[Jessari]

It was funny how the louder you were in the woods, the less chance you had of seeing anything besides trees, trees, and more trees. Gowan wouldn't have minded the appearance of one of the fuzzy little animals who seemed to populate the forests in so many children's movies, but he hadn't seen so much as a chipmunk, and he wasn't about to count the spider that, after he'd stumbled into its invisible web, had proceeded to crawl up his face and scare him half to death before he'd dislodged it. He brushed his fingers through his icy-blue hair, unable to shake the feeling that it was still up there, crawling around.

Jostled about by Gowan's movement, Crow growled unhappily and reached up to nip the man's ear. It was a warning bite, just enough to hurt, but not enough to break skin. Gowan flinched, quickly lowering his arm as the Sad Sleepyheart curled back up on his shoulder and drifted off to sleep yet again. Despite his travelling companion's bad humor, he considered it his closest friend. Unlike his brothers, who had their own life to live, Crow never left his side. Sometimes he felt that its company was his only tie to sanity.

A motion caught his eye and he stopped, watching as a doe and her fawn moved out from between two trees. He held his breath, trying for the first time since entering these woods to be quiet and still. They didn't seem to notice him, although the doe's ears swiveled cautiously about as they passed by. The fawn followed her, and he observed with amazement how soft its fur seemed. White spots marked the fawn's tawny coat, showing its youth as clearly as the bounce in its step did. Unable to resist, he reached out a hand to touch it-

And they were gone, vanished into thin air. Gowan's heart fell as he turned his gaze downwards. No hoofprints in the dirt. No crushed leaves or anything to show there had been any sort of creature here within the past day or so. He rubbed a hand over his face tiredly, fighting the urge to reach for the flask he always carried with him. No matter how often time shifted for him, it always felt real, so real that it was impossible not to be fooled by glimpses of the past or future.

For a long time he stood motionless, hunting desperately for any sign that he was standing in the here-and-now, but it never came. It never did.

[MillietheWarrior]

The woods were so quiet, Maleh observed from where she sat beside the stream. The birds had fallen silent, the leaves no longer rustled, and the breeze had fallen short. She brushed her fingers through her hair, untangling the curls that fall over her shoulder and reached far past her waist. The bright gold and pink locks were invisible to her eyes, as everything else around her was. Maleh could not see, but she could hear, and she could smell, and she could touch. She had spent her entire life in darkness, never knowing the beauty of the forest or the breathtaking colors of the sunrise and sunset. She had never seen the color of the water in the stream, or looked upon the leaves rustling high above her. She could only satisfy her desire to see with a wild imagination that was so far from reality, it would have startled anyone that had looked into her mind. Sevella had once tried to describe the color blue to her, long ago. But it was an impossible task that had let Maleh even more confused than when they began.

Today though, she had ventured father from the village than she usually did. She tended to stick close, worried she might lose her way back. But her knowledge of the forest trails and her excellent sense of smell and hearing allowed her to carefully explore a little further away. She carefully rose to her feet, long legs bare but for the sparse bit of clothing that covered her in only the necessary places. Most of her kind didn’t believe in clothing, and some even ran around in the buff, but Maleh was one of the few who donned the clothing and wore it often. Sevella or Zita or even at times, Mahj, when he was around, aided her in dressing herself, making certain she didn’t pick out outrageous clothing, or put it where it did not belong. The soft, golden feathers around her neck sparsely covered her chest, and the cloth around her hips, accentuated by beading and strange, intricate seam-work, covered her lower half; it was dyed a deep brown in color. Her feet were bare, allowing her better freedom to feel where she was going when her eyes could not allow her the ability.

She turned and began back along a well-known path, walking silently as her hands glided along leaves and tress, the forest whispering and guiding her as she stepped silently through it’s midst. Her keen ears detected no sound around her, and it was strange and disconcerting., of course, it wasn’t long before she discovered the reason behind the forest’s sudden stillness. The heavy scent and sound of a human hit her only moments before she collided with him. Instead of falling down like a normal woman might have, Maleh leapt backwards, crouching in the dirt a few feet away, teeth bared in a feral snarl to ward him off. Many humans were bad, or so she’d been led to believe, and they would hurt her and her people if given the chance. “You should not be here,” she snarled the warning, her eyes narrowing in what she assumed was his direction. Sharps claws dug into the earth, and she opened her mouth to speak, revealing equally lethal fangs. “This is no place for a human.” He smelled strange, and there was another scent with him that identified another creature, though Maleh had no idea what it was. She just knew there were two, and this could be potential trouble for her village. She’d need to keep them away at all costs.

[Jessari]

Gowan was still standing there, lost in the tangles of his mind, when Maleh walked into him. He stumbled backwards, barely catching himself before falling on his butt. His eyes focused once more on the real world, wandering about at first as he reminded himself where he was and when he was before zooming in on the barely-clothed figure that crouched before him. "Great," he whispered, staring at the fanged woman in disbelief, "I've finally snapped. I've lost it. Welcome to Wonderland, Gowan, settle in and stay awhile."

