"The damage is infectious, and all that can be done is purge it all and start from scratch."
If life is a series of choices, then perhaps that just means that life is a game? To Akazawa Saki, that's all life really is. She refutes the existence of G...
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Time felt like it was passing at an agonizingly slow pace. And for Saki, that was never a good thing.
The struggles with the wolf issue had taken its toll on the woman, and no amount of antidote she had taken for the paralysis poison had worked entirely. She had barely managed to lead Lirae and her pet further than the edge of the affected forest before she felt her whole right side begin to seize up on her.
Out of options, Saki had managed to climb up at least a decent way into a large tree a safe distance from the affected area of forest and string up her lone hammock for Lirae and Tok to use. It was cold and it wasn't necessarily the most comfortable, but the girl appeared to be delighted in sleeping out in the fresh air, so the hammock was a pleasant change for her. The large hide overcoat of Saki's was also borrowed, and yet at that moment Saki could only sigh as she left them be.
It left Saki to tend to the most immediate of tasks; waiting out the lingering effects of the poison and keeping watch. A simple treatment of thyme and salt was applied to her bite-wounds, and wrapped lightly with makeshift bandages she had stashed away in the bottom of her rucksack.
The wind screeched through the treetops, a chilly bite to the air as Saki regularly prodded her right arm with her left, keeping tabs on her condition as she waited out the night. Distant howls hung on the air, much too far away to mean much to Saki sitting up there in the tree. The night dragged on slowly, with every sound rousing Saki out of her thoughts, hanging faintly in the back of her mind like a looming shadow.
And perhaps, that was reason enough for Saki to bury her face in her knees and will the demons from creeping up from the darkest recesses of her mind.
Eventually, the faint caw of a green pheasant drew Saki from her precarious state of lucid consciousness, marking the approaching hour of dawn.
Her heavy lidded eyes were marred by fainted bruising, marking the presence of a sleepless night in an otherwise sleepless week. A deer wandered close beneath the tree Saki and her escortees's were located within, bringing a small frown across the woman's face.
There was no sign of the sickness, even though they had set camp not so far away from the edge. Not even the path Saki had lead Lirae along had been tainted from the residue that undoubtedly clung to her boots.
And that, was odd.
She dropped herself into a gradual slide down the trunk of the massive pine tree Lirae was propped within, wincing as her bite-ridden arms seared from the endeavour.
She could ascertain that this part of the Clarines wilderness was not the one she had spent the night perched up in the previous tree, and she was at least three leagues away, but in her mind there shouldn't be any difference.
Her feet led her along the path she had taken, kicking up dirt as she went. It still crumbled like good, natural forest soil unlike the dry chunks that the contaminated areas were reduced to, and out of curiosity, she crouched down near the line of contamination and scooped up a handful of the cleaner soil.
