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The setting sun reached its rays through the mantle of soft leaves that formed a canopy above the woods, painting the undergrowth in dappled light and deep shadow. The first crickets to stir hummed somewhere out of sight as a breeze whistled through the long, swaying grass. A thin brook burbled as it wound between oak trees like a gray-and-gold ribbon. The forest hovered on the precipice between peaceful and exciting, charged with possibility the way a hand can be charged with static electricity.
It quickly collapsed into the latter, however, as three adventurers burst into the scene: one carrying with her a battered sword, one of metal who sparked with magical energy, and one clutching a scrap of parchment that was once a map as she speedwalked to keep pace with the others. All three spoke at once, their voices overlapping in a crackling din of vivacity as they argued.
“I’m just SAYING, we haven’t checked near the forest’s edge yet, wouldn’t that logically be the most likely place for it to—?”
“Augh, my dad’s gonna kill me! He always said not to bring it with me into the woods, but I’ve been careful and I never thought that—!“
“I swear we were never anywhere near here today, none of the landmarks look—“
The sword-wielder, a young lioness covered in tiny nicks and scars, took a deep breath and stomped one foot in a bid for the others’ attention. “WAIT!”
A stunned silence fell over the other two, who slowed their pace to a stop.
“We’ve been looking for at least an hour now, and we haven’t found a single clue that points to where my scarf went!” She said, gesticulating wildly. ”I don’t know what we’re doing wrong, but we need to try something different!”
“…Right,” the shortest of the trio, a cat with messy fur and inkstains on her paws that smudged the parchment she held, admitted reluctantly. She glanced down at the map of the woods with a rueful expression, as if considering how it had proven itself utterly useless in navigation thus far, and stuffed it into her bag. “Where do we start? Retracing our steps?”
“That seems like a good idea,” the final member of the group—an automaton made of metal and wood who fidgeted with a small flower—started as he looked around the dense wood. “And we could mark the places we’ve been, somehow; that way we can cover more ground.”
“Okay, let’s do that then!” The lioness brightened. “We left the main path and went to that old abandoned shrine, that clearing, and a waterfall before I noticed it was gone. So I’ll search the clearing, Jarah could check the shrine, and Miri could look by the waterf—”
“I’m not doing that, Nell.” The cat—Miri—shuddered, as though she was already drenched in the cascade’s freezing waters. “I can’t swim, remember?”
“Ohhhh. Right,” Nell said quickly, cringing. “Let's switch, then! Does that work with you both?”
“It does! Where should we meet back?” Jarah asked.
“The start of the main path should work! See you guys there!” With that, she set off through the tangled undergrowth, and soon disappeared.
Jarah and Miri shared an apprehensive glance, then followed suit.
* * *
No one in their small village knew who exactly the shrine tucked away in a secluded corner of the neighboring forest was dedicated to. A few speculated it worshipped a harvest aspect of their local patron deity from a bygone famine, but most didn’t pay it much mind.
Jarah was, however, not one of these people. The dandelions that bloomed in sunbursts around the half-overgrown altar were easily harvested and cooked into dishes, and the time-worn stone statue that towered several feet above him was a sentinel, ensuring nothing bad could happen under its gaze.
It was easily Jarah’s favorite place in the forest, possibly even the entire world. But as much as he would’ve liked to stop and stare up at the statue or watch bugs crawl along in the grass, he wasn’t one to shirk responsibilities. And besides, his friends needed his help; he couldn’t abandon them!
He examined the altar for any hidden cracks where a scarf might have gotten stuck: nothing.
He checked the swaying branches for any sign of a familiar flash of cyan cloth: just more leaves silhouetted against the gloaming sky.
He searched the thorny shrubs that shot up through the broken cobblestone floor around the shrine: nothing, and needless to say, he was very lucky he couldn’t feel pain.
After at least an hour of fruitless scouring, Jarah, accepting defeat, returned to the main path through the woods.
* * *
The clearing was flooded with rose-gold sunlight and scarce of undergrowth, so losing something there in such a way that it wasn’t immediately visible was… A challenge, that was certain. How does a small trinket or an item such as, say, a scarf be concealed so well in a location with next to no hiding spots that a person can simply lose track of it? Nell could be absent-minded, sure, but it wasn’t like they left in such a rush that she would have left it behind in the open.
Miri didn’t mind, though; she had always loved puzzles, and this was one she was determined to solve. The most obscured spots here are the tussocks and the bushes, and I remember Nell sitting against the largest tree, she noted as she surveyed the glade for clues, so I’ll look there first!
The long, jade-green grass, which lay bent and crushed from their earlier visit, betrayed no other sign of anyone’s presence. No scarf to be found betwixt the blades. Miri dusted the dirt off of her coat with a frustrated sigh, before refocusing herself and moving on.
A search through the bushes outlining the glade proved, unfortunately, similarly fruitless. Well, that wasn’t entirely true; the branches yielded small, green berries that rifling through her small journal full of notes on things they had found before revealed to be gooseberries. (Hah, take THAT, Nell! She did have a sense of humor!) But still, not a hint of her friend’s prized possession in sight. Even the gnarled, twisting oak tree, whose roots reached across the clearing in tangling fractals, was void of any sign of woven wool.
