It was a while later. Venus had long since gotten better thanks to the witch, whose name was Flora. The girls were exploring some woods. If only Hertha could have appreciated the scenery. But it was hard, extraordinarily difficult, when she wanted to stay safe, make sure Venus was safe and sure everyone was content. They travelled past the woman who Hertha would be in debt to, though she wasn't sure for how long - and had eventually reached a mythical forest.
A forest where the roots travelled upwards and created tunnels with their arms. A forest where the trees were purple-wooded and had white leaves. A forest where there were glowing mushrooms growing from within the trunks of every inanimate citizen of the woods. Fairy lights shimmered across the canopy and friendly childish giggling could be heard from all corners of the biome. It was somewhere Venus was apparently familiar with, and so she comforted her shorter friend explaining that the giggles were from pixies and inchlings which scurried under the crevices of the woods.
It served no interest to Hertha. She didn't want to see any more new places. Not yet. Not until she had somewhere she could return to. But there was no place for someone like herself. There was only more adventuring. Was it ironic? That Hertha was growing sick of learning the same new things? Probably. It felt like she couldn't take anything more from walking around.
The trees looked bored of her, the rain seemed sick of trickling down her hair, the mushrooms seemed tired of the warnings they received from others of the pair eating them. Everything was beginning to blur into the same.
Hertha was dissociating. Nothing felt new, she felt she had lost all human desires and excitement. There was nothing, she thought, nothing to excite her in this saddening state.
Only shame, regret and guilt really got to her. The shame of becoming an explorer because her mother was mad at her; how feeble was Hertha to not be able to withstand such a petty argument? Regret would always be a part of her, any little danger and she'd think back to how she sat admiring fishes while Venus was slowly dying above her. And guilt, well, guilt from feeling those anyway, it was a vicious cycle of feeling bad and because of that, feeling bad. Hertha's morale was hitting an all-time 0.
"Hertha, would you like to live here?" Venus suddenly asked, looking around the woods. Hertha couldn't say the place wasn't mysteriously beautiful, but she knew couldn't say she thought for herself that the place held a new type of beauty. But Hertha thought of the question nonetheless, it was a unique question: Venus had never asked before.
"Hm... where? There isn't nearly enough room anywhere to build anything sustainable enough for living." She pondered and looked from under the roots, which Venus ducked into and posed.
"Become a tunnel dweller, but on the surface." She joked with a small smile, appreciating the purple tint that reflected off of her face.
"But caves are so much more pretty!" Hertha smiled back, joining Venus under the trunk and sitting down. "Look around at this, it's purple and... oh... Venus." She sighed while suddenly thinking of small interior decorations for under the roots.
"What? Wouldn't it be so pretty? I personally prefer the ocean. Imagine an underwater home! Oh, Hertha, that sounds splendid." She continued with some more enthusiasm. Hertha hadn't seen a lot of Venus being excited or expressing herself, so Hertha tried to focus more on that than her ever deepening hole of bleak trauma, "but impossible, the pressure and light levels of the ocean is just a bit too much for anything long-lasting." She concluded and looked away.
"You're only saying that because of the merman boy you had a crush on." Hertha scoffed and laughed at Venus's guilty face. It was true, sadly. Venus only held a connection to the ocean because of that boy. But she didn't want to hear it from the likes of Hertha.
Striding over more roots, Venus decided it was time to try and get food. Often, Hertha would complain, but as Venus was beginning to realise, the girl looked more blue with their situation. She'd be caught staring off into meaningless features while stuck in her own trance, and more often than not, Hertha's eyes looked glassed over with deep thought. Venus only felt her brow furrow and she crouched down to pick up some mushrooms, before deciding otherwise, "Hertha could you be a dear and pick all of the white, glowing mushrooms? They aren't poisonous." Venus explained before slinking into the bushes to find a stream for fish.
Hertha did as told, finding the task to be decidedly dull - she had done it plenty of times before. Plucking at the roots and feeling their somewhat rough-textured liquid stain her hands; Hertha hummed and tried to think of actually settling down. Venus or not, she wanted to have a place she could call home. After watching Venus get poisoned, Hertha could only worry of dying alone in the wild.
It didn't make sense, Hertha had seen Venus evade death many times prior to. There was no reason for her to be so worried. But there was a new fear which blossomed from seeing Venus so helpless and alone with her horse - dying without anyone there. No one would know, no one would care. Maybe all Hertha wanted was someone to... to feel something - in the situation in which they passed. But thinking of the witch, alone in the middle of nowhere, aged and confined to the woods around her; when she died, no one would check up on her. Hertha had the urge to revisit her in the future, but also feared that if she did, she'd find the woman dead in the cabin; maybe in the further future, just a skeleton. That was horrifying. And Hertha didn't want that to happen to them.
