[private] you should find another guiding light, Oaks

[Sheer]

i'll be getting over you my whole life -

As soon as she was able, she took her leave from the forest.

Though she was eternally grateful for the man that had freed her — Jack, he had said his name was — she now could not shake the feeling of humiliation that was taking root inside of her. The forest was no place for a girl like her. She had lived a life that was too sheltered, and like a fool she had walked into the darkest depths of a place known to house danger, thinking that she could manage it on her own. She is not sure how often others walk into the forest and find themselves tangled and ensnared by briars, but she doubts that it is very many. She should have kept to the meadowlands and the riverlands, to the familiar grasses and the tame forests that provided shelter but were not quite so treacherous to traverse. 

Moving through the sea of meadow grass that trembles in the breeze, she tries to put everything out of her mind, but the wounds she still carries make it difficult to do so. Most of them are superficial; places along her neck where branches and thorns had scuffed her coat and scraped the top of her skin, and bramble still tangled in her black mane and tail. But where the thorned vine had wrapped around her front leg was throbbing and raw feeling, the dried blood having darkened to a rust-red. It was not currently so tender that she could not force herself to move soundly, disguising just how sore the injury is, but with every step she felt the pain pulse up her leg, a constant reminder of her foolishness.

But the relief she feels to be back in a place so familiar is a balm to her pain, and she pauses on a knoll to simply breathe and take it in. The air is fresh, fragrant with sunshine-warmed grass, and the heat of the sun is strong against her back. A sapphire sky stretches above her, with only a few wispy clouds drifting lazily across it. She revels in it for a moment longer until she finds herself longing for the shade, and she scans the nearby area. Her silver eyes settle on a peculiarly bare tree, stark amongst the verdant leaves that adorn the others, but her gaze is most drawn to the figure that stands below it.

He could have just been resting, but even from where she stands she can nearly see the exhaustion that seems to weigh him down, pulling him like an anchor. Daring to move closer — ignoring the striking pain that shoots up her own leg — she cautiously steps beneath the tree with him, though does not draw directly alongside him. “I’m sorry to intrude,” she says, soft and a bit uncertain since she does not know him. “Are you all right?”

s h e e r

@ Oaks

[Oaks]

my crown is in my heart

He couldn’t have expected to be left alone for long, not here and not with the state of his appearance. Oaks can already feel the sickness taking hold, weaving through his bones and into his blood like a well-acquainted guest (it is partially of his own creation, after all – how would it be foreign at all?). It spins and twirls, it spikes and digs, it makes itself comfortably at home. As a rebounded magic, it does not take quite as formidable a hold as it had on its intended target (its target, for Oaks had not meant to harm his mentor at all and does not know that it had caused Zain’s death). Regardless of this lessened strength, it leaves him feeling miserably weakened and waning ever so steadily. It is a slow progression, but notable all the same.

He’s not entirely sure why he had chosen to return to this tree, another of his unintended victims. Perhaps as a reminder of his curse? Perhaps hoping that it might inspire his magic to act again as it had that day, when it had nearly pushed away the disease that had robbed these boughs of their flowers?

He is nearly ready to try, to close his eyes and focus as he’s been taught, but a brilliant coat of blue and violet with a speckling of vibrant glowing white catches his eye. She approaches him, joining him beneath the shade-less tree, and for once he does not despair at the company. Where he would normally warn others away and fret for their wellbeing, he accepts her presence even as she stands at a safe distance as strangers often do.

Her apology is kind, her concern even kinder, and Oaks smiles faintly in response as he nods his head. “You need not worry,” he tells her in a voice roughened somewhat by the scratching in his throat. “I’ll be all right, one way or another… but I might ask the same for you.” The scratches upon her body are notable at this closer range, having been hidden by her brilliance before. One of his wings twitches as if attempting to offer her a hand to hold, but he does not quite have the strength to stretch it out fully between them. “Those wounds,” he nods particularly to her leg, “do not seem as kind as you.” It is not flattery he attempts, but a mere observation and perhaps gentleness to show his gratitude for her concern.

The infection that is only just beginning within her wounds is somehow almost evident to him, as if he can sense it growing there much like he’d felt it growing within the tree that covers them now. His magic, fickle and crude as it is, can almost be felt again as a slight static in his skin, reaching and seeking this new plaything. “I… I could try to help, if you’d like,” he offers to her.

He’s almost done it before, fixing something that wasn’t quite well.

Whether he could do it again is another question, though.

my crown is called torment

OAKS

@Sheer