The Sacred Blade

Chapter 8- An Unusual Encounter

As we continued through the foreign woods, we had a small conversation, learning to accommodate Auriol's lack of speech by watching for hand gestures and points from her fingers every so often, but she remained to herself most of the time. Darius asked me more about my home life, but he didn't speak too much about his own, other than the basics.

"I live with my grandfather," he said, shrugging, "in his mansion on the hill. We are never cold or hungry, and our house is always clean."

That was it. It seemed to be a sensitive subject for him, and he was trying to be nonchalant about it. Maybe something had been going on at home that sent him into the woods that morning that he found me, providing more help and assistance than I ever would have imagined.

I decided it was only fair to fill Auriol in on what I had shared with Darius the previous night about who I was and where I came from, giving her a short but sweet version of Camellia Dahlgren. She remained silent but attentive, so I must admit that she's the best listener that I've ever met (by default).

Darius, for added politeness, acted as though this re-telling was the first time he'd heard my story, only to occasionally interrupt with an additional detail that I had left out from the initial version from the night before as if he had gone through it all right with me.

When I got to the infamous Jessica Pierson, he added his input. "Who does she think she is? I believe that this Jessica Pierson is not brave enough to even set foot into the mud, and here I know a girl who has done just that and much more!" he exclaimed with mock pride, shouting the last part so loudly that the birds flew from the trees above us, cawing angrily.

I suppose that was a compliment, and almost felt bad for initially thinking that he and Jessica would have made a great, narcissistic couple together. I could also tell he was mocking me for having fallen into the mud a few minutes ago, so I just rolled my eyes, but there wasn't as much disgust behind it as before.

At that moment, his boot sunk so deeply into the mud that it took him a while to pull it back out, completely making up for the jest he made earlier, and he even looked slightly humbled while cleaning it all off, using leaves from the ground.

I wish I could claim that was the last encounter that we had with mud, which was already caked onto my clothes, jammed underneath my fingernails, and stuck in my hair, too. I had never felt so dirty in my life, and yet Auriol barely sunk into the mud as we walked along, the white on her dress never looking so clean.

We stopped by a small, bubbling creek an hour or so later where I refilled my canteen with fresh, cool and clear water, Darius doing likewise. Auriol seemed to look as fresh as ever, perfectly at ease and sitting graciously on a mossy boulder a few feet away from us. My now stale loaf of bread was brought out of my satchel and passed between us until it was nothing more than some crumbs on the grass for the next creature that came along.

Looking up at the bright sun, I guessed it was about noon. Back at home, I would be at school enduring another boring lecture in Science from Mrs. Meyers. Maybe it would be something about the "relevance" of experiments on misbehaved teens or a lesson on how to use a microscope in order to inspect the germs that unsanitary children carry around all day.

Roughing it out in the wilderness was hard, and this monotonous routine sounded like absolute bliss after the pebbles I had stuck into my shoes and the mud bogs I got sucked into. What I wouldn't give to be back in my cozy bedroom at home drawing or taking a relaxing nap. I suppose there's no turning back now, I thought with a sigh.

A bird cawed in the canopy above, jolting me out of my train of thought. I looked up, noticing a black bird with beady eyes scrutinizing me from above in a protruding branch of a tall tree. It stared at me for a few moments, then flew off into the bright blue sky, joined by seven others of its kind.