According to her grandad’s books, Rochelle had read that mushrooms preferred dark, damp environments, out of direct sun and with just the right combination of nutrients to thrive. Unfortunately for them, the entire wooded area that made up Pleasant Valley happened to be a dark, damp environment, practically void of direct sunlight. Brittle normally would have been dismayed knowing their mission was, by all rights, darn near impossible. But dismayed was the last thing he felt.
He was having the time of his life. The hours galloped past unnoticed as the pair raced beneath the sagging pines in search of their treasure. Fearless Rochelle led the way, scrambling up every nook, sliding down every cranny, whilst turning over every mossy log along the way. Lastar slunk reluctantly along behind them, utilizing a combination of shadows and plant life to disguise his presence. Brittle caught the demigod’s movements out of the corner of his eye more than once. Lastar’s glamour changed with his worsening mood. He started the journey as a chicken and then, after nearly getting snatched up in the talons of a hungry hawk, shapeshifted into a toad, and then a fox, before settling on the grumpiest forest animal of all, the almighty skunk.
Overhead, the patches of clear sky peeking through the thick treetops gradually turned from light blue to brilliant shades of pink and orange. Brittle and Rochelle took no notice. More hours passed. The stark pinks and oranges gave way to dusky blue, before it too was swallowed by the void of darkness. A blanket of black velvet draped across the night sky, stretching from one end of the horizon to the next, with pale starlight shining through the pinprick holes within its cloth.
“Goodness me.” Rochelle reached her scraggly, sap-encrusted arms into the air over her head with a yawn. “I’m bushed. I better get home.”
“So soon?” Brittle said.
“Soon? Brittle, it’s practically the middle of the night. Grandad will worry if I dally any longer.” Despite the insistence that she needed to be on her way, Rochelle still hung around. She shifted her weight from leg to leg nervously. “What about you? Are you going to head back to your cottage?”
“Don’t worry about me.” Brittle waved her away with a confidence he fervently hoped looked more convincing than it felt.
“You could always stay at my place, you know. I’d have to hide you, but the old hayloft in the barn isn’t half bad. I stay up there sometimes on clear summer nights. The straw’s only a little bit itchy. There’s usually cats to keep you company. Better than the mice, anyway.” Rochelle’s attempts to make the barn sound more enticing fell flat on their face. Her nervous smile seemed to indicate that she knew this as well. “Okay, maybe it’s not great, but at least it’s not far. See that peak? Our house is nestled along the base. Couldn’t miss it if you tried.”
Brittle looked to where she pointed and saw a claw-shaped rock formation towering above the trees. Bathed in pale moonlight, the peak’s stony gray sides glowed against the dark like a ghostly pillar. Kinda of creepy, if he was being honest. Which was why Brittle was extra careful to turn down Rochelle’s invitation as politely as possible.
“Thanks, but I’ll be okay,” he assured her.
“You sure?”
The forest couldn’t be any worse than spending a night stuck at the bottom of a ravine, Brittle supposed. Certainly better than a mouse-infested hayloft. “I’m sure. Meet me tomorrow at the pools?”
“Tomorrow,” Rochelle agreed as she turned to leave. Her clomping footsteps carried her fast and far, disappearing from sight in a mere matter of clumsy strides. Her voice called out behind her, echoing amongst the trees. “Goodnight!”
Lastar came waddling out of the underbrush once certain she was gone. The demigod’s black and white fur was puffed in irritation. “Finally,” he chittered, gnashing his pointed teeth together. “I’m cold, I’m hungry, and I’m missing my bed. Let’s go home.”
Brittle’s gaze swept across the forest floor, searching for an ideal spot to hunker down for the night. A hollowed tree or stump would be most ideal, but he’d settle for the inside of a mossy log if needed. “Go ahead, Lastar.”
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“This way then.” Lifting his tail, Lastar padded off into the underbrush under the false assumption Brittle would follow. The skunk reemerged several seconds later, glassy eyes gleaming bright with outrage. “I don’t care how important you are, young sir. I will not be carrying you. Let’s go.”
