[MythicDusk]

The Leshy ran her fingers across the edge of the bark, murmuring an old language that only she remembered, her fingers phasing into the bark slightly. Her eyes were half-closed, watching as the sap that had accumulated on the outside of the bark glowed a soft golden. She carefully pulled her hand away, and the light folowed, leaving the tree looking decidedly duller. She murmured something again and the color exploded from the tips of her fingers, showering her and the trees around her before fading away.

She hummed carefully, patting the tree she had just pulled the life force from before scooping up the axe she had rested against its trunk. She carefully swung it, making a small knock in the moss on the bark.

"I'm sorry, old friend. It's just your time."

She drew the axe back, sending it into the trunk with a sound like a thunderclap before she drew the axe out of the softening wood, swinging the axe back and driving it in again. She did this a few more times until the tree began to topple.

She huffed and stepped back as she watched the tree fall, groaning as it hit the ground. She sighed, scooping the leather jacket off one of the branches she had left it on. She frowned at the angry hissing of the trees, and placed her hands on her hips.

"Look, he told me he was feeling sick and had an infectious parasite feeding off him. I gave him a dignified death. I would appreciate it if you didn't try to throw me to the wolves when I've committed no sins." She huffed as the hissing quietened down, nodding. "Thank you. You know I wouldn't go out of my way to hurt you guys. It's my job to protect you."

With that, she turned away from the small patch of forest she had been talking to, their fears soothed. She began wandering back to her den, a small wooden hut deep in the heart of the forest. Gods, she was tired.

[Indigo]

A little over thirty feet away, a woman in a cheerful sundress walked purposefully through the forest. She carried a shovel over one shoulder.

The museum had a perfectly good collection of mushrooms, of course, if you wanted to look at preserved things floating in jars, and normally that would do Briory just fine; they were more exciting in life, but for certain kinds of study you really needed the preserved forms. In any case, this wasn't one of those—someone else in the department, probably Natalya, had arranged some sort of fungus class with a group of fifth-graders tomorrow without providing much notice or asking if she wanted to do it, and if Briory was going to teach kids about her field then she was going to do it the right way, with live specimens.

Truth be told, she was pretty excited about it, even given the relative lack of prep time. Kids asked such interesting questions, and tended to be almost more interested in her work than she was. She'd already spent much of the day outlining what she was going to talk about. Mostly she had the specimens she needed already—though the bigger ones might be hard to transport, maybe she could borrow Natalya's car since this was almost certainly her fault anyway—but there was one she needed to find for herself.

And so here she was. She hadn't spotted her mushrooms yet, but then, she'd been briefly sidetracked by some strange noises nearby and hadn't done much looking.

[MythicDusk]

The Leshy felt something crawl across her skin. The knowledge that someone was in her forest. Looking for something. She felt her lips pull back from her teeth and she looked around herself. She was near her small home, in the trees, out of the vision of regular people, were the masks, made from the skulls of deer, of horse, of bear, some of them. Great things that covered her head and face and terrified any that came near, some of them marked with old runes.

She grabbed her favorite, a stag skull with great, spreading antlers. The runes carved into the bone, bleached and stark white. More runes daubed on with paints and soils. She let out a low sigh as she pulled on the old skull-mask, letting her own eyes peer out from the eye sockets.

And then she ran.

She ran towards the source of the disturbance in her forest. Her hand gripping the handle of her axe, prepared to throw it if it was a woodcutter or a poacher. This was her forest, her land, her home. Her domain of power. She would let nobody take that from her.

She found the source of the disturbance. A woman. She didn't look like she would hurt anything, but she still didn't like people in these woods. So she revealed herself. Fuzzy around the edges, an axe in her hands, shining with sharpness, a painted and carved stag skull covering her head, the antlers like branches of trees.

"Get out."

[Indigo]

Skulls didn't scare Briory; she spent a lot of time around Amarantha's collection, mostly because the collection was too large to be contained by any single room, and some of those things had some very weird modifications. The rest was a bit much, though. To be confronted by someone who is mysteriously indistinct despite an unobstructed view is usually cause for alarm even without considering the axe. She was not easily driven to turn and run, but she did take a few respectful steps back.

This situation called for calm. Fear led to bad decisions. She studied the skull with its impressive antlers, the intricate carvings and other markings on its surface drawing her eye. How much of those could she remember by the time she got back to the museum? Maybe someone could tell her what they meant.

That was enough methodical consideration to slow her frantic heart and clear her head. She swung the shovel to her other shoulder, so it would be better positioned should she need to defend herself from this apparition. "Not unless you give me a very good reason." She was not about to disappoint a bunch of ten-year-olds just because some strange person appeared out of the forest and made demands of her, axe or no axe.

[MythicDusk]

Leshy could feel her form shift, felt it press at the bounds of reality, felt it pull back and recoil when they did not shift. When Leshy did not want them to shift. She didn't want to take on her ancient, bestial form. One woman with a shovel didn't call for it. It was too much energy to expend and too much blood to spill.

But she did growl from under her mask, her shoulders hunching as she tightened the grip on the axe.

"Do you know what this place is?" She began to pase, moving like a predator as she slowly began to circle the woman, her voice a deep pit of a growl in her gut.

"This place is sacred. You are treating on a temple, tomb and sanctuary all in one." She clenched the axe harder, her hazy knuckles turning white. "I am the sacred guardian, and I have an axe, and no need to obey the law."

She stopped in her pacing, turning the axe in her hands, as if testing its weight.

"What did you come here for?"

[Indigo]

Briory's mouth flattened into a hard line. She was all for sacred places, but there was, well, a time and a place for them, and more importantly they usually had boundary markers of some kind or at least showed up on maps. People made sacredness. Without something, some symbol to make it distinct from what surrounded it, a place was just a place.

Of course, there might have been a sign she had missed. In which case she did not appreciate her simple misunderstanding being met with bladed threats.

"I came for mushrooms," she said. "A rare bioluminescent species that responds to stimulus in unusual ways. I'm not interested in your temple. I didn't know it was here. If you tell me where the boundary line is I'll be on my way and out of your...antlers."

[MythicDusk]

She tensed. Everything about her tensed, her true form readying itself to spring from the blurred fle4sh she inahbited now. The skull pressing uncomfortably against the inside of her flesh.

After a moment, she breathed, relaxing her grip on the axe and snorting, her shoulder dropping for a moment. "Do you have any iron on you? If you touch a tree with it, you'll kill it. Especially pure stuff. Generally, just don't use metal around here."

With a casual lack of care, she swung the axe to rest the head on one of her broad shoulders, her eyes lidding beneath the skull. "If you do use metal, however. I can't promise my reaction."

With that, she shrugged again. "I know the mushrooms you're talking about. Called Fae-caps around here. I can lead you to them."