There is nothing outside the forest, 2/5

The details are blurred and faded now.

  It was the day we… lost… it is too sad to say.

  One moment we were walking, the next, falling.

  My arms flailed out and caught the ground.

  Desperately, I leld the leafy earth, my feet kicking at the emptiness of the pit that had opened.

  There were cries of pain.

  Shocked, I pulled myself up and looked down at horror and blood.

  My brother was murdered… my loyal brother the aurox lay impaled on cruel spikes, thrashing, bleeding, dying.

  Tomm too, lay impaled through his arms and legs. He stared up at me, his eyes wild with pain.

  “Run,” he yelled.

  The orc were coming. Maybe I obeyed Tomm. Maybe my instinct compelled me to run like a frightened rabbit.

  In blind panic, I climbed up a tree and hid… Looking down, I saw the orc inspecting their trap. Silent tears ran down my cheeks and I knew I was watching Tomm’s last moments.

  How is it that we must be born in pain, live in chaos and fall again into darkness so easily.

  As I watched them kill him, I asked myself, is there anything more to life than this?

  When the orc had finished with him, I scurried down from my hiding place and cut off his head.

  It had to be done. I cut off the head of the might I might have loved because that how we show kindred with the dead. I placed tomm’s head atop a yew, and hoped dearly to see him again in his next life.

  I walked on. There was nothing left to do but to walk on- to some thing outside of all this.

  It was a slow walk, and intolerably lonely. Constantly dodging orc and orc camps.

  Often there were marker stones beside rivers and the tallest trees.

  ‘FEY DIE HERE.’

  They read, or…

  ‘NO FEY.’

  ‘NO WELCOME FOR FEY.’

  ‘FRE- FREE OR DIE.’

  I suspected that I understood the word Fey by then, but still I walked on. What did I have to lose?

  There was another great river, to wide and fast to cross. Lookin for a ford, I found some thin else.

  Some thing new.

  A path made of stone, in the air! Maybe a home for a river creature… but so clearly built to cross the river.

  Stealthily, I crept closer. It was made of stone, cut into blocks. It was shaped like a crescent moon, lying with its points touching the earth.

  The People do not build such things. The orc, surely, could not.

  It both amazed and shocked me, yet still I walked across it.