His ramblings would have continued, but Crow, jostled by the collision, opened his mouth and let out an unhappy "Mawwr!" Gowan raised a hand and stroked the small, purple-scaled creature in a way that comforted him almost as much as it did the Sleepyheart. He watched her carefully, weighing the possibilities in his mind. The first thing that concerned him wasn't 'who is she?', but instead, 'is she real?' She had certainly felt real enough, and he flushed, remembering the feel of her bare flesh as she'd collided with him, but that in itself wasn't sufficient evidence. Many of the things he experienced looked and felt real, even when they weren't. But she was interacting with him. The only time anyone in his visions interacted with him was when they were a part of his own memories, and he knew he'd never even seen her before.

"A-aren't you human yourself?" Gowan asked, noting how her eyes seemed to gaze off over his shoulder. He wondered if that was the same look he'd been told came into his eyes when time shifted around him. Was she...was she blind? Nah, couldn't be. Why would she be alone in the woods if she coudln't see anything? "What are you doing here?"

[MillietheWarrior]

Maleh tilted her head, much like a puzzle dog mighty when struck by something it didn’t understand. Was he speaking to himself? And why? And what was ‘wonderland?’ Maleh’s confusion sent her back onto her haunches, eyes blinking very slowly and infrequently as she stared at the spot she assumed he was. His voice had allowed her to pinpoint his location, but even her hearing wasn’t an exact science, and she couldn’t be entirely sure she was looking at him. “I do not understand,” she said at last, rising gracefully to her feet. Confusion won out over caution, and she stepped forward, pointed ears twitching and nose wiggling as she sniffed him and listened to his words and breathing.

“What is ‘wonderland?’ We are in a forest. It is not wonderland. You are strange…but you are also the first human I’ve ever met. Tell me, what do you look like? Do you have an angry face and a shooting fire stick, like many have said you do?” She’d often been told that humans wore angry faces all the time, and that they carried sticks that shot fire out at any who dared to oppose them. It brought instant death, but Maleh was not concerned about that. She wanted to know about this strange creature. It might be her only chance. When he posed his own questions, Maleh drew her head back, looking almost offended. “I am not a human,” she barked, wrinkling her nose in disgust.

“I am…” she fell silent. Should she tell him what she was? No, perhaps that was a bad idea. She would wait until she knew him better. “I am not human, and what I am is none of your concern.” She took another step forward, and lifted a hand, as if to reach out to him, then thought better of it, and retreated. “I am going for a…walk. I do not often get to travel so far. But I was allowed to leave my home today to venture along our trails. I could ask the same of you, human. What are you doing here? It is not a good place for you to be. You have frightened the forest. It stays silent in your presence.”

[Jessari]

Gowan watched the strange woman carefully, noting how she reacted to his words. "Wonderland. You know, the White Rabbit? Tea parties? Card soldiers?" Crazy people galore? he added in his mind, but didn't speak it aloud. His state of mind wasn't something he talked about, especially not with strangers who might or might not be real. For all he knew, he was standing here talking with himself. It wouldn't be the first time something like that had happened.

Her next words confused him all the more. "I, uh, no? I'm not angry, just..." Lost. Even within the familiar walls of his bedroom, he was lost. "I guess I look a little confused." Understatement of the day, he thought, processing the fact that she was blind, as he had suspected. "And by fire sticks, I'm guessing you mean guns. No, I don't have one of those, either. Not even a knife or a walking stick."

She seemed pretty adamant about not belonging to the human race, but although she was quite firm about not telling him what she was, his thought process tangled around the fact. His forehead scrunched as he considered her, his eyes narrowing as if he could see straight into her mind and pluck out exactly what she was. "Okay, see, you don't have to tell me what you are, but I need to know-" he stopped abruptly, aware that, if he asked the question, she would possibly think him crazy, an assumption that would be well-founded. "You're not.. you're real, aren't you? You aren't just something I've made up in my head, right?" His voice had a vulnerable quality, like a child calling out in the darkness of his bedroom to make sure his mom was still there.

In answer to her last question, he let out a dry chuckle. "Well, the forest frightened the heck out of me too. It has some pretty big spiders in its arsenal. As for what I'm doing here... You wouldn't happen to know where I could find a Quicksylph, would you? I-I'm in need of one, and I heard they've been sighted in this forest."

[MillietheWarrior]

Maleh looked, if even possible, more confused. Her head tilted further to the side, long hair falling across her bare shoulder to brush against her stomach. “I know what a rabbit is. I do not, however know what a tea parties or a card soldiers is.” She assumed he meant only one thing, as he had not used ‘rabbit’ in plural. The others must not be plural either. Her shoulder seemed to droop a little, seemingly in relief. “Oh, thank the Mother. I don’t know what I would have done if you’d carried a fire-stick. I cannot…I cannot defend against something like that.” She squared her shoulders back suddenly, and if she hadn’t been looking a bit to his left, the glare she’d fixed him with might have been intimidating.

