It was back in his living room, most likely sitting on the armrest of his couch, that Cormac was sure he had left his phone. And of course it would take not but a minute to run out the door in this para-dimensional forest glade to go get it and not be left pacing about in said glade trying to keep occupied and not fall asleep until Ixia woke up.

“Just have to go and grab it.” Cormac thought to himself, pacing around the central pool in the eerie quiet and eerier moonlight. “Not even a minute.”

He looked down to Ixia, still peacefully sleeping in her pool of completely still water. Not even a breeze in here to disturb the surface.

“Just gotta pick the right time.” He thought, making another lap around her for good measure. “Juuuust gotta go now and not later because the more I wait the closer I get to her waking up and not being here for her. Then she’ll know what a pathetic excuse for a guardian I am. So I gotta go now.”

And with that Cormac broke from his circling of the sleeping dryad and strode over to the plain white doorway in the woods with pure determination in every step carrying him towards his goal.

And pulled an about face mere steps from the door without missing a step and marched right back to the pool, coming to a stop as he put his hands on his hips and stared at the canopy and the cracks of moonlight peeking through.

“But there’s probably no reception in here.” Cormac shook his head, staring up into nothing. “So I would get it and come back and she would have woken up and my phone would have no signal and she’d cry and banish me out into the woods here and then I’d be lost in the spooky woods forever until I die which really wouldn’t be long probably unless there’s a curse that would keep me alive and wandering forever.”

His hands slumped off his hips, and his fingers drummed on his thighs as he looked down to her again. “Of course there would be a curse. That’s gotta be a thing. Especially for failed Guardians. Fail your dryad, Lost In The Woods For Eternity Curse. And really I’m on thin ice already. As soon as she has the modern world figured out there’s no need for me.”

Cormac resumed his pacing around her pool. “No. No that’s not her. Not like that. And she would understand if I was just grabbing my phone. Just like she would understand if I had to use the bathroom. She would absolutely understand my pathetic needs getting in the way of Guardian duties, whatever those are.”

He had not asked, as he didn’t want to appear any more foolish than he already was. At some point, that would probably bite him in the ass. But if he kept avoiding that bite then it did not count in the slightest.

“And so...I just have to be pathetic when she’s not looking!” He thought to himself with a triumphant smile and holding a clenched fist aloft as he stared off into the night. “Wait. No that’s a terrible idea.”

His triumphant smile remained as he glanced down at his watch, which obliterated any sense of triumph and replaced it with open eyed horror. “AN HOUR?! I’VE SPENT AN HOUR JUST PACING AROUND IN INDECISION AND JUST FUCKING-”

Cormac took a long, deep inhale through his nose as he stopped in place and let his arms hang at his side. He checked Ixia once more, nodding to himself as he confirmed that she was still asleep and safe.

And then took off into a sprint out through the doorway standing in the middle of this forest, grabbed the doorframe to swing around out the door directly next to it leading into his living room without stopping, kept up his sprint as he saw his phone there on the armrest, grabbed it mid sprint as he skid to a halt on bare feet flecked with bits of para-dimensional dirt, then sprinted back while repeating his action of grabbing the doorframe with his free hand to keep momentum while sprinting back into that forest glade.

To find absolutely nothing had changed.

His breathing was still steady as he blinked a few times while staring at Ixia, compliments of morning jogs, and he then looked from one end of this forest glade to another and found that everything was exactly as he had left it and not a single bad thing had happened.

Cormac held his phone up, tapping a button at it’s side that lit it up and told him that not only was an open door enough to bring wi-fi and reception into a magical forest but this bold action had taken him not even half a minute after his entire hour of deliberation.

“There’s a lesson here.” The Guardian thought to himself as he sat down in the dirt. “I think I may have become the most literal case of missing the forest for the trees, and if I ever admit that to anyone I will die.”

Just to be sure, he looked up the definition for that idiom and was halfway between debating if that phrase really did apply to this situation when his phone buzzed with a call from an unknown number.

He stared at the phone as it buzzed away with slowly blinking eyes and resigned frown as he sighed and answered it.

“Hello?” He asked the mysterious caller in a low voice while keeping an eye on Ixia.

“Do you really think you’re doing enough for her? Or-”

“Nope.”

And he hung up on the deep voiced mystery caller, hitting the power button to put his phone to sleep as he kept staring at Ixia in unblinking silence.

The phone buzzed again, and with a grimace Cormac looked down to confirm it was still the unknown caller.

He hit ignore just as it buzzed again, resting his phone on his knee while noting all the subtle colors of the flower currently blooming from Ixia’s leaf hair. Were the colors different this time or was it just the light of the “moon” here? It looked almost like an orchid with pastel blues and yellows and he could have sworn that there had been some pink tones in there previously.

The phone buzzed twice, which Cormac recognized as an indicator he had a new voicemail. He opened his phone and searched for “orchids” to see if that flower was anything of this world or it was pure magic.

Hey.

The text notification slid down from the top of the screen, looking to be from a long string of numbers.

Cormac was more and more certain that it was the moonlight altering the color of that flower. He put a hand to his chin, scratchy from some stubble of indecision of whether he was going to go for more facial hair while being certain that he remembered more purple in those flowers, so the pale otherworldly moonlight was most likely the culprit as he gave himself a satisfied nod and smile.

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I know you’re getting these.

The next notification lasted half a second at the top of the screen before Cormac flicked it away, next searching for if the color he remembered Ixia’s flower from earlier was more of a deep blue or a purple.

