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Flora Rose In the Forest of Never
Of Things New and Otherwise Part 2

Of Things New and Otherwise Part 2

When we were both ready, Ethan led the way out of camp and into the woods. While I was still getting caught up in different plants and on different thorns or branches, it wasn’t as bad as it had been the day before. In fact, I could sense a bit of Ant around me, which in turn seemed to calm the plants down and let me through.

Why Ethan could get through things was beyond me, though as with most things that was a question for a different day and under different circumstances.

It didn’t take very long to make it to the staging grounds, which was still forest and where I’d been the day before and I could sort of sense where the faerie ring had been, but neither of those places was where we were heading. Though I did slow down, briefly, at the faerie ring to see if I could see or sense something about it.

Because Ethan was moving so fast, there wasn’t enough time and I ended up following him rather than trying to suss out the faerie ring. If I could do that, I realized, it might answer its own set of questions in regard to where I was and how to fix things.

We did stop when we left the forest along a bank of the river and in sight of what used to be a very impressive castle. The foundation was still there and I could see the footings for the draw bridges were also there, beyond that and as I remembered, the entirety of the place was beyond boringly mundane.

“This is it,” Ethan said.

“I know.”

“I was just thinking it’s been a long time,” he said.

“I was here two days ago.” I said. “Except, two days ago there was a tall castle and battlements, drawbridges and soldiers, as well as people and a city on the other side of the river.”

“There was a city on the other side?” Ethan asked.

I looked at him wondering how he didn’t know there was or had been a city next to the castle. Times had changed, I got that, but even before I’d gotten trapped by the faerie ring cities grew and died, but the remnants rarely disappeared and a big city was going to have a lot of remnants still standing.

“We can’t get past the river,” he said. “Though there is an entire line of thought and scholarship that suggests there had to be a city to support the castle. We just can’t find it or see it.”

“It’s right there,” I said, moving downriver and pointing to the clearly old and crumbling buildings on the other side.

Ethan followed me and looked where I was pointing.

“Just trees and more trees,” he said.

“Really?” I asked.

More and more interesting.

“You can’t see the other side and you can’t get to the castle,” I said. Ethan responded as though I’d asked a question, which I hadn’t. I ignored him and started looking more closely at the ground.

“What are you doing?”

“Looking for things,” I said.

“What kinds of things?”

“I’m not sure yet,” I said. “It’s one of those things that you know when you see it, but you can’t know it until you see it.”

Even though Ethan wasn’t saying anything, I could tell what I was doing was making him uncomfortable. Enough so that he’d set his backpack on the ground and started pulling out things, some of which he was using to follow where I’d already been looking at the ground.

I had no idea what Ethan was trying to accomplish, it looked beyond ridiculous to me, but then not being able to see a clearly visible city across a river was also ridiculous to the point of absurdity.

“What are you doing?” I finally asked, a little frustrated.

“I don’t know. I guess it’s one of those things you know when you see it, but not before you can see it,” he said.

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I wanted to say something, to do something to indicate I neither appreciated his humor nor thought him cute and to suggest what he could and should do to himself, but nothing came to mind. Someone really ought to figure out a way to signal extreme displeasure that doesn’t require any vocalization.

Without any kind of signal, I glared at him and then continued doing what I was doing. While it was true that I had no idea what I was looking for, it was also untrue that I didn’t have any idea what I was looking for. Since the problem was clearly magical and Ethan seemed to be unaware of magic or what it could do while also, somehow, almost entirely reliant on technology and science. I assumed as he was still avoiding any questions I had regarding the forest, his world, and more.

There was a point in looking around that I wondered if neither of us had any idea what we were looking for and by not finding what we were individually looking for, maybe we needed a new strategy. Except for a new strategy we also needed to understand each other, and understanding didn’t seem to be a high priority on Ethan’s side of the equation.

“Why don’t we take a break,” he said almost like he was reading my mind. Which he wasn’t because he can’t and couldn’t and to think otherwise was just crazy sauce covered in whackadoodle.

Without any other real options, I decided he was probably right, but don’t tell him that, and I sat down on a rock and opened my pack. Inside was food in addition to which we’d added some foraged plants and mushrooms and berries and nuts.

I took out the container of food Ethan had packed for my lunch and opened it. Inside was some meat and bread, cheese and other foods I didn’t recognize.

We ate in silence, which seemed mostly nice, and as we ate I started to hum along to some song in my head. I didn’t remember the name of the tune or even when or where I’d heard it, the sound just seemed to comfort me in some way.

“When the jackalope sings,” Ethan said out of nowhere.

“What?”

“That song is called When the Jackalope Sings,” he said. “Is that a song they played where you’re from?”

“I don’t know,” I said, though what I was thinking was that I didn’t remember and somehow all of this felt wrong. “Jackalopes are one of those things that maybe do and maybe don’t exist when I’m from.”

Ethan nodded and looked down into his container. It didn’t look like he’d been eating, though I couldn’t tell. He did seem interested in making sure I was eating, which was nice. Just not, you know, always aware of what he was doing while coming across as too aware of everything around him.

“Jackalopes are faerietales,” he said after some time. “They aren’t real and yet we have this song and there are other references to them as fantastic creatures and guides. The lyrics to the song tell about what happens when a jackalope sings and what it means to the person who hears it.”

“What happens?”

“I don’t really know. They are somehow different. Though, when I think about it, they may have been different before the song and then become more after they hear it. That’s confusing. I think the best answer I have is I don’t know.”

I wanted to ask Ethan what the lyrics to the song were, but hesitated to do so. I was also resisting the urge to tell him about Ant, the jackalope from the night before, or our conversation. I could still tell that Ethan didn’t really believe me, he also didn’t have a better explanation.

Regardless of what era or millennia you live in, there will always be people who think too much and too much about when they live and what it means.

Ethan was clearly too much of a thinker. He wasn’t capable of seeing the forest for the trees. Or the city across the river. That one was what bothered me the most. Not being able to see something obvious and real was something new for me.

I wanted to explore my own thoughts and figure out what was going on but didn’t really have the patience to figure out the best way to get around Ethan’s mental defenses. The problem I kept coming up against was that I’d never needed to bypass someone’s mental defenses and without magic and my powers I couldn’t figure out how to move forward.

“We should probably head back to camp,” Ethan said. “The light disappears pretty quickly this time of year. We can come back in the morning.”

I looked from him to the sky and the mountains. There was still hours before the sun would drop behind the mountains and at least an hour more before full dark. I couldn’t see any indications of inclement weather, and suddenly wondered what it was Ethan was trying to do by leaving the river in favor of the camp.

“I was thinking,” I said as I stood up and gathered my backpack, “that we should move the camp closer to the river so we don’t have to travel as far.”

“No,” he said, as though that was the only answer and like there was no need for an explanation.

In my mind, if you want to do something, being as close as possible to that thing is the best idea. Before I was transported through time, when I wanted to mess with people I had to be near them and the more I wanted to mess with specific people, the closer and more established I needed to be.

Case in point, the castle that’s no longer a castle in a river that somehow blocks Ethan’s view of the other side, was a spot where I lived, off and on, for hundreds of years. Had the different monarchs, kings and queens and the odd emperor, not been so much fun to humiliate and tease and change, then I wouldn’t have spent so much time in a room only I could access in a castle that was designed to stand for millennia.

By the time I’d gotten to this part of my thinking, we’d been walking for a while, what felt like a different route to the camp, and had stopped more than once to collect wild edibles including wild onions.

“When did you say was the castle razed? I asked.