Frigid breeze sauntered against the dim, yet cleared, azure sky above the once chartreuse lumbering giants. Emerald leaves had long since withered into other pastel colours-orange, vermilion, deep gold-and majestically painted dying ashen bark. Canvassed trees groaned in misery against the bitter wind that danced like pictish imps across their limbs, slowly diminishing the last spark of life left in them as gelid winter brewed on. The leaves had all but abandoned their companions and fell as if rain upon the earth bellow.
Cool, lithe fingers reached out to catch one of the torn foliage and save it from its fall. They curled about the russet leaf and aphotic golden eyes gazed upon the tree's petal face as it crumbled even under the soft grasp. A frown pulled upon the corners of cherubic, paled lips while the remnants of the thing fell upon the ground. The woman, our aforementioned savoir of leaves, stood stock still amongst the towering shrubbery in deep silence. She allowed the forest's whispering calls cantilate the story of the nearby fate within her sharp ears, listening to all that it entailed. Her optics pulled from the miniscule scene she had been observing to gaze further up the mountain she had been trekking upon for only hours.
A straightened nose wrinkled, the skin stretched across it distinctly blushed with mother earth's cold embrace, beside high cheek bones that also held the pinkish colour. The smell of mystical spells, rotting bark, and the wretched spring that had spoiled beneath the rocky forms reaching her nostril with the new found wind that pushed its way down the mountain side. Skies breath pulled upon crimson-golden waves of silk and brought them crashing against the woman's waste in a mimic of a deserts sumptuous sun set. Her long fingers traced the length of a stray hair that had blinded her view and quaintly put it back with the others.
It was time to move on. She began to walk once more, shrugging the brown, dear skin bag farther up her sleeved shoulder. A cloak of deep amber played behind her, warding against the bitter cold and keeping the rest of her hidden attire from being frozen within the wind, trimmed on the outer sides-as well as the inside-with a wolven fur of dimmer brown. She pulled the hood up as she slowly came closer to the destination she had begun to seek that very morning. As the soft lining of her hood tickled the sun kissed skin stretched across her exotic, stubborn features, the frown upon her mouth upturned slowly with satisfaction.
It took only a few moments for the woman, seemingly no older than twenty-five summers, to enter the mouth of the cave. The air brushed past her from farther within the deep caverns, bringing with it the sounds of voices and the tapping of a harsh object upon another. She picked her way easil through the mounds of skeletons and puddles of only the Gods knew what, sauntering farther into the dwindling sized cave until finally she had reached the wider opening some feet into the moutain side. A gracious door stood in the center of the clearing she happened upon, the locked door embedded within it's bark calling sweet nothings to her curiosity.
What now? |
Submission Name: What now? 