“I’m not going.”
The skunk stamped his front foot. “You can’t be serious. It’s the middle of the night, Brittle. Where are we going to sleep?”
Brittle, once more, was forced to state the painfully obvious. “Out here.”
“Outside? Out in the open? Are you mad?”
“You sleep outside all the time,” Brittle reminded Lastar.
“In a burrow under the front steps. Not like out here.” Lastar lifted his snout as he spoke, casting a wary eye from tree to tree, as though expecting something to come hurtling down out of the shadowy boughs at any given moment. “This is the wild, the lawless, the unknown. There are all sorts of creepy crawlies lurking about, just waiting to get their claws in me.”
“I’ve finally figured it out,” Brittle announced as he started off in the direction opposite of home. Moonlight filtering down from the treetops lit his path with pools of pale, eerie light. Brittle could see a promising prospect up ahead in the form of a large pine with what looked like a sizable hollow hidden between its twisting roots. “You’re powers, I mean.”
“This should be rich,” Lastar muttered as he padded along in Brittle’s wake.
“Lastar, Demigod of Needless Worrying.”
“My worrying is not needless. It’s completely warranted.”
“Fine. Lastar of Completely Warranted Worrying,” Brittle replied. His wee mind took the idea and ran, exhibiting the sort of unbridled creativity that often accompanied the stage right before complete and utter exhaustion. The last hurrah, Brittle supposed, before it was light’s out for an indeterminate amount of time. “You grow in power each time an anxious parent frets over their child. Or when the farmer’s harvest comes up short. Or–”
Lastar cut in, contributing his own thoughts in the form of a pitiful wail. “When a naive bog log beast insists on spending a night in the forest when he has a perfectly safe home to return to!”
“See? Fitting, isn’t it?”
“If that were the case, boy, I would be the most powerful demigod in existence. I’d probably be able to ascend to the ranks of full god within the month! Better yet, I could cut that time in half simply by spending it with you.”
Brittle reached the large pine and was pleasantly surprised to find he could squeeze his body into the hollow with a bit of finagling. The inside was blanketed in moss and dead leaves with an overpowering stench of rotted wood. Quite cozy, all things considered. There was even enough room for his disgruntled skunk companion.
Brittle patted the spongy ground beside him. “Come on. It’s as good of a bed as any.”
“Ha!” Lastar curled up at Brittle’s feet, tucking his pointed snout into the fluff of his black and white striped tail. “I miss having an actual bed. A nice straw mattress. Pillows…blankets…”
Brittle soon drifted asleep to the drone of Lastar’s voice as he listed all of the things he missed most about the indoors. From Brittle’s brief summation, Lastar missed everything but the kitchen sink.
It was still dark outside when Brittle awoke a few hours later with a jolt. A warm sensation wriggled beneath the bark at the back of his neck. Brittle gathered his spindly legs beneath him, suddenly overcome with the feeling that he was being watched. He sat and waited, counting the seconds as they slowly ticked by, listening for sounds of movement. Other than the breeze rattling the trees and a few chirping insects, he heard nothing. Eventually, when his panic settled, Brittle crept forward, careful not to disturb Lastar, and peeked his head tentatively out of the hollow.
He gasped at what he saw.
A series of soft blue, glowing lights hovered just outside of the hollow. The lights stretched on in a continuous line through the dark forest as far as Brittle could see. If he didn’t know any better, he would have sworn it was a path, beckoning him to follow. Logic decreed that he should have been terrified, and yet, Brittle felt a ripple of excitement instead. In fact, if it wasn’t for the squiggly warmth buzzing at the back of his neck, warning him something wasn’t quite right, he might have scampered out after it without a second thought.
“Lastar,” he whispered, nudging the sleeping skunk awake. “Look outside. Do you see it?”
Lastar blinked the weariness from his eyes. “What in the world?”
The answer, Brittle realized, was almost as unbelievable as the hovering blue lights surrounding their tree. “I think we might have found the forest sprites.”
“No,” Lastar said as his fur bristled in trepidation. “They found us.”