𝑳𝑬𝑮𝑨𝑪𝒀 𝑶𝑭 𝑻𝑯𝑬 𝑳𝑶𝑺𝑻 • 𝐴𝐶𝑂𝑇𝐴𝑅

001. STRIKE ONE

  "I am so pathetic," she mumbles to herself. Praying to a god she doesn't even believe in? How was that ever going to work? She looks up to the sky with her hands now settled on her hips defiantly. "If you really are out there, and you are choosing to ignore me and my reasonable demands, forget I ever said anything...bitch."

Erza's most certainly going to forget this ever happened, so it's only fair that this (imaginary) higher power does, too.

There is a moment where she thinks about adding one last cheeky comment, just to take her mind off the sheer embarrassment she's made of herself. But the boom of thunder interrupts her before she can, and a short distance away a flash of white lightning jolts its way down to the earth. If it's a warning sign to stop while she's ahead, she can take a hint. She wasn't all that serious about the whole 'strike me down' thing, anyway. Sort of; she's a little curious.

Throwing the hood of her nice woolen cloak over her head, she restarts her boundless trek. Without the sun, she isn't quite sure which direction she's come from nor which direction she's going. Not that it really matters; she never has a true destination in mind. Wherever the wind takes her is where she belongs. She just hopes the wind never takes her back to that Weaver's cottage; that is an encounter she will never forget.

  Another bolt of lightning arcs across the sky just above her with a crash.

  "Okay, okay! I'm moving!" she calls out to the world and hastens her pace to the tree-line.

  Just as Erza is about to breech the edge of the clearing to look for a hidey-hole of some sort for the night, she is slammed down into the ground from above. The burst of surprise and shock from the hit is so fleeting she almost believes she really was just smited by a god for her insolence. But after another moment, she's actually quite sure she's been knocked down by a fallen tree, if the persistent crushing weight on her back is telling enough. She can't exactly lift her head off the ground to inspect the damage, but it feels like a big spruce or a pine.

So long as it's not on fire—she sniffs the air. No smoke, thankfully.

  She wonders how long she'll have to lay here before some hunter or traveler comes along and finds her. Probably days; she's a small journey outside all the nearby city and town limits. It doesn't help that she went rather far off-trail for this particular venture with the divinity to avoid potential onlookers.

  Oh, days without food or a bath. How tragic.

  Just as she considers taking a long nap to pass the time, she picks up on the twitching of her tree while feeling slowly returns to her back. She realizes that it's been going on this whole time and she'd just dismissed it as aftershocks from the lightning that must have hit it. But now that her attention has been drawn to it, it's hard to ignore how...squishy her tree is.

  Erza grunts with exertion as she attempts to nudge the tree-that-is-definitely-not-a-tree off of her. Little by little, she's able to get most of the weight onto the back of her legs and backside. Huffing quietly to herself, she finally stretches and twists around to look at what hit her.

  She blinks through the downpour. She...isn't quite sure what she is looking at. There's a wing or two in the way, and it's hard to identify what creature it is based on the looks of those. An overgrown bat is her best guess, though she hasn't ever seen one. Shoving its body a little bit further down, she reclaims one of her arms with a quick budge and tries to move a large membranous wing out of her way.

  With so little room, it's difficult to lift the massive thing, and when Erza finally does get it off her back a little, she immediately drops it back down with a hard and painful thump.