Murky Mirkwood
Disclaimer in first chapter.
A/N: I will try (key word that, TRY) to update with at least 1,000 words each week.
▬§▬§▬§▬She was on her feet, that was good. Best take any threats ready for fight or flight. There was something solid at her back and that was even better, one less direction to worry about in the event of an attack. Faith settled herself against the rough bark of the tree gingerly and took stock.
Her head was... fuzzy. Yes, that was the word. Her vision was blurred at the edges and her nose felt stuffed up, all she could smell was blood. She licked her lips and grimaced at the faint coppery taste in her mouth.
Faith looked at the trees that surrounded her with undisguised confusion. First of all, the last thing she remembered was a wall of televisions, and before
that... Her eyes went wide with surprise and her breath started to hitch in her throat:
before that? She cast back and found that the last few years were all but gone. Everything since her Calling was a murky haze of pain and anguish.
Not so different from when I was a kid, then, she reflected. That thought brought up her formative years and she winced before shoving those images back down. She remembered her childhood, boy did she ever! She took a moment to wonder what kind of sick fuck would take the time to do a mind wipe and leave her with all the shitty memories, taking the good.
The Mayor... that was pretty much a blank. All she got from that was a quick flash of a blindingly white grin and a shiny black screen, but she could recall vague feelings of safety and comfort. She wrapped her arms around herself and glanced down.
Where the fuck are my- She slowly let her gaze extend beyond her trunk and acknowledged at last what her senses had been trying to tell her. She plucked at the shirt and pants that had gone from slightly snug to way-too-big with nerveless fingers.
Oh - my - god... Faith shut her eyes tightly, teeth clenched hard as her head fell back against the tree with a thump. Her fingers tightened into fists and she screamed, long and loud.
Throat burning, she went limp against the tree and tried to get her breath back. Faith hissed as she flexed her fingers and grinned a little at the eight shallow crescent-shaped cuts in a line across the centers of her palms. Her sudden movements made something tighten on her chest. She pulled the collar of her shirt away from her neck and looked down at the glowing red insect sitting on her breastbone.
It chattered at her and she shrieked, flinching back and cracking her head against her tree as it flew out of her shirt, into her face and then away. Faith watched the red spark disappear into the mist and sat on the ground, curling into a foetal ball between two knotted roots.
She'd lost her memory, she didn't know where she was, and she was a kid again.
"I fucking hate my life."
▬§▬§▬§▬Two days later she was dirtier, hungrier, and more thirsty than she'd been when she'd arrived in this strange, seemingly endless wood. On the plus side she'd managed to make a rudimentary spear from a piece of wood, sharpened on one end from crude scraping with her belt buckle.
Her t-shirt was now long enough on her body to work as a sort of short tunic, she'd fashioned her pants into a backpack by knotting the bottoms of both legs and draping the crotch of the jeans over her shoulders. She still wore the shoes, even thought they were far too big for her suddenly-tiny feet. Faith had torn off her shirt sleeves and bound them around the shoes to keep them on, using her shoelaces as a belt and a grip for her spear instead of their original intended purpose.
She might not have started out as Gloria Girl-Scout, but she'd managed to figure out a few things about her surroundings pretty darn quick. First and most important rule to surviving-in-this-huge-frickin'-wood was to hide when the birds stopped singing. Lack of pretty birdsong meant that the giant demon spiders were near and since the spiders were roughly twenty feet tall and four
times that across, hiding was really her only option. There were a lot of knooks and crannies at the bases of the trees, and besides that the spiders tended to stay off the ground whenever possible.
The first time the spiders had come she'd been ill-prepared and still freaking out about her childish body. Her hiding place had been... less than adequate, leaving her with a perfect view of the gargantuan arachnids. They had stuck around for hours while she shivered in her hole and after they were gone she practically dove into the first puddle she found. She scrubbed the remnants of blood from her nose and mouth - judging from the amount her trip to this godforsaken hole had not been an easy one - and thanked every god she could think of for her acute hearing.
She couldn't really call it 'Slayer hearing', not anymore. Faith wasn't a Slayer, how could she be what with regressing to pre-Potential age? The Slayer had to be past, or in the midst of, puberty and by Faith's reckoning her newfound youthful visage had at least three years to go before she would have to even
think of shaving her legs or dealing with PMS.
The second rule she'd learned was that water was her friend and fire was bad. The closer she was to a pond or pool, the more likely it was that she'd find something somewhat edible. Faith had managed to scrounge up a few mushrooms and roots from around water's edge, and had even speared a rabbit early on her first day in the place... which had led to the discovery of the second part of rule number two.
In this dark, damp wood, anything bright and hot drew unwanted attention. Her first attempt at a fire had drawn the GD-spiders, and they'd stuck around for almost an hour, crawling all over and, she would've sworn, almost
sniffing at the air. They'd eaten her rabbit, too, stupid eight-legged freaks. After her second fire had led to another six hours in a cramped and musty hole, she'd stuck to mushrooms.
Still, she was thirsty, and a little leery of trying to drink from the dank puddles and small ponds she'd found. There really wasn't much edible plant-life to speak of near the water, so she had been forced to continue foraging around.
Her third rule for this godforsaken wood was don't go out at night. What with the GD-spiders and her inability to light a fire, traveling at night would have been impossible anyways. The real reason that it was a 'rule' was that she had discovered something very interesting the first time night had fallen.
In the dark, her skin started to glow.
▬§▬§▬§▬Gandalf frowned and crouched down. Beside the small pool was a set of tracks in the mud. The tread was long and broad, too large for a dwarf or an elf. The shallow depth of the mark bespoke a light-weight creature, obviously of some intelligence to be accoutered with footwear.
The wizard sighed deeply and pushed his hat back off his forehead to scratch his scalp. Between the doings at Dol Guldur and a strange creature invading the Mirkwood, Thrandulion would not be pleased with the news he brought.
He set his staff in the mud and stood, looking up at the sky. He had, at best, another three hours of daylight to track this new devilry. Best make a good start before the dark, and that which lurked within it, awoke.
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