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 Posted: Sun Apr 30, 2023 12:40 pm
 Ullita had made a mistake, and sometimes she would even go so far as to call it a serious lapse in judgment. A Big Mistake, if you will. And being bumped in the side by her new… “friends” before she could go to sleep after a long day made her more convinced than ever that this was All a Big Mistake.
“We can’t go to bed yet,” Jon said. “We have something we need to do.”
The terrible ferret on his antlers nodded. “Very important. We have to do this.”
Ullita sighed and shook herself out. “Fine,” she said. “But then we can go to sleep, yes?”
“In a few hours, yeah,” Jon said. “Once it’s over.”
“Once what’s over? And define ‘a few hours!’” But it was too late, Jon and Addie had all but disappeared into the darkness of the thick woods, the glowing patches on Jon’s body the only sign of where they had gone.
All she’d wanted was that lantern, that peculiar thing that Jon carried with him wherever she went. She wasn’t even sure what it was—he claimed it was just a pumpkin, but she wasn’t so sure. She’d never seen a pumpkin glow so bright! It had to be something else, she just couldn’t figure out what. Maybe he’d tell her if she stuck around. Yeah, that’s why she was sticking around. To find out. To get one of those little pumpkin lanterns for herself, to light the darkness, so she’d never again be lost in spooky woods. That’s why she was here, and no other reason. So she took a deep breath and followed them into the forest, deeper and deeper into the thick, overgrown woods Jon and Addie inhabited, and into the unknown.
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Posted: Sun Apr 30, 2023 12:43 pm
They’d found her not long after they left those other woods, the ones they’d awoken in mysteriously. Ironically, it hadn’t been all that far from their own native woods, just a few hours’ journey downstream of home. If they’d just followed that river, they could have made it. But instead they ran into Ullita, who’d tried to con them the moment she saw them. She’d claimed that she was The Voice who had led them around for one confusing and frustrating hour. Then, when they’d seen through her, she’d claimed to be a Servant of the Voice. When that ruse didn’t work, she’d admitted that she, too, had been a victim of it, and that she was horribly, hopelessly lost and had no idea where she was.
But she was sure she could find the way home if only she’d had some way to light her way…
Jon and Addie were bandits. They were tricksters and thieves, and they knew dishonesty and deceit as easily as they knew laughter. It hadn’t taken much to see through Ullita Samsa, and neither had it taken much to be fascinated by her. She wanted so badly to be like them, they could tell. So what else could they do? But invite her to come home with them, to learn the ways of the trail-robber with them, to teach her to, at the very least, learn how lie convincingly the next time she wanted something.
But there was more to their life than just playing tricks on people in the forest, tricking them into leaving their valuables behind. There was more to their lives than it seemed at first. So Jon was glad to hear the sound of the mare he’d already taken to thinking of as Sly Ullita Spring behind them.
“You think she’s pretty,” Addie said from between his antlers.
“She is pretty, Addie,” he said. “And she’s fun, like you are.”
Addie looked back at the pale mare following them through the woods, making noises of annoyance and irritation every time a branch snagged her jewelry. “She’s not like me at all!”
“Well, no, not exactly like you. No one is. But she’s more like you than you’d like to think. She’s got potential, Addie, and I’d like to see more of that.”
She sighed. “Okay.” She settled down between his antlers, the tip of her tail twitching. “You think she’s ready for this, then?”
He nodded. “Yeah. She’s ready for this.”
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Posted: Sun Apr 30, 2023 12:47 pm
They traveled through the woods until they came to a small hill in the center, a rocky outcropping that rose above the trees. It was large and flat, with one or two scraggly plants too thin to be trees but too tall, far too tall, to be bushes, clinging to the sides and the cracks of the rock on the top. The sun was just starting to set over the dense tree tops, and the sky turning shades of gold and pink and purple. Despite the brilliant colors in the sky, the light was still dim, the shadows purple and growing to cover the ground. Ullita was more grateful than ever for Jon’s glow, his hooves not doing much to light up the ground around him, but still doing something against the darkness. Overhead, the first stars were starting to come out, twinkling against the dark blue like flecks of mica in sand. It was getting dark up here, the only light remaining Jon’s lantern, which he set down at his hooves. The stallion, a patch of darkness against the burning sky, looked up at the heavens and sighed, as if disappointed by something.
Ullita watched him. “Why so sad?” she said.
He shook his head as the ferret slithered down his neck to sit on his shoulders. “No moon tonight,” he said simply. He looked over at her. “It’s an old friend. I miss it.” His eyes glowed faintly in the dark, a pale reflection of the lantern at his feet. Ullita stepped closer to the light.
“Yeah,” she said. “It’s a lot harder to see without the moon around.”
“Yeah.” He watched her for a few more seconds, then looked back up at the sky and sighed again.
For a while, no one said anything, and neither of the Soquili moved (though Addie twitched and turned on his shoulders). The sky grew darker and darker, the sun’s glow fading beneath the horizon and the last remains of its fiery mane giving way to the purples and blues of night. Finally, Ullita spoke. “So…are we just stargazing, or…?”
Jon twitched, as if dragged from a reverie. “I grew up in these woods,” he said at last. And his voice was…odd. It was normally light-hearted, bright, joking, insincere. But right now, it was—heavy was the only word Ullita could think of to describe it. Full of meaning, like he was telling her something he told few others. “This was my family’s homeland. Now I’m the last one.”
