As tears continued to stream down her face, Elara's fingers unconsciously touched the surface of the abstract painting before her, as if she were possessed by something mysterious.
Feeling the rough texture of the paint under her fingertips, Elara snapped back to reality and took a few steps back reflexively.
"...."
Elara silently took a deep breath to calm her emotions raging inside her mind, while her heart strangely ceased its rapid pounding.
She wiped the corners of her eyes and cheeks, now damp and stopped when she caught a strange scent from her fingers.
She lifted her palm and examined her fingers, noticing the green stains that felt peculiar, as if not made from the usual green watercolor most people used.
Spontaneously, Elara glanced back at the large abstract painting depicting a woman in a green dress, displayed prominently before her.
It was then she noticed another detail: the woman's hair in the painting was also green, matching the color of her dress, making it look like a veil to anyone not examining it closely.
"Is this painting freshly done...?" Elara wondered as she glanced again at her fingertips stained with green paint. The same fingers that had unknowingly touched the surface of the painting.
In the silence, as if verifying something, Elara rubbed her index finger, stained with green paint, with her thumb, then observed the green smudge spreading to her other fingers that had previously remained untouched. She continued this until the green paint dried on her fingers.
Suddenly struck by curiosity at the sight of the unfamiliar green color on her fingers, Elara dared to lift her face and once again scrutinize the painting for a few moments, swallowing hard as if trying to suppress something within her petite frame.
With what she believed to be a safe distance, Elara dared to look again at what lay before her. Something seemed to beckon to her instinctively, as if urging her to take notice.
The painting before her was truly abstract, requiring Elara's full attention to distinguish between the hair and the dress.
Elara even nearly mistook the woman in the painting as entirely unclothed, the green color across her body actually being her long green hair.
While the most recognizable and striking feature in the painting, depicted with meticulous detail, was a brown crown seemingly made of thorny roots, each thorn adorned with what appeared to be six differently colored gems, elegantly placed atop her head.
And thanks to that, Elara felt an interest in the crown as if this painting was just an illustration, showcasing the thorny crown rather than the green-haired woman.
"What a strange crown..." Elara muttered. Unaware, her palms, fingers stained with green paint, trembled as if longing to grasp something.
Elara blinked as her round brown eyes gazed at the thorny crown, especially its six differently colored crystals, with an indescribable curiosity in her gaze.
As if aware of being observed, the six crystals in the crown within the painting, each red, yellow, green, blue, white, and black, suddenly shimmered. They twinkled simultaneously, as if playing an optical illusion on Elara.
Elara almost reached out to touch the painting again, but fortunately, when her foot stepped on a twig, producing a soft snapping sound, it snapped her back to focus.
"Gulp..."
Elara decided to lower her gaze slowly from the crown to the face of the owner of that thorny crown.
"..."
But what truly unsettled Elara was the woman's face in the painting.
The woman in the painting seemed intentionally left without a face, perhaps to allow people to freely imagine how she looked. Or maybe the painter simply couldn't depict her expression, or there could be other reasons Elara herself didn't understand why she was so curious about things that weren't her concern to begin with.
And even more strangely.
Elara somehow sensed that the woman behind the painting was smiling at her. The painted red lips, though unseen, appeared to move and were saying something Elara couldn't quite decipher because it was too blurry.
"Nice painting," Elara stiffly uttered, as if sincerely appreciating whoever the painter was behind the abstract artwork displayed boldly in the middle of the Eternal Forest.
Refusing to touch the painting that seemed to call out to her incessantly, Elara decided to turn her back to it.
Though her entire body shivered, and her legs almost gave out, screaming to collapse onto the ground, Elara mustered all her strength to act as if she felt nothing from its surface.
"Let's go back, winds guide--"
Elara stopped mid-sentence as she realized what had been strange since the beginning.
The group of winds that should have been busy blowing and circling around her had vanished.
The winds, which had been Elara's only way out of this dangerous forest, were no longer visible to her brown eyes.
