Chapter One, Part One

    She walked down the trail, the wind brushing past the trees and letting her long chestnut brown hair flow gently with it. The girl paid no attention, her blue dim eyes staring up in the clouds. Maybe it was something else, she wasn’t sure. A bag was slung across her shoulder carrying a bundle that seemed to stir, or maybe it was the wind playing tricks. The bag was made of deer skin and it wasn’t the only item that was that the girl wore. In fact every item she wore was made from the stuff. The belt that held the rusted sword around her waist was even made of deer skin. Her hands were placed in her pants pocket as she just strolled along the road. Anyone that would see her would have a hard time believing that this girl, no older than sixteen, had been travelling this path for three weeks now. Her skin was fair and soft and her body was slim with the perfect curves. She looked like a girl from royalty escaping the palace by wearing peasant clothes, but this wasn’t the case. She was born in this forest and lived off of it her whole life.

    The girl stopped in the middle of the road. Dirt gently floated in tiny dust clouds around her shoes. Her eyes shifted gaze to the top of the forest trees to the vast number of apples. She could hear her mother’s voice soothingly say ‘An apple a day keeps the doctor away, Flame. And since you and Chao need all the strength you can get, grab your bounty.’ A small forced smile crept on the girl’s face. The natural beauty that was there vanished and what was there instead of a pain trying to explode out of her very being. Smiling no longer was natural and the girl could feel it now more than ever.

     “Where were the doctors for you mom?” she muttered softly under her breathe getting on her toes to yank an apple from its mother. No one was around. She could speak as loud as she wanted to, but the trees had ears. Anything had ears, and maybe even her apple did. She shoved the thought away sinking her teeth into it. The juice poured out seeping into her tongue and gradually followed down her throat. It was better than water but it did make her thirstier. However, it was better than what she had eaten in the past three weeks. All there was in this forest were rabbits, deer, and other plants. It was rare to see an apple tree in these parts. If she wasn’t dying for another taste in her mouth she wouldn’t have wasted her time trying to grab these apples. Truth was that she hated apples and everything about them. In the old days they were just too sweet and the skin always got in the way. But today, they were the sweetest tasting things in the whole damn world.

     The girl dropped her bag onto the ground and there was a thud and silent grunt. The flap of the bag opened letting a white scaly tail skimp out and resting right on the flap. The girl looked down giving the bag a scolding look dropping apples right into the bag. With each apple that fell there was another grunt that escaped the bag. The girl bent down grasping the bag’s handle and brought it to her face. “You know better than that,” she hissed, her voice barely above a whisper. “You know what will happen if someone saw you, even if it was just a tail.”

     The tail sunk back in and a low murmuring sound began to escape out of the bag. It seemed as if it was talking to the girl, but that would be ridiculous, or maybe it wasn’t. The murmur sounded to be from another tongue, a tongue that didn’t belong to anything human.

     Another smile, which still seemed unnatural, crept on the girl’s face as she slung the bag back on her shoulder. “I don’t need to lighten up,” she smiled, which still seemed unnatural. “Do I need to remind you that I’m keeping us alive from the bounty hunters? You’re just going to have to get used to living like this.”

     Another murmur came out of the bag. This time the murmur sounded the way a child would when it wasn’t aloud chocolate before dinner, a whining cry.

     “You have apples to occupy you’re time, buddy-oh-my,” she mused. “We’ll be living like this until the quest is done.”

     This murmur was a grunt of dissatisfaction.

     “Part of the quest is figuring out how to find this thing,” she murmured. The girl cocked her head up, her blue dim eyes looking back up into the sky casting off a dazed look as she continued walking on the trail.

Author's Note

Snaps and Craps! I can handle em!

Reviews

[Danny J.H.]

great start its a wonderful story