Having a place to settle down would give them somewhere to belong. Somewhere to call home. In the instance (which Hertha could only pray would never happen) that one of them were dying - all Hertha could have asked was that the other, when unable to save them, would pull them, and carry them to rest where they felt their worth. If that wasn't so complicated to understand. Hertha wanted to die where she felt welcomed, where she felt safe. She wanted Venus to have the same treatment.
She hadn't even realised there was food being set out in front of her. She zoned out again to the only thing she would actually desire. It was surreal how Venus would handle so much adventuring, it was like she was born for the routes. Hertha ate quietly, mushroom stew with smoked cod, which was unseasoned and bland. Not that Hertha actually minded that.
The actual "struggles" of survival never actually worried Hertha. Having no bed, the exposure at night, the lack of good food, the general dangers. Even things like limited clothes and not having a proper bath. Things like that didn't bother or grow to be an issue for Hertha. After all, she was already nearly there with her past life of being less advantaged than others - as well as the mental preparations for having no home anymore.
It only began bothering her when she realised she no longer had worth and meant anything to anyone. Maybe, Hertha's greatest fear was being worthless. Being truly alone.
Night was beginning to fall, Hertha saw the sky darken and along with it, the woods. Literally. The leaves began shifting black in a wonderful chain reaction until it simulated its own day and night cycle. The mushrooms seemed to flow harder and the fairy lights from before seemed to try and simulate stars. Nature mimicking nature. At some point, Hertha would appreciate it.
Quietly, their fire crackled one last time before hissing at the water being poured over it. Venus patted it down with some grass before slipping under a band of roots creating something of a tunnel. She saw Hertha follow behind her, along with Dove, who sat down before laying and letting Venus rest her head on her stomach. Hertha used her bag as a pillow and looked up blankly, close to ready to fall asleep.
"Hertha, come closer!" Venus offered, sitting up and seeing the unresponsive girl in another one of her daydreams, "Hertha?" She asked once more.
"Sorry, yes, Venus?" Hertha never looked at her, but responded with a relatively normal tone.
"Come closer, I feel we should reminisce," the woman was setting the conversation up for her advantage.
Hertha pulled her bag closer and rested where her legs could sit on Dove's abdomen respectfully, Venus then spoke again, "a lot has happened, how long has it been?" She began trying to pump answers out of Hertha.
"I've lost that concept of time. I'll be honest. I don't know how long it's been. Days have been becoming the same." She confessed blandly.
"Hm... I suppose so. Are you... okay... Hertha? You seem so... disconnected. I'm worried." Venus never looked at the girl, but the girl never looked at Venus either. So it wasn't like the situation could possibly get worse.
"I just... I'm fine mostly. I just want you especially... to have somewhere you can feel safe. Not somewhere emotionally, like by someone's side. But physically, a house, a cottage. Somewhere you can go when nowhere else can deliver." She sighed, there wasn't a point hiding it, "I don't want to stop exploring, but I want to enjoy it again. I never want to stop you from doing what you want either but... I just want to have some closure. I don't want us to be in near death situations and decompose where no one will find us." She explained further since the conversation was getting to that point.
"No, I get it. It's quite... unsettling to think of how if we vanished, that would be it. But in that way, you've sort of become your mother, haven't you?" Venus asked, slightly amused.
"I suppose that's true." Hertha agreed, thinking back to her mother. "But I guess it's a general thing, isn't it? Oh whatever. I can't be bothered to think right now." She sighed and shuffled in her space.
"Is there anything you miss, Hertha?" Venus suddenly asked. Hertha hadn't thought about it, but she began doing so now.
"I haven't forgotten what it was I missed... but I can't put my finger on it. I think we both feel something is missing. For you it might be your status... but I can't... really explain what I'm needing right now. What's made me want to go back? Nothing. What is making me want to break out of this cycle? Maybe too many things, so I can't give you one answer. What do you miss, Venus?" She returned the question.
"Hm... I miss... I suppose... getting a good rest. I've been hounded by over-stimulating dreams of animals. It's so odd. It isn't every night, but it's the more inconvenient nights." Venus huffed and looked up, thinking of the dogs and the oxen.
"Animals? What interest do they serve you?" Hertha suddenly sat up, confused. Venus wasn't too fond of animals herself, only a few.
"I don't know but they've been bothering me." She muttered, "whatever. Hertha, where should we go next?" Only then did they make eye contact. Not that it lasted long, Hertha went back to lying down and looking up at the purple wooden roof.
"I don't know..." simply, she sighed, "it would all be the same at the end of the day. I think I'll be asleep now." She closed her eyes and left Venus alone with what she had said.
Venus frowned as she lay against the stomach of her horse, and then, it made sense. Hertha did miss a home. And throughout their adventures; both had forgotten, they had their own homes to return to. With that thought, Venus knew where her next destination was going to be.