"Where... When did they disappear?!" Elara exclaimed in frustration. Her trembling eyes scanned her surroundings as if truly lost.
After repeatedly scanning left and right, searching for the group of winds that should have been guiding her home but were nowhere to be found, Elara finally reached a conclusion.
She felt that she needed to leave immediately when she realized that something had happened without her awareness while she was mesmerized by the painting.
With that thought in mind, Elara, without glancing back at the large and mysterious painting once more, prepared to sprint forward, aiming to find a way out without further delay.
As Elara continued running through the unfamiliar forest without glancing left or right, solely focused on moving forward because she remembered that the winds had only guided her straight ahead, she noticed a small bird perched on a branch.
It resembled a sparrow but with unique features and a red hue.
But Elara decided to ignore the bird as if she hadn't seen it at all from the start and continued running.
The bird's eyes emitted a mysterious red glow as it gazed at the petite figure of Elara sprinting through the woods. Its tiny beak opened slightly, as if about to emit the typical chirp of a bird.
However, what came out was the voice of a bored and slightly irritated male human.
"Such a pity I lost to 'him'. Now I can only watch from afar like this."
The small red bird glanced once more in Elara's direction with indescribable eyes before deciding to soar high into the sky. The mysterious flapping of its tiny wings immediately prompted the bustling winds in the air, which had been blowing like ordinary winds moments ago, to react. They swirled around as if clearing a path for the bird to fly freely through the vast sky.
***
Elara kept running and running, unaware of how much time had passed or how far she had gone from the location of the painting.
Whether she was heading towards the forest's exit or further into its depths, Elara had no clue.
All she could think about was getting away from the area where the painting was.
"Wind... Winds that guided me before, can you hear me?!" Elara occasionally shouted as she ran through the dense forests, hoping the previous winds would hear her voice and come to her aid.
Of course, she also hoped that the winds would be willing to guide her, leading her in the right direction home.
Unfortunately, despite her countless shouts, not a single wind responded to her.
'Why are the winds that usually blew towards me now completely absent?!' Elara inwardly exclaimed in frustration.
Elara was forced to pause for a moment due to her breathlessness from running non-stop. Sweat dripped, flowing swiftly from her forehead to her neck, dampening her clothes slightly.
Taking advantage of this break to observe her surroundings, Elara looked around with cautious eyes, afraid of suddenly encountering something strange in the middle of the path again.
And as she suspected, she found something else, which made her brown eyes tremble in an instant.
However, this time she discovered a small creature that seemed completely harmless. A brown-furred creature that looked very delicate, with a long tail that seemed tempting to be stroked, was sitting on a felled tree.
"..."
The brown cat gazed at Elara, who stood not far from where the cat was sitting, as if analyzing her with its sharp yellow pupils before finally making a sound.
"Meow."
"... A cat?" Elara blinked repeatedly as if to ensure she wasn't seeing things.
A cat in the Eternal Forest, a forest known to be very dangerous and mysterious?
Anyone in their right mind would think that this cat was not an ordinary cat.
'Could it be a beast? But why is there a beast in the first and second layers of the Eternal Forest?'
Many speculations arose in her mind about this surprising situation, but at least Elara could conclude one thing.
'Whether it's a wild beast or just an ordinary animal, at least I'm certain that this creature in front of me poses no harm and has no interest in me whatsoever!'
With that in mind, Elara decided to turn around, ignoring the cat. She intended to continue walking through the forest to find a way out of the Eternal Forest, pretending not to notice the presence of the cat from the beginning.
'No matter if it's dangerous or not, the point is I must not disturb these beasts.' Elara strengthened her resolve inwardly.
'Let's pretend not to see it. I didn't see it at all.'
That's what Elara thought. At least only Elara.
Because the creature she suspected to be a beast was suddenly standing between her legs, rubbing its soft fur body against her legs and wrapping its long tail around Elara's calves.
The beast was behaving as if it were a normal tame cat!
"Meow~"