Chapter Text
Forests, Cole thought, came in two main varieties. Sure, there were countless types of trees, all different climates and soil varieties, infinite topographies. Technically there were more kinds of forest than there were feathers on a swan.
None of that really mattered.
The two varieties he was concerned with were welcoming forests, and forbidding forests.
A welcoming forest was much more common. It was a comfortable place to walk and be, somewhere you'd be happy setting up camp, somewhere you could imagine building a little house near some pleasant little rivulet and settling in for the winter. A welcoming forest made no bones about having you within its bounds, brought you in with birdsong, gave you nuts and fruit and dappled sunlight and babbling brooks, all to please and delight any visitors. Wildlife loved welcoming forests. Some were quieter than others, some could seem forbidding but opened up once you were past the initial thicket, but you could tell when the trees wanted you to come and explore and hunt for grubs and tubers among their roots.
This was not that kind of forest.
This was the second kind.
This forest was dead silent. This forest was dark and gloomy and it brooded. It wanted to know what in tarnation you were doing there, and how soon you would go away and leave it the hell alone again. The brooks had much more sense than to babble. They flowed sluggishly over the rocks, staying quiet and only making the barest minimum of noise. Any animals kept mostly to themselves and their dens, venturing out to gather food as quickly as possible before retreating again. A forbidding forest was just that: forbidding.
Cole, however, enjoyed a good forbidding forest. Inevitably these forests were on the dank and damp side, a perfect place to sow with spores. Mushrooms adored forbidding forests, loved to twine their little hyphae in and around the roots of the trees, over rocks and under logs, and amongst the remains of whatever creatures had had the misfortune to enter the forest unprepared. These places were a veritable smorgasbord of decay.
His badger- the damned thing had resisted being named ever since he'd found it as a pup and nursed it to adulthood- ambled lazily along a ravine, snuffling for bugs and grubs as it went, snacking on the way. It wasn't as if they had anywhere in particular to go, after all. Their only goal was "away," far from the court where he'd grown up. Too much political maneuvering, too much schmoozing. It had all depended on who you knew, who you paid off, who you had offended and who had taken a liking to you. Cutthroat, in a word; everyone trying to climb up and up and all the while pulling one another down at the same time. Cole had no patience for it. It seemed as if he was the only fairy who was content with his lot in life, a humble little thing happy to spread mushrooms, fungi, and slime molds in places that needed them. Even the occasional parasitic plant found its way into his repertoire, ghost-pale stems rising shyly through the leaf litter, flowerheads bowed low.
And so he had left, a bag full of various spores slung over his shoulder, another sack of his few worldly possessions tied to the badger's rudimentary saddle. He didn't need much. Didn't want much, either. A couple of sets of clothes, a spare pair of boots, an oilcloth, some twine, a sturdy knife, and a bedroll. Some things to make a fire with. Some things to bind wounds with. A little kit of spices and salt to make his dinners taste better. A waterskin. A little bundle of grooming supplies. And down in the bottom of the bag, a small, sealed bottle of honey and rosepetal wine, gifted him by a grateful farmer for seeding his woodlot with morels.
He tugged his serape a bit closer around himself, whistling merrily as the badger trundled on. It was hard to tell the time of day with how little light filtered through the thick thatch of branches high above. At best guess, it was early afternoon. His raggedy wings fluttered a bit, lifting and stretching out. Time for a rest. Riding all day could be rough on the thighs and spine, and he needed a smoke break since the badger had made it abundantly clear in the past that it didn't appreciate ash falling into its fur. He reined it in, dismounted next to a big mossy boulder, and took a long, deep breath of the cool, moist air.
Out came his little smoking kit, mugwort and mullein and raspberry leaf rolled in a bit of corn husk. He lit it, took a few pulls from his cigarette, and leaned against the boulder, groaning in contentment as the smoke filled his lungs. Just what he'd been craving. Didn't matter that the badger wrinkled its snout at the smell and let out an exasperated huff, turning away and digging under the rock, finding the hole of some terrified little rodent that smelled like a meal. Cole smiled, watching the big animal hunt down its snack.
As he leaned against the stone, a sheet of moss fell away, making Cole slip awkwardly forwards. He squawked, surprised, and backed away as a substantial mat slid down and off the rock.
And revealed an eye.
It was big, at least to Cole. The pupil alone was the size of his head. And whoever had carved it from the bluish stone had done so beautifully, even going so far as to detail individual eyelashes. It was a work of art.
"I'll be damned," he murmured, taking a drag from his cigarette as he stared at the eye, which was staring at him rather unnervingly. "There's something you don't see every day."
He took a few more steps back, surveying the mossy lump that he had assumed was just a hill, or a rock formation. Roughly, it had the proportions of a person. A large person, judging by the size of the lump as well as the scale of the eye he'd uncovered- the eye that was still staring directly at him.
Carefully, he tugged at the ragged edge of the moss, pulling a little more down and revealing the regal arch of an aristocratic nose. Another mat fell away with a minimum of effort and uncovered muscular lips set in a haughty scowl, encircled by a neatly trimmed beard.
“Well ain’t you something,” Cole hummed, stepping back and cocking his head to the side to take in the face staring back at him through the dirt and roots. For all that it had been buried, the sculpture was in remarkably good shape, the moss having shielded it from the worst of the weather. He traced the curve of the lips with one hand, wincing when his palm left a small smear of dirt on the stone.
The badger, crunching down the last bits of its meal, snuffled at his serape, curious. This thing didn’t smell like food, and certainly didn’t smell like a mate, either. Why, then, was Cole reacting to it as if it was in any way interesting?
“Oh, gross,” he grumbled, shoving away the bloody snout. “Go clean yourself up. You smell like a slaughterhouse.”
With a grouchy huff, the badger waddled away. If Cole was going to be that picky, he could go play with his weird rock on his own.
Setting aside his hat and serape, he rolled up his sleeves, trying to gauge just how much of the statue was left. Clearly it was someone important, for all the care that had gone into it. And he was pretty sure that the statue had once stood somewhere impressive, perhaps a temple or a palace or something of the sort, though there was no evidence of any such thing having stood there.
Ah, well. He grabbed a root and began to tug, his wings flexing mightily with the effort. May as well get the hard part over and done with before nightfall.