Wandering Spirits

Chapter 4

Storm slammed open the door to his parents' house and let the sun rays tickle his neck as he shouted towards the entrance, "I'm taking Leika out!" His voice disappeared between the walls of the spacious house.

His father, an old man with more life experience than hair on his head, came limping out of the living room. He leaned heavily on his faithful cane and stared questioningly at his son. "You've certainly become eager to go for walks lately, my boy," he remarked with a crooked smile that wrinkled the weather-beaten lines around his eyes.

"I need the exercise," he replied shortly and evasively, as he tied the leash around Leika's neck. The dog wagged its tail unaffected by the heat, eager to see what the day would bring.

Outside, the thermometer was arguing with a sky-high fever; the sun was baking a delightful, but merciless heatwave over the landscape. In this corner of the world, the weather gods were capricious - they could serve arctic cold as well as Saharan temperatures at a moment's notice.

Storm tightened his grip on the leash as Leika eagerly pulled ahead, as if she had sniffed her way to an adventure. The two figures stood out against the burning light: a young man with tousled red hair and a longing for something unsaid, and his four-legged companion, full of joy and curiosity. With each step, the sun produced more beads of sweat on his forehead, but he wiped them away without a second thought, focused on an inner dialogue that never made its way to his lips.

With a determined stride in their steps and an underlying tension bubbling in his chest, Storm made their way along the tractor paths. Leika, just as eager and attentive, sniffed her way forward with her nose pressed against the dry dust. They had followed this route before, the same one that had led them to an unanswered mystery.

In his mind, the memories from the night before danced - a shadow-flickering chase through the trees. The girl, the greatest mystery of the forest, had vanished into thin air, but left traces of her existence in his memory. It was not just a walk for the sake of exercise; it was a quest for truth, or perhaps to prove that he had not dreamt it all.

They reached the point where Leika had previously pulled hard on the leash, as if she was on the trail of something unseen. Today was no exception; she pulled him towards the old pine trees that guarded the grove like green-clad sentinels. They jogged now, his breath becoming heavier, and his heart beating a rhythmic concert against his ribcage. He felt the adrenaline mixing with the heat from the sun scorching his neck, but the cold from the night's thoughts chased after him with every step.

"Are you here again?" he whispered, more to himself than to his four-legged companion. His thoughts swirled around like the leaves from the trees fluttering in a gentle breeze; the possibility that the girl had returned to this place kept him trapped in a web of hope and worry.

Storm and Leika continued to sneak forward with an energy as if they were on the border between play and seriousness. With each step, the excitement grew, and with each breath, he tried to calm the inner storm that gave name to his way of being.

With his heart in his throat, Storm bent behind a thick pine trunk, his eyes fixed on the unexpected revelation. The sun rays filtered through the leaves and cast a golden light over the clearing where the girl had now taken her place. Leika, as if she understood the seriousness of the situation, was quiet by his side, ears perked and nose quivering.

He studied her from his hiding place, noticing how she squatted and helped herself to the offerings of the forest. It was as if she had become one with nature itself, dressed in dirty rags that could hardly be called clothes anymore. Blonde hair fell in unruly bunches down her back, infected by nature's own decoration - twigs and pine needles that had found their way to her wild mane. Her face, almost unrecognizable under layers of dark soil, turned towards the ground where she eagerly picked among the pile of what seemed to be wild mushrooms.

'She is just like an squirrel,' thought Storm to himself, a hint of humor glinting in his worried gaze. He knew that squirrels didn't eat mushrooms - at least not the poisonous kinds that he suspected these to be. But in that moment, with a sense that something greater was at play, he found a strange comfort in the idea of a world where girls could be squirrels, and squirrels could be safe.

Leika sniffed gently in the wind, as if she was trying to interpret the girl's story through the scents that carried messages of lost innocence and unanswered questions. Perhaps that was why she didn't bark or show signs of distress; maybe she, in her own way, had understood that the girl was not a threat, but a soul in need.

'I should probably say something,' he thought as he watched the girl take another mushroom up to her mouth. 'But what do you say to a wild animal, or a wild girl that no one seems to miss?' He felt trapped between the desire to help and the fear of scaring her away.

Storm's gaze lingered on the girl and the unsettling meal for a while, before he slowly began to plan his next move.

Storm leaned against the rough bark of the tree. He felt his heart beating in his chest, a quiet drumroll of excitement and fear. The sun rays played through the leaves and cast light and shadow play over the girl's crippled figure. She was a picture of the wilderness's ruthlessness, dressed in nature's dirty sequin jacket, illuminated by the sun's merciless spotlight.

Leika, his four-legged companion, lay at his feet and watched the girl without making a sound. Storm could almost hear her quiet breath, a soothing rhythm contrasting the wild scene in front of him.

With a focus that excluded everything else, the girl leaned forward and unraveled yet another mushroom from her stash. He froze. Every cell in his body screamed danger. He had seen the same mushroom drawings in his science book - the deadly ones. It was as if he could see the poison's violet aura enveloping the innocent gills.

"No," he whispered first, but the words were swallowed by the silence.

His foot hit a branch, which snapped under the weight of his haste. The girl flinched, but her eyes did not waver from the deadly allure of the mushrooms. Storm, with an impulsiveness that he knew would make his comrades raise an eyebrow, rushed forward from his hiding place. Leika's ears perked up, but she remained calm, as if she acknowledged the seriousness of his stormy approach.

"Don't you see that the mushrooms you're eating here are poisonous?!" His voice carried a mix of desperation and indignation as he grabbed the girl's hand and knocked the mushroom out of it. His fingers enveloped her dirty, bony fingers with a firmness meant to be that of a rescuer, not an enemy.

In that moment, when the girl looked up at him with eyes that were big and vulnerable under layers of dirt, Storm felt a kind of absurd pride for having intruded into her territory of dangers and saved her.

His heart pounded hard, like a drum in his chest, as he stared at the girl screaming. It was a raw, deep, and instinctive scream, filled with a mix of fear and wildness. She howled and thrashed like a cat caught in a buckle of water, while she tried to break free from his grip with beak and claws.

He had not intended to be a threat, but he now saw that his rescue attempt was perceived very differently through her eyes. Her eyes glowed with an inner fire, a survival instinct that did not accept help from strangers. It struck him how absurd the situation was; here he stood, in the middle of a clearing, fighting with a wild girl over life-threatening mushrooms.

"Okay, okay," mumbled Storm half-heartedly as if trying to calm a wild animal. He gave in to her frantic movements and released her gently. She threw herself at the mushrooms with a desperation as if they were her last meal, and backed away with her hands full.

"You can't possibly be hungry enough to..." he began, but his words drowned in the thick air between them, charged with a bizarre kind of tension.

Leika, as if she understood the humor in the situation, let out a heavy sigh that could almost be interpreted as a snort. She sat down at Storm's feet, heavy eyelids almost as if she were rolling her eyes at the foolishness of humans.

He could do nothing but stand there, powerless, as he watched the girl continue to poison herself. With each mushroom she put in her mouth, his hope sank lower and lower. He wondered what kind of strange adventure he had gotten himself into, and if this would become a story he would ever tell, or one he would let remain hidden in the eternal silence of the forest.