chapter 4

For https://steemit.com/freewrite/@mariannewest/day-382-5-minute-freewrite-tuesday-prompt-flashlight

You remember this. It’s Nanowrimo, and I’m telling a story in Chibera. I just got done talking about the two women becoming a symbiotic single woman in Chibera. One of them has a mom who might have had a stroke, and she’s stuck in this world while her body is in our world on autopilot. What happened to her mom? You might ask. I don’t know. I confess, it crosses my mind that this might all be an allegory. That she’s escaping not because its real, but because it’s a coping mechanism, and going on autopilot is a thing we do… and then this is an extra long autopilot because either her mom died, or is serious condition and she just can’t deal. But now that I’ve thought of those possibilities, I’m not going to choose them, because they’re already there and too easy. No, this is real. And she’s going to either be stuck here forever, really, though I confess, that will feel unsatisfying. Or she’s going to learn from this experience, lose something, but gain some sort of clarity about her relationship with her mom (hello hero’s journey)

Off we go. It’ll be a while until we get there.

“I wish we had a flashlight,” Jani murmured to herself in the darkness. “What’s a flashlight?” Jani murmured to herself in the darkness. She stumbled over another root before her body remember how to step lightly, precisely, through the forest. She’d been tramping as if she wanted to attract a longlegs attuned to vibrations around it, or, really, any creature with hearing as poor as a human’s or better. Once her body remembered, though, there was scarcely a skritch, and that could be attributed to a bug or a leaf just obeying the very mundane laws of physics. No predator worth its salt would bother with that kind of a sound.

Jani headed towards a lantern, though, so there would soon be no need for a flashlight. The lantern hung from the bobbing, bouncing coach that presumably carried some wealthy denizens of nearby Stramoth. These were the kinds of folks who had to be careful of bandits, and who had hired stompers and trompers to clear the forest without considering anything but their selfish consequences. Not every bit of forest had an attentive arbiter-apprentice, eager to prove herself… but, unlucky for these rich merchants or nobles or whatever they were, this particular stretch of woods had their entirely new apprentice-arbiter, emboldened by a new voice in her brain to stand up for her team. Team Tree.

And so, the bobbing lantern stopped, akimbo, as inexplicably muddy roads swallowed a wheel.