ANGELS IN FLIGHT - Printable Version

Rain pattered methodically against leaves-- a consistent little plit-plit-plit-plit that soothed her ears. The ceiling was overcast with thick, grey clouds that blotted out the lights above, but it was still bright enough for Vivilene to see where she was going. The cervitaur wove around thick tree-trunks with a basket tied to her back (the horizontal one), snuffling quietly between the ferns.

It must have been an hour or so, now, since the rain had started. Her thick hair had flattened until it was straight and stuck to her face and shoulders, and her shawl shared a similar fate-- soaked through and sheer and somehow sticky. If she didn't have it tied around her torso, Vivilene was certain it could have stuck in place to it anyway with the water. It was uncomfortable. It was cold, and she was soggy, but rain was the best weather for sniffing out herbs.

Petrichor brought out the smells. It was easy to find tough little stems she called 'warmroot' (chewing them into a paste and applying them to wounds left a heated, sort of numb feeling) and stuff them away into the basket. She needed them for Hunter's shoulder, if he would have them. They grew densely by the trees, under the foliage, and were rough to pull down.

Vivilene could have brought Attikias's hunting knife. It would have made the job easier.

Alas...

Hooves twisted in the mud when Vivilene found a particularly large specimen-- thick and tough and buried under all that dirt and foliage. She grabbed it with both hands and pulled right back against it, until she could hear the streeetch of roots leaving soil and

A slip, and Vivilene came crashing onto her side, legs flailing in the air and basket of herbs spilling all over the forest floor, lost out of sight.

A pause. "Nooooo..." she lamented softly, as close to a dismayed wail as possible. At least the root was between her hands-- but at what cost? The cervitaur rolled and brought herself back to all fours with mud streaming down her thin limbs, eyes scanning the surroundings for the rest of the warmroots.

It was... too green, too muddy, to see where the stems had gone. At least I can go home after this, she thought, as she began rifling around the foliage.

Unlike Vivilene, Angela hadn't intended to be out during the rain - she'd come earlier, picking through the trees for treasures and oddities, although her definition of treasures was far more humble then the word implied, when the rain had begun to fall. Not that she particularly minded - the rain was nice and soothing against her skin and she found herself just standing beneath the trees, head tilted up, feeling droplets of water fall gently onto her face. A small smile graced her lips as she stood quietly for a while before her meditative state was interrupted by a soft wail in an achingly familiar voice.

Her head snapped to the side, as if she could see her through the trees, before she started forward, quickly, in the direction she'd heard Vivilene's voice. She didn't know that her sibling had been wandering through Pegasus's forest as well, but the cry suggested that something had gone wrong...oh, she hoped that she wasn't in trouble. Angela wasn't much of a fighter, she didn't know to what extent she could help.

But coming on the scene was a quiet relief that it was only a matter of losing something in the forest foliage, but the relief melted to a gentle sympathy. She'd done it before - dropped a bundle or a basket of trinkets and for them to go rolling off, seemingly to be lost in the woods.

"Oh," she murmured, sympathetically. "What happened, Vivi? Did you lose something? Let me help..." She thought quickly, picking up a stray branch on the ground, and sent her magic surging through the length of it. A soft white glow emanated from the branch and she held it out, if Vivilene wanted to take it to give her some extra light to find her missing roots.