Ullita shifted, eyeing the shadows around them. “What happened to the others?”
He shook his head. “Gone. All either left or died off. Accidents,” he added quickly. “And wild animal attacks. But there’s been nothing like that in Gloomwood for a long time.”
She nodded, recognizing the name Jon and Addie had given the woods. “Are you sure?”
“Oh, yeah. Not since we started doing the Vigils.”
Ullita swallowed a sigh. “And the vigils are…?”
“What we’re doing right now. See, the thing about Gloomwood is…it’s cursed.”
“...You’re joking, right?” Ullita took an involuntary step closer to him. “Curses aren’t real y’know. They’re just, made up.”
“What about shifters, then?” Addie said. Ullita started. For a second, she’d forgotten about the ferret’s existence. Addie’s voice was tight, aggressive, and she only calmed down after Jon hushed her gently. “What do you call the curse of the shifter if not a curse?”
“Well, okay, sure, there’s that. But there aren’t other curses, I mean…you can’t really curse the land, that’s not how anything works.”
“Yeah,” Jon said. His voice hadn’t changed. He didn’t sound angry, or frustrated, or even haughty or superior. He just sounded distracted, like he had a lot to think about. “Everyone says that, but then things started happening to my family, and they only stopped once I started doing things. Things like this vigil.”
“Riiiight. The vigil.”
Jon’s head turned sharply and his look turned into a glare.
“No, no, the vigil’s important!” she said quickly. “Tell me more about the vigil!”
His eyes were still narrowed suspiciously, but he let it pass. “On nights of the new moon, we watch the sky until the sun—and the moon—rise again.”
Ullita frowned. “So we wait until the sunrise, or the moonrise…?”
Addie snorted. “They happen at the same time,” she said. “New moons rise at sunrise.”
Ullita glared at her. “How was I supposed to know about that?!”
Before Addie could reply, Jon stepped in. “Now you know. We’re all going to learn a lot of things, okay? Please stop arguing.”
The mare blinked. “Did you just say ‘please’?”
Jon ignored her question. “Once the sun and moon rise, we can sleep again. But someone has to watch the sky until the sun and moon rise again.”
“And this will prevent us from being cursed for the rest of the month?”
He nodded. “This and a few other rituals,” he said. “But this one’s the most important one.”
She shifted on her hooves. “And…all three of us have to be up here?”
“No, but it’s easier. We can nap in shifts this way. We don’t all have to be awake at the same time. Besides,” and here, he smiled for the first time since they’d walked up the hill. “This way we all know that each other is safe.”
Ullita stared at him. “...You’re pulling my leg,” she said at last. “This is all a prank. You don’t really believe in curses, do you.”
He tilted his head, but it was Addie who replied. “Do you want to risk it?”
And she was forced to admit…she did not. “Okay,” she said. “But I want to stand close to the light.”
He nodded. “Of course.” And their vigil began.
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Posted: Sun Apr 30, 2023 12:49 pm
They didn’t talk much the rest of the night. He hadn’t decided yet whether or not the vigil should be a silent one, but the silence just happened naturally on its own, and he wasn’t ready yet to disturb it. The night was uneventful in any case, the two Soquili leaning against each other as they slept on their feet, only to awaken an hour or so later to take the next shift. The mare’s warmth against his side made him giddy all night, much to his concealed embarrassment. Addie probably knew, though. But Addie could hush up about it. He was allowed to find a mare pretty, after all!
As the sun finally rose over the opposite horizon, Jon nudged her awake. “Look,” he said, gesturing to the faintest splinter of white in the sky, almost entirely obscured by the light of the sun. “New moon rising.”
She shifted on her hooves with a groan. “Yep, yep. There it is.” She sighed, then finally turned her head and looked up at it. “It’s…so small,” she said at last, her voice soft.
“Yeah,” he said. “It’ll get bigger, though. It always does.”
“Mm.” She paused, then spoke again. “Will we need to watch the full moon rise, too?”
“Nah.” He shook his head. “I don’t think so.”
She looked at him again. “You’re making this up as you go, aren’t you? The curse, and this vigil, having to be out all night to watch the stars and watch a little bit of white go over the horizon…”
He smiled. “What did you think?”
She huffed. “It was…pretty,” she said at last. Her eyes reflected the golds and pinks of the sunrise, the light glinting off of the jewelry that speckled her face. “The stars, and this sunrise. It’s really spectacular. I just wish you didn’t tell me that the woods were haunted.”
“I had to tell you about it sometime,” he said.
She whipped her head around, her eyes alight with triumph. “Aha! I knew it! You didn’t tell me the woods were haunted last night. You told me they were cursed! You made this all up as a prank!”
“Oh, they’re haunted too,” he said without skipping a beat. “Mysterious deaths leave behind ghosts.” He stretched his legs, getting the kinks out of them before they made their way back down the hill and into the woods. “Some of them real, some of them inside of us. You didn’t think I was born with these markings on my legs?”
Ullita stared at them with horror until Addie sighed, loudly, from Jon’s back. “He was,” she said. “He’s just pulling your legs.”
“And he’s pulling my legs about the curse, right?” Ullita said. “And the hauntings, those aren’t real, either?”
Jon grabbed his lantern again. “C’mon, let’s get some breakfast.”
“Now I’ll never sleep in these woods again,” Ullita grumbled.
Jon laughed, and led the way back into the forest again.
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