Forever Green

~ 22 ~ Escaping Temptation

There was no time to check if Audeste was unconscious or just stunned—Lenesa turned and ran.

Audeste's wisp, Goru, disengaged himself from Shwei and swooped over to check on the Turned witch. Shwei, in turn, changed back into a ball of light and zoomed after Lenesa as she stumbled through the trees. The use of too much power had left her with an empty pit in her stomach that made her feel nauseous, and she knew she did not have enough magic left to clear a path for herself like she had for Theiden. She was afraid to look down at her hands, to see how much negative energy had formed there already. She could feel them tingling and starting to go numb.

She lost her sense of time as she stumbled recklessly through the forest. When a stone half-hidden by fallen branches eventually caught her foot, Lenesa finally succumbed to the concoction of lightheadedness and queasiness raging within her and fell to her hands and knees. Shwei sat patiently beside her in fox form as she retched into the bushes until there was nothing left. It didn't take long—she had barely had any breakfast and it was well past the appropriate time for lunch—and Lenesa finally sat back on her heels, trying to control the small tremors coursing through her body. It was almost too much of a temptation to just give in and lie down on the ground and go to sleep, but Theiden was waiting for her. She had to continue.

Shwei nudged Lenesa's knee in encouragement, and she staggered back to her feet with a tired sigh.

The walk back to the cottage took close to an hour. Lenesa was in no hurry to return home, and went slowly, hoping to regain at least enough of her energy for the black markings on her hands to go away. She had never seen them worse than in this moment, as this time the thorny tendrils extended all the way up to her elbows.

By some grace of fate, the angry obsidian patterns had receded to Lenesa's wrists by the time the worn gray stones of her cottage came into view through the trees. She shoved her hands deep in the pockets of her skirt, suddenly wishing she had worn her blue dress with the longer, billowy sleeves—despite how impractical it would have been while fighting.  It would have at least done a better job of hiding the marks that remained.

"Lenesa!" Theiden had been pacing by the garden, and approached her as soon as she stepped out from beneath the shadows of the trees. He was cautious, Lenesa noticed, stopping short to keep a large amount of space between them. She could tell his encounter with Audeste had rattled him, though he tried not to show it.

"I'm not going to attack you, if that's what you fear," Lenesa said, willing her words to come out light and unaffected. Despite her efforts, though, she could detect a tang of fatigue in her tone that weighed them down, and she only hoped that the hunter would not notice.

Theiden snorted, and his shoulders lost some of their rigidity. "I'm not afraid you're going to attack me," he replied. "Training's over, right?"

He managed a semblance of a smile, but Lenesa didn't bother to return it. Instead, she tottered over to the front step and sat down, mindful of how Theiden watched her every step.

"What happened to Audeste?" he asked as she leant against the door frame.

"I don't know," Lenesa replied, and this time, she couldn't keep the exhaustion from her voice. She blinked, but the blink lengthened and turned into a long moment of sitting with her eyes closed instead. At one point, Lenesa felt her head start to nod backwards, and though her body protested, she forced her eyes to open again. It would not do to fall asleep here.

Sitting beside her in fox form, Shwei gave a low, concerned hum. Without looking, Lenesa reached out a hand and gave him a scratch behind the ears.

"Are you all right?" Theiden asked. He was standing in front of her now, looking down at her with a concerned frown.

"Perfectly so, thank you," she replied, somehow managing to take his empty smile from earlier and wear it as her own.