Page 38 of Escape from the Green

So I slept.

And I dreamed about a field of sunflowers.

-

The next day, I traded some of my blueberries and almonds to a hungry-looking family on their way to the Light Court to carry Amy's note to her brother.

I hadn't been able to part with the ring.

I'd passed a small market where I could have sold it. I could have gotten myself changes of clothing, more food, weapons to defend myself with should I need them.

I'd felt the ring, heavy in my closed fist.

And I just couldn't do it.

It was on my sixth day of traveling that I finally started to find familiar things. A tree I had climbed in my youth, made more gnarled and rough with age, but still boasting the crude carving in the side of a Draca breathing fire. Then there was a stream where my friends and I had flirted with sprites, letting them wash our hair, run their hands all over.

Close.

I was so close that I could feel the draw again. Like the veil, but more familiar, stronger.

If the draw was still there, the chances of my friends and family being there as well was much stronger.

"I wouldn't go that way if I were you," a voice called from above me, making me stiffen, head shooting upward, seeing what I had missed when I had looked up on the tree line as I approached.

A woman.

Easy to miss at first with her lean body clad in dark browns, making her blend in with the tree limb she was standing on, arms down at her sides. Her hair, too, matched, blended in. Long and sleek, tied here and there into small braids adorned with little trinkets found along the forest - rust-colored autumnal leaves, berries, pieces of natural rope with small gemstones beaded through.

Her face was what you would expect of fae - all sharp cheekbones, and a slightly pointed chin. Her almond-shaped eyes were an almost unnatural orange-brown, much like that of the leaves in her hair.

Her hands were perhaps the only thing about her that made no real sense. The tops had strips of scars - some old and pink, some red and new. The palms looked rough and blistered. And her nails, her nails were filed to points.

My eyes trailed down, seeing things I had missed in my surprise. Like a bag wrapped around one of her thighs. Like a band wrapped around the other, various items sticking out the top.

Most of them, I would bet, were weapons of some form or another.

Everyone knew a woman on her own in The Green would be subject to more hardships than most.

You could become a victim, or you became a predator yourself.

It seemed the woman in the tree was the latter of the two.

"Who are you?"

"Smoky," she supplied easily, chin jutting out a bit in pride.

"As in tourmaline or quartz?"

"Quartz."

"Interesting," I decided, nodding. "Born or made?"

"Both," she told me, shrugging. "I grew up in The Green," she added. "But on my own."

"Someone had to have raised you." Or else she'd have fallen prey to the worst sort of experiments, the hideous types of torture we all liked to pretend didn't exist.

"I have vague memories of gnomes feeding me from folded leaves. But as soon as I could walk, I was on my own."