The forest was a combination of brown and green. The ground was a graveyard of wilted and dead leaves, smothering all life below, a few strands of grass bursting through the lined bodies.
Dark limbs of Hazel and Ash trees protruding through their forgotten children, rich green and bland brown mixed in their arms, covering the forest in a foreboding shadow. The mighty light of the titan sun blotted out, hiding the children of Gaia in her loving shadows.
The three walked in silence, slowing at every sound of a crackle of dead leaves or the snap of a twig in the distance. The small sounds of chirping in the trees or the buzzing of nearby insect wings and the gush of wind swaying the trees in song and dance, never leaving them in silence.
Yossarian crept steadily once again, as a large snap came to their right. He shifted himself behind a thick trunk, leaning across to find a small brown, scruffy body of a Doe.
Sighing he stood back up, his sudden movement attracting the animal's attention causing it to flee.
He looked around the forest's landscape, dread filling him. He always told himself to never underestimate the size of forests and their mysterious inconspicuous abilities to hide whatever he looked for whilst venturing into them.
Yet here He was again, trying to find small needles of clues in a forest full of haystacks. They've been searching for the past hour, yet he's seen nothing out of the ordinary.
Georgia walked past him, a thin smile on her face, as she gracefully moved through the forest, left foot gently laying itself without a sound on the wilted leaves, right foot quickly, yet quietly taking its place.
Yossarian at noticing this cocked his eyebrow back. When on earth was, she a natural hunter.
Georgia went on, leaving the two behind, before stopping near a small cliff. She looked back, throwing a hand up and indicating for them to come.
When they arrived at the cliff, Georgia pointed down on the bottom of the other side. "Down there! There's a slight dugout, it might be related to our search."
"Or it might just be an animal's food storage," Yossarian commented, trying to focus his eye's on the slight hole 50 meters or more down. Yossarian could barely make out the dugout's features, his eye's straining to just see the lip of the entrance. Must be getting old, he bitterly thought.
"True, however, there don't seem to be signs of any recent animal activity from up here, and this is the first clue we found so far," Georgia replied neutrally, her gaze now looking for a safe route down.
"Best give it a shot. Better than idly strolling about." Ruby added, already moving towards the sides of the cliff.
Yossarian merely rolled his eye's before following the two, not willing to argue, because in truth he was starting to be bored of just hoping to encounter something during. Additionally, he didn't want to argue with the two.
When they got close to the bottom, they staked out the small hole in the stone base of the cliff, long blades of grass lining outside, almost blocking the entrance from view.
"Alright," Yossarian turned around to face the two, "I'll go investigate, you two stay here." He told them. His eye's centred on Ruby's black sunglasses, before speaking again. "Georgia come here. Don't give me that look just come over."
Georgia etched her way towards Yossarian who walked slightly further to the hole. "What is it?" She questioned, wiping away some wet strands of dark hair from covering her eye's.
"Listen, do you trust Ruby?" He inquired, looking forwards, away from Ruby, as not to act more suspicious than he was.
Georgia looked at him for a moment, before responding, Her eye's darkening. "Not one bit.
Everyone knows actions speak better than words, and the party," She spat. "The party has done enough to paint each one of them as a stain on humanity."
Yossarian stared at her, eye's wide. He didn't expect such blistering hatred from such a young and usually emotionless child. She held a dangerous point of view, something he would need to change.
"Whilst the party has committed horrible stuff, it's not necessarily fair to wipe away the individual and hold all member's in a collective view. You remove all possibility of humanizing and redeeming those that want it, and in the end, all you will get is a fabricated monster."
Georgia contemplated his words, swallowing down the meaning, the anger in her eye's slightly dimming. "So you trust her then?"
"Not in the slightest. But I'm open to being wrong." Yossarian replied. "But that's why I need to stay back and watch her carefully. I don't want to be worrying about accidentally exposing my back to a person I can't trust, So be careful." Yossarian ordered, straining the importance in his last words.
"Do you trust me then?" She inquired.
"Nope, just slightly more than her." Yossarian blatantly told.
He stood up and crept close to the hole, his gaze looking carefully around the grass near the entrance, searching for any signs to track. That's when his eyes fell over the small bunch of flowers lying near the hole's entrance.
The flowers possessed bright golden, tinted petals, stained by dirt and grit. Small red lines tracing along the petals surface, creating odd yet beautiful symbols. Yossarian bit his lip, looking up to see that he was in a small clearing, just below the titan's left-hand armpit.
He wasn't certain about the nature of the flower's, so he pulled back the right side of his coat, reaching for the inner up pocket which had a line of silver chains stretching out. He pulled at one of the more worn chains, pulling out a small monocle.
He slowly placed it in his right eye, his vision changing to see a variety of new colours exploding from the objects around him. A small, defining black aura emit from the flower's bodies.
His body started to shake. Black was a horrid colour, used to define those that lay in the mysterious or banished. The monocle was often used by alchemists and witches alike. The glass possessing a small property in perceiving hidden natures behind the appearance of those it sees.
Yossarian believed the glasses creation involved some myth around Apollo gifting the recipe for the glass to a few gifted alchemists, centuries back. A long-forgotten recipe, leaving the glasses a prized commodity in the modern world.
Yossarian gaze however flickered to the hole. A slight white light lingered in a large dirt lump. Yossarian's fear dimmed and was replaced with a sombre attitude.
He strolled back to the two, head hunched down deep in thought.
"So Mr Perthro, what did you find?"
"Two things of major importance. A cursed set of flowers, and a dead body. Which is rather an odd combination of things." Yossarian awkwardly joked, an edge in his voice.
A person in the distance eyed the trio from the covering of a few thick bushes, a deep, cruel smirk on his face. "Fuckin found ya."