Lone Gold, Daring Purple ✓ | Sorcerers, framed, runaway

14: Narsy magick and the grand escape

Overhead branches made a kaleidoscope out of Narrentry Woodland's skies. Clouds shaded indigo, charcoal, and black with speckles of orange indicating the sun was setting behind the storm. The scents of wet soil and leaves hung musky, but fresh in the air. Cypur took a deep breath, filling his lungs to the brim before letting out. 

On his shoulder, behaving herself, Wescherlie did the same. The beauty caressed his aesthetics, making him want to capture this moment with an AutoPic. He would have brought one if this wasn't a run for his, and for Wescherlie's, safety.

Remember this. He promised himself, and he knew he would.

As evening hushed into night and the warm tones faded from the sky, a whitish-blue glow appeared in the shadowed parts of the wood. Night, or a cloudy evening, meant that things obnoxiously glowed. He spotted a glowing rat, scurrying among leaves, nibbling on milky-white mushrooms in its path. They were the culprits that made Narrentry Woodland glow but gave sustenance to every plant and animal. They were a vital part of the life cycle.

"Exspiritavius lumesius." He named the mushroom, recalling an encyclopedia he once devoured. He thought he could sure devour one now. His stomach grumbled for dinner, forgetting he'd just eaten.

"Ex, what?" Wescherlie whispered after a beat.

"Basically, Glowing Ghost." Precense picked a mushroom. "Poisonous to us, though."

"Well, then, just say it," she grumbled. "You don't have to make names all complicated."

"It's not. The luminescence is in the nutrition," Cypur explained, "making the animals and the ground where they poop, glow." He pointed to an area of the ground where the glow splattered.

"Glowing poop?" She snickered. The glowing things around them were bright enough to illuminate her face in an eerie light. He noticed that upturned beak. A mischievousness glinted in her eye.

How immature! Cypur gave a wry smile. He hadn't really thought about it, but now the idea tickled him, though he didn't dare show it. Sorcerers did not laugh at immature jokes. Accepting his magick was out of control didn't mean he was willing to give up on being a Sorcerer. He would do the smaller things first. Work his way up.

"Cypur, Wescherlie, I was thinking to take you around north through part of Berlennia. It's quite barren so—"

"Barrenlennia, you mean," Wescherlie said.

"Berlennia," Precense stressed the name, "is barren so you wouldn't be seen by anyone that might tip you off. No one lives there."

Cypur traced their route on the map in his head. The way Precense was taking them would just graze the Unseen Town's borders also known as Narron. It was the only town that existed in the woodland. The inhabitants were rumored to be reclusive, unfriendly, and weird. 

All that was written about them in books was they were a clan of Human-born Sorcerers who followed some ancient Sorcerer belief system. It was a twisted form of aesthetic ethics that required Human sacrifices to be given to their god.

But no one could say for sure if that was true, because no one had ever met a Narron. They kept away from the rest of Sorcerer society and Sorcerer society kept away from them.

After a while, the rough forest floor flattened out into a well-used path. Precense stopped, alert, and then Cypur realized, too. Someone was coming using short-distance teleportation. The bursts of magick he felt were getting closer. Wescherlie perched atop Cypur's shoulder.

Before long, a man and a woman teleported before them. They each held a cardboard sign in their hands and one of them had two signs. The signs had 'yes', 'no', and 'perhaps' written on them. Cypur waited for them to say something. The song of a cricket permeated the awkward silence as if it this was all a joke.