried about that.

The fog had begun to accumulate behind him, building upon itself until it was so thick it might as well have been a stone wall.  There was nowhere to go but forward.

The fog gave him a moment to figure out the legs situation, but once they were beyond the threat of him falling on his knees or backside, it was less forgiving in its mannerisms, and instead began to force him forward, Until a lone tree stood in a clearing.  With a shiney beige thing attached to it.  The the rang.  And rang. And rang some more. He looked around the forest, wondering if something More was to come of it.  Why was he feeling so anxious now?

When nothing did happen, except more ringing and more anxiety building, some bizarre instinct kicked in, and one of his grabby legs picked it up and placed it near his ear.

”H-hello?”
There was no answer.
“Hello?” He inquired again, a bit more confident this time.
Heavy breathing was the only reply.
“Hel-LO!” He pressed, now to the point of irritation.
“Yes, hello, Mr. Sek C. Jake! We’ve been trying to reach you about your car’s extend...”

The phone clattered against the tree trunk, dangling from its spiral cord, and Cyan’s screams could be heard for miles away.  

For some reason, he had anticipated that running and screaming might yield better results.  But it did not.  Instead of escaping this night mare, the fog merely funneled him to another small clearing, a sight not so unfamiliar from the last.  This time the phone was black.

And it rang.

He tried to backtrack, but the fog thickened to the point of no permeation.  Again.  Cyan made a strange sound as he approached the chiming phone, somewhere between a sob and a belch.  With a shaking hand he lifted the phone to his ear.

“H-hello?”
“Who is this?!” a snakey voice on the other side demanded.
He paused, momentarily paralyzed by the simplicity of the question.  The odd thing was, he knew his lips moved to say the word Cyan.  But that however, was not what he heard.
“Sexy Jake from State Farm”
“What are you wearing, Sexy Jake from State Farm?” the prying, pushy voice demanded.
Well I don’t see how that’s any of your business. he meant to say, wanted to say.
”Uh...” what had the wind called these stiff, chaffey things? ”Khakis?”
“Well she sounds hideous!” The rude, snarky voice said, as if speaking to someone else.
”Hey! He exclaimed, clearly offended as he had the sudden urge to pull his tight fitting polo further down his rounded belly.  “That’s a rude thing to say.” Ah, so now is when he actually says the real things he wanted to say. Right. Of course. 

So, Whatever the answer should have been, that wasn’t it. Something cool and wet started to touch his ear, and instinctively he drops the phone.  When his hand touches his ear, and comes back away, there is a sticky green goo globbed to his palm.  And more if it keeps spilling from the phones receiver.

He backed away, watching as The mass grew, and grew. And grew and grew and grew until it reached the height of halfway up the telephone tree.  It paused there like that, silent and shiney and massive, as if it were sizing him up.

As if it were waiting.

For what? He had no clue.  Was there anything valuable he could recall? Some type of password to use or offering to make to the Glob?  His head thrummed, racing with many thoughts, though all were unhelpful.  Unfortunately that spiraling thought cycle caused a small period of zone out.  And even more unfortunate for him, sometimes stupid things poisoned his lips when these zone outs happened.  Like right now.

“Would you, uh, like to talk about your cars extended warranty?”

And then it screamed.  Or did what he surmised  was a scream coming from a gelatinous green pile.  It was his best guess anyway, and for a brief moment he thinks that maybe he has killed whatever this thing was.  But then it started to move; so slowly at first he   Had to take a hesitant step forward to be sure.  

Yep, it definitely was moving.  And getting faster. And consuming every size tree, rock and shrub that stood in its way.  Cyan was in its way.

“Run, khakis, RUN!” He bellowed, turning tail away from the green Glob and heading anywhere that wasn’t there.  

It felt like forever before he made it to the rivers edge, and despite his best efforts of weaving and trying to evade the thing, somehow his path always led him back in front of it.  Until now.  The pines and oaks groaned and snapped, no match for the girth of the Glob as it overtook them effortlessly.  Before him the river slid by in inky, black strands.  It looked unwelcoming, like it loathed the very idea of him even thinking about jumping in.  And in a normal, not so nightmarish might, he’s probably find some kind of kindred spirit vibes with the river.  But the green mess closing in on him gave him little choice.

“Sorry” he muttered as he jumped into the frigid current.

Cyan knew how to swim.  Cyan was a good swimmer.  Cyan knew how to swim and was a good swimmer when he was a horse.  Cyan was not currently a horse and did not know how to operate the equipment he had been given well enough to be a good swimmer. 

This was a problem.  
A problem he realized too late.

A different kind of coldness pressed down over his back, pushed down steadily and more heavily each second.  He was pinned between the Glob and the black water.   It stung when the water trickled into his lungs, it’s invasive nature seeking to fill any hollow spaces it could find.  They made short work of him in the forest, and it was as silent  as such a thing could be.  He thought of his mother, he thought of his father, and he wondered if the next darkness would be any less colder than this one.

A whooshing sound is what he heard first.  Then a crisp POP.  He checked his other senses.  The burning was gone, the acidic taste of the water was gone, but the stale smell of it was heavy in the air.  Darkness still, but that vanished as his eyes reopened, blinking, he watched as the Glob crept back into the fog on the other side of the river.

The wind picked up as he turned to stare into the mouth of a gaping cave, almost as if it chimed a catchy little tune as it tussled his immaculately pressed khakis. Like a good neighbor, Jack O’Lantern is there!