Indigo maybe? No that didn’t sound right.

Cormac leaned back, stretching this way and that as his phone buzzed once more with yet another text notification.

Is this proper behavior for a Guardian?

He tapped at the notification, typing up a quick reply as he stared at the screen.

What u wearin?

He hit send with the smallest of grins. No further messages in any form were sent, and Cormac whiled away the hours on his phone or getting up to stretch his legs as he walked around the small forest glade. Some time around when he was yawning every few minutes, Ixia moved in her pool and her eyes shot open. Whatever panic had startled her in those initial few seconds vanished as she saw an exhausted looking Cormac smiling back at her with his head propped up on his palm and elbow resting on his knee.

“Sleep well?” Cormac asked, stretching again with another yawn.

Ixia pulled herself up and on to land, legs still dangling in the water as she sat at the edge of the pool and looked across to Cormac. “I did...and thank you.”

“Hmm?” Cormac’s brain was caught between naked wet dryad, exhaustion, and that earlier incident to have his wits running on the slow side.

“You didn’t have to wait here, but I’m glad you did.” The dryad said with a warm smile.

Cormac returned her smile with his own sleepy version, waving it off. “It’s right there in my job description. And on that note, I also tested out your magical security system!”

Ixia retained her smile as she tilted her head and raised a brow slightly. “What?”

“Yeah something very obviously scary and supernatural tried to call.” Cormac said with yet another yawn as he held up his phone and pulled up the call history. “Tried the whole cryptically ominous thing, but you said my apartment was secure so I put that to the test. And seeing as how I’m not dead right now it looks like this place really is secure! Electromagnetic Radiation of varying sorts can still get in...also cable internet. But all those probably malicious entities can do is keep spamming me with messages!”

Ixia’s mouth was hanging open as her brows had pushed together in great concern.

“Okay,” Cormac sighed, hanging his head. “I really should have waited until you were woken up more to hit you with that but I would rather you be aware of the developing situation. Also that there is a situation.”

The dryad shook off her daze and a bit of remaining water on her leaves and regained her smile and a light laugh before she finally answered an increasingly perplexed Cormac. “I woke from a slumber to find that I am still safe and someone was looking out for me and doing a fine job of dealing with any threats that arise.”

Cormac chuckled, turning a shade more red as he looked away. “I may have agitated them slightly, but I feel pretty confident that they can’t get to us here or they would have. So both of us can sleep easy now!”

“You look like you need some sleep.” Ixia observed with a sympathetic smile.

“I need some sleep.” Cormac admitted.

The dryad stood up, pulling her legs out from the water and reached a hand out to the human. He didn’t even bother to argue as he let her help him to his feet and started getting ready for bed after making his way out of the forest glade. Ixia had insisted that between ensuring her plants were developing as intended and a number of streaming services that she felt quite confident about navigating that she would be fine for however long he needed to rest.

And most importantly, she swore to resist all temptation to watch any episodes of their various series without him. Which got a laugh from him shortly before he passed out and the dryad was left alone for the night as was usual while her Guardian slept.

Checking in on her plants, they would indeed be up and about soon enough. No more than a day or so and they were developing just fine. Which left her with the whole night to herself, as she curled up on the couch and looked for something to watch on T.V. that she and Cormac had no plans of watching together. She picked some random “modern day” show, reasoning that even if this was something of an idealized version of the modern day world it would at least provide some much needed insight and acclimatization right?

Sitting alone on the small couch in silence in the dimly lit living room as she read over a few descriptions of shows available. The one about the teenage girl dealing with drama at school and the drama of her scientist father always being too busy sounded good. Right up until she got to the part about her going into space with visiting aliens.

“I should save that one to watch with Cormac.” She lamented before stopping herself mid thought, setting the remote down as she leaned back against the couch.

In these moments of having nothing else to keep her occupied, her situation tended to hit her like an avalanche. Her forest was still under the reign of malevolent forces, all humans she had known were long gone, any beings of the Veiled world were...in serious question. And she had only Cormac. She had been lucky, so far.

Her flower could have gone undisturbed for millennia more. It could have been finally destroyed. Her rescuer could have been someone wicked. He could have said no to becoming a Guardian. And her choice in Cormac could have been a poor one.

Picking up the remote once more, she mindlessly scrolled through more modern day dramas and wondered what exactly “high school” was as she lamented still needing to learn much of this world.

Really he was struggling to keep up with her as much as she was struggling to keep up with him, when she thought about it. Cormac was teaching her about the modern world every day and yet she had been slacking in returning the favor to the man she dragged into this. He never said no to it, but the more he revealed himself to be lost in The Veiled world the more she felt guilt over that. That all she knew as simple fact was completely unknown to him yet far more perilous than not knowing the basics of clothes.

Ixia physically cringed as she just decided to put on the first show she could find, and really only listened to it as a sound and not as words or concepts. Something about some private investigator searching for missing persons, and the more she watched the more it seemed suspiciously like there was an air of what modern humans would call supernatural in this. But still the detective managed well enough with a crafty mind and quick wit.

She looked back to the door leading to Cormac’s room, cracked open just a bit to let her hear anything if needed but shut enough to not wake him with the noise of the T.V. she had down low. Her eyes sagged a bit, and she turned the T.V. off before producing a pair of dulled wooden knives from her flesh before carefully moving aside his coffee table.

If she had dragged him into this, the least she could do is start teaching him more about what he had gotten into, and more about how to defend himself.