At her wit’s end by now, Miri paced back and forth across the clearing like a hardened noir detective in a book series she loved. There had to be at least one clue to help her figure it out! Maybe she had forgotten to check something, or the quickly fading daylight was too dim to properly search anymore, or—or something !
But the glade had no secrets to hide, no missing puzzle pieces she could use to piece together a way to the scarf; not to mention, she was almost certainly not coordinated enough to not trip over a root and knock the wind out of her lungs if she tried to make it back home once night had fallen.
Forced to admit this was no longer very effective, Miri took a small charm—a wooden pendant carved into a star, which glowed brightly in contrast to her surroundings—out from her bag to light the way, and left to return to the main path.
* * *
The waterfall glowed like cooling metal in the final rays of the setting sun, its waters rushing past Nell’s paws as she stood on the scattering pebbles of the riverbank. It crackled and roared like a wild beast, accompanied in its cries by the rivulets that hissed as they meandered away. The symphony was almost enough to drown out the thoughts racing through the lioness’s head; keyword, almost .
There’s only so much time left ‘til nightfall, there’s no way you’ll find it — Dad’s gonna be so upset when he finds out, you’ll be lucky if you’re allowed to leave your room before the end of the month — and Jarah and Miri are going to act all exasperated and secretly be glad you’re not dragging them around anymore — and that’s if you don’t slip and crack your skull open on a rock , a nagging voice in the back of her mind whispered like a mosquito’s wail. Nell gritted her teeth, shaking her head in an attempt to ward it off. She couldn’t let her brain get to her, not when she could run from it; and a task like this should be a welcome distraction.
And luckily enough, what else did several minutes of drinking in the scenery and walking along the bank reveal but a cyan scarf, wrapped around a half-submerged branch and waving in the wind like a flag of surrender.
“That’s it that’s it that’s it!” Nell crowed to no one in particular, a grin already spreading across her face as she bounced on her paws. The branch was held in place in the middle of the river, but she could definitely grab it, so long as she had something to stand on to get a bit closer…
Her gaze landed on the dark silhouette of a fallen tree a few yards downstream that stretched nearly the width of the river. Perfect .
She bounded over to the log, and set one paw on its bark. Gross and soggy, but it only shifted a bit under her weight. Keeping her center of mass close to the tree, Nell shuffled across, closer and closer to her goal. It was so close , she could just reach out and grab it if she leaned…
But as soon as she grasped the scarf, her stomach dropped at the sound of a splintering crack as the wood she had been standing on snapped, and before Nell could process what was happening she plummeted into the water.
Nell was a decent swimmer, but skill only matters so much when the air is knocked from your lungs and the whirlwind of debris and death-cold water overwhelms you. Panic, try to right yourself, open your eyes and see nothing but swirling clouds of sediment, reach out for anything to grasp onto. Something large slammed into her shoulder (the tree! It had to be the tree), and she clung to its peeling bark. Her lungs screamed with every passing moment, but the current was so strong she wasn’t sure she could right herself without being swept away. You’re going to die here , that tiny voice in her head hissed, and in that moment she couldn’t help but believe it.
She barely registered the muffled sound of voices somewhere above before two pairs of arms dragged her back to the surface.
“Oh thank goodness, she’s not dead!” Jarah cried, his face lighting up with relief.
“Nell, what happened!? You look awful!” That was Miri, whose viridian eyes were wide with panic.
“Like you’d look— hcckk —any better half-drowned,” Nell joked, coughing up some water halfway through her sentence.
“You—you know what I mean!” she sputtered. “You said you’d go check by the waterfall, not that you’d spend half an hour nearly dying!”
“That wasn’t part of the plan! I just saw the scarf stuck on a branch in the river—I guess the wind must’ve carried it earlier—and I tried to get close enough to grab it by using that tree as a bridge, but I leaned too far and—WAIT, THE SCARF!” Panicking, Nell checked her pockets, only to discover its complete absence. If she had nearly drowned and all her effort wasn’t even worth it , she was going to scream—
“Oh, right—here you go! The current nearly carried it away, so I caught it.” Jarah unwrapped the scarf from around his forearm, proffering it to her. “Hopefully it’s… Not too wet from the river?”
It was definitely too wet from the river, but at that point, Nell didn’t care. She held it close, tears beading in the corner of her eyes, before she stuffed it in one pocket in favor of grabbing her friends into a group hug. “I thought I was gonna die! How did you guys know to look for me?”
“You weren’t back by the time the sun set, so we figured you either got distracted or carried away,” Miri said matter-of-factly. She stood there awkwardly for a moment, then reciprocated the hug. “...I’m really, really glad you’re alright, by the way.”
Nell had no idea how long the three of them embraced, but it couldn’t have been more than a few minutes before she stepped back and brushed some drying mud off of her pants. “Aw man, it’s already night… My dad’s gonna kill me anyways!”
Jarah glanced at the moon, which was half-hidden by foliage and slowly climbing up from the horizon. “Maybe if we hurry, we won’t get in too much trouble?”
“Sounds good to me,” Miri said, taking out her charm and fidgeting with it until it began to emit light. “Let’s go!”
And so the three adventurers took off into the night, winding their way through the brambles and verdure. Though the woods were dark and dense, and they were all miserably cold and exhausted, their hearts glowed just as brightly as the tiny light which guided them back home.