“But I can defend myself. I may not be a warrior, but I can fight.” His next question caught her off guard, and her eyes flickered, as if they wanted to blink and focus, but they still retain that strange, distant look, the pink paled by a milky white covering them. “Yes, I am real,” she said, holding up her arms and running her hands along them. She seemed to want to reaffirm that she was, indeed, real, and tagged lightly at the feathers on her neck, then on a lock of hair as her hand ran over her skin slowly. She seemed real enough. Did this strange human see something she did not? Was she…see-through? No one had ever told her. “Do I not look real?” she questioned in a small voice, frowning at his shoulder.

His chuckl sounded very…unhappy to her. She scoffed, looking amused. “The forest is not dangerous, if you know how to deal with it. You must not only use your eyes, but your ears and your nose as well. Can you not smell what is around you?” Her eyes clouded over with thought, and she lowered them to the ground, before they quickly shot back up to the man. She didn’t want to seem submissive. “I cannot…see…So…I could not say…Perhaps I could help you look for one? If you describe it’s scent or sound?”

[Jessari]

"Oh, don't worry," he was quick to assure her, "I'm not here for a fight." Blind she may be, but with his own handicap they'd be evenly matched. He'd probably end up stumbling over his own feet or something.

As they spoke, shadows appeared and disappeared among the trees around them. The occasional shape would pass through where they stood, running between them soundlessly, so fast that it was nothing but a dark blur. If she could see him, Maleh would notice the flickering of his eyes, back and forth as he tried to track the shapes. It was as if time had sped up, leaving only the two of them alone in the middle of its rapid stream. Although it was the middle of summer, Gowan watched as first a few leaves fell, then many, as if Autumn had come upon them. It was disconcerting, to say the least.

"Good," he answered her. Part of his mind whispered that her affirmation didn't mean anything; even a vision might proclaim its reality. But Gowan clung to her words as desperately as he clung to his sanity. He had stepped far outside his comfort zone by travelling into this forest, away from his sister and brothers, away from his home. Nothing here held the slightest bit of familiarity for him, and even a stranger's companionship was welcome to none at all. He needed her to be real.

A small smile curled his lips at the question that followed. He watched as her hand traveled from the feathers that barely concealed her to her bare neck. Human or not, she truly was beautiful. His eyes wandered lower, then he realized what he was doing and yanked his gaze back up to her sightless eyes. Just because she couldn't see didn't mean he could let himself ogle at her like some beer-soaked pig at the local tavern. "No," he assured her, his voice gentle. He understood the feeling of self-doubt that showed itself in the motion of her fingers, understood it far better than she ever would. "You look real enough to me. May I have your name? Mine is Gowan."

Then for her final set of questions. "All I can smell is forest, but the individual scents that make up that smell is a mystery to me. As for sound...that can be deceptive. I'm afraid my senses aren't as keen as yours, and not very dependable, even for a human." The shadows had disappeared, and the leaves had found their way back to the trees, but that didn't mean Gowan could relax his guard against the tricks of his own mind.

"I'm not exactly sure how to describe a Quicksylph to you. I've never seen one myself, so all I know is what other people have told me. They are small, almost like a miniature hu-" he caught himself. "Like a miniature person with wings. They speak in a language of their own, and they like collecting things: colorful rocks, coins, beads, pretty much anything that catches their fancy. As for how they smell? Well, unfortunately I've heard nothing about that particular aspect of the Quicksylph."

[MillietheWarrior]

Maleh couldn’t decide which was more confusing; this human, or his mannerisms. He seemed…lost. Or at least, she gathered it from they way his words hesitated and second guessed themselves. If she’d been able to see him, or know the planes of his face, she would have understood what he was feeling. Maleh was able to feel faces, hands, fingertips to gather her information about the emotions, appearances and thoughts of others. But she wasn’t sure how close she could or would get to this human. Humans were dangerous, she was told. They lied and deceived to get her people within range so they could destroy them. This human probably was no different. She sniffed the air, and cautiously edged closer, every fiber of her being rebelling against her until she was trembling with the desire to run as she urged herself forward.

“I am called Maleh,” she said softly, reaching blindly for his hand and fumbling a few times before her own hand landed on the back of the small dragon at his neck. She looked surprised as her fingers ran gently along the scales. “You are like a lizard,” she said with quiet awe. “I thought humans had skin. This is strange.” Her hands continued to move until they reached his cheek, and she gave a slight start. “But here you have skin! You have scales and skin! You are truly a strange human.” her hands stilled against his cheek, and she tilted her head, eyes staring past a point just beyond his ear.

“You cannot smell? Or hear? You are scent blind? And sound-blind? Poor hum-Gowan.” she murmured softly, her words quiet in the silent forest. She listened as he described the Quicksylph, and frowned slightly, her forehead creasing in concentration. “Anything that flies is difficult for me to track or find. I would not be able to locate one until it landed, and even then, it would be very difficult without any knowledge of it’s scent. But perhaps I can help you through the forest?” Lead him away from her village, at the very least. “It is a dangerous place if you do not understand it.”

((Ffzzzttt...My brain just shorted out. XD))