About the time I finished eating all of the food, I found myself still hungry, physically and in other unexplainable ways, and I started looking around for more.
That's when I heard the noises from the forest, to the south (ordinal directions are still ordinal directions). Looking around for a place to hide and not immediately seeing one, I found the closest bush that looked like it was thick enough to let me hide behind it and again found myself in a very unladylike situation. I was jumping head over teakettle into the brush and hoping my rather ornate dress didn't get caught on anything or, worse, was visible through the bush.
In my precarious position, I shifted around to see a tall man walk into the clearing and set down a bag he’d been wearing on his back. He ducked into the tent and out again and then looked around at his campsite as though he was aware something had changed but didn’t know what. It took him a moment to see the food bag was in the ground and empty and then another minute to look around for who or what, I was hoping he was leaning toward what, was responsible.
Since the seasons were in flux, it didn’t take him long to spot my out of place, out of season, and out of fashion dress through the underbrush.
“Who are you and what did you do with my food?” He said.
I didn’t reply.
“I can see you. Just, you know, tell me,” he said.
“I’d rather prefer to decline such a request and ask that you pretend not to see me as I walk away,” I said.
“You’re kidding, right?”
“No. You may now imagine some creature, either mundane or magical, has taken your supplies and now you must do whatever you can to ….”
“I’m coming over there,” he said and true to his word he started walking toward me.
What bothered me, in that moment, was that he actually could see me and he wasn’t suddenly ignoring me and imagining whatever he liked when it came to who or what stole his food. In fact, I was beginning to breath faster and harder as he got closer because his mind should’ve taken care of everything I said and he wasn’t doing what I said.
People always do what I say.
Before I had time to pick myself up and run away, like someone chasing a small rabbit toward its hole, I’d barely shifted to sitting on my dress and feeling the cold before he was looming over me.
“Who are you?” He asked.
“Who are you?” I countered. It’s always best to counter an aggressive question with an aggressive question of one’s own. As I wasn’t thinking clearly, my question mirrored his, but at any other time I’m certain I would’ve had something better to ask.
“Who are you?” He repeated.
This time, probably because of the force of his words and some weird latent magical ability, I squeaked, “Flora Rose. I’m sure you’ve heard of me.”
He shook his head “No!,” and said, “My name is Ethan Black. Did you eat all of my food?”
I nodded.
Seriously, his name was Ethan Black. How lacking in creativity were the people who came up with that name.
Ethan didn’t wait for a response, instead, he stripped off the thick coat he was still wearing letting me see that he was slim and muscular, a tasty looking morsel if I could figure out what was wrong with my powers. As it was, I stood up, in no way gracefully (don’t you dare tell anyone) and started to follow Ethan back to his campsite. Where he walked through the underbrush and along animal trails with ease, I seemed to catch on everything with some plants almost seeming to jump in my way and delight in tearing away at my dress or scratching at my exposed skin.
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By the time I’d made it to Ethan, he was pulling out additional supplies, from where I had no idea, and setting up a second tent complete with cot and sleeping back. I watched him, expecting to see the tell-tale signs of magic, but there weren’t any. As far as I could tell, he was as mundane as mundane could be. Except for the fact that he’d created a second tent in the camp, set up a camp table and chairs, what looked like a small stove without a firebox, and other things.
When he was done, I’m sure my face was as dumbfounded as it could possibly be, he said, “There’s extra clothing in there. I’m not good with sizes so I’m hoping I got it close. Go ahead and change and then you can answer my questions and I’ll see whether or not you should be placed under protection while I finish my work.”
He had questions for me? Well la di da I had questions for him as well.
Not wanting to argue about who was going to ask what and when, I ducked into the second tent and sure enough, sitting on a cot were several sets of clothes. No dresses. All pants and shirts, a couple of coats, some boots, and other things. As I had no idea, really, what I was doing, I had to guess from the undergarments to the pants and shirt and a belt and socks and boots and it took me a lot longer to figure things out than I would’ve liked.
I thought about magicking up a mirror or some other way of seeing myself, but didn’t. And it wasn’t because I couldn’t. That kind of thinking will get you killed or at the very least maimed and then killed and then maimed again. I just decided to not see what I looked like and stepped out of the tent and saw Ethan cooking something over blue flames on the small stove.
He motioned for me to sit and then set a plate in front of me complete with utensils, the food he’d prepared smelling as delicious as it looked. “Tuck in,” he said. I didn’t need to be invited twice as I could feel my stomach rumbling with hunger thereby betraying any reason I could state to avoid eating the food he’d prepared.
No. I didn’t check for poison, though I normally don’t because poisons don’t work on me and I only ever check if I’m going to use some of the things normals try using on me back on them.
“Who is Flora Rose?” Ethan asked.
“Me,” I said around a mouthful of food.
“Who are you? You seemed to think I should instinctively know who you are.”
I wanted to let my mouth fall open agap, but resisted the urge. He didn’t know who I was. Was this a good thing or an incredibly inconvenient place to be in?
“Stories have been told about me and my antics for hundreds of years, thousands of years. Have you not heard the stories? Are you unfamiliar with the tricks and punishments extracted upon the innocent and guilty alike? I’m totally famous.”
Ethan shrugged. “I never studied classics and you sound like a story out of ancient literature or something.”
“Why are you here? This forest and the surrounding mountains are off limits to just about everyone. I’m only here on special disposition from the government.”
“I was at the castle,” I pointed through the woods to where I could still sense the castle, “and then I was following a lovely friend across the staging fields and into the woods and then I was here.”
There was no reason to lie. Either Ethan could help me or I’d leave. In either case, I wasn’t done here until I’d had a chance to properly use my powers on him and I hadn’t had that chance yet. Making up for him not listening to me was going to be fun.
“There was a castle in roughly that direction,” Ethan said, “which is part of the charter under which I’m here. But that castle hasn’t stood in a thousand or more years. No one has lived or spent any significant time in these woods in almost two hundred years.”
He sat down with a plate of his own and took a bite. When he swallowed, he said, “How did you get here?”
I didn’t know what to say. This man had never heard of me. The world I’d lived in was thousands of years ago, and nothing seemed to be working the way I wanted or expected it to.
“I think,” I said after eating more, “that I was tricked into a faerie circle.” I looked to see if Ethan understood what a faerie circle was and based on his expression, I said, “A faerie circle is a circle of different types of mushrooms that forms a portal from the real world into somewhere else. It’s said some of the Fae, the faerie folk, used these circles to trap their enemies or punish the guilty.”
“Faerie folk created a circle of mushrooms to trap you,” Ethan said.
I nodded.
“Did you do something that deserved this kind of punishment?” He asked.