defying death.

It’s not that you hate forests.

The endless piles of dried leaves and tree branches are annoying, as are the mosquitos that flit close and then droop away, disappointed when they realize your thin vestiges of blood don’t have any nutrition for them. You can tolerate having to skirt around anthills and keeping an eye out for any plants that might try to strangle you.

What you really hate, from the bottom of your desiccated pusher, is the endless glorious calls of birds trying to tell each other to piss off.

Rivali doesn’t seem to mind. Or well, they mind other things entirely, but you haven’t noticed them trying to curse the birds to drop dead like you’ve been nobly struggling to do.

In fact, right now they’re staring into the distance like an absolute -

- what is that.

You follow the younger jade’s gaze, and see a telltale white glow that you know from sweeps of looking at it in the mirror, using it to light up the nooks and crannies of your old home cavern.

“I’m going to go talk to them.” You say, low.

Rivali sighs, crossing their arms.

“Please make it quick.”

“No promises!” You sing back, slipping through the trees, shying away from the stink of a cholerbear where it’s brushed against the trees, leaving bits of fur.

“Pardon me!” You say, stepping close (but not too close) to this clearly inexperienced young drinker. Really, who doesn’t how to turn their glow off?

“I can’t help but noticing you haven’t…” You flick your own glow on, then off again, and shrug. “Why is that? You could attract predators, you know.”

Or worse, but in this forest it’s being chomped on by giant teeth that worries you.

[ You’ve walked for what it felt like days. But the sooner you got away from the cave you used to work in, the higher were the chances to survive. Did you... even survive back then? All you remember is a noose around your neck before the world went black. However, when you woke up outside the your former working place,  it seemed like you just had taken a nap in an inappropriate spot. If you don’t count the unnatural glowing. There is only one time you recall reading about trolls with such a bizzare ability, and the book where you took that from was a fantasy novel. So... It can’t be real, right? Eventually, you get tired of walking and thus decide to sit on the nearest big enough boulder you see in the surroundings. There, you keep thinking and thinking--- The situation you’re in is so absurd you have an hard time believing all of this is happening to you. You should be dead, shouldn’t you?

An unfamiliar voice snaps you out of those dreadful thoughts. It belongs to troll of your same blood color who, for some reasons, approached you. At first, you stood up, ready to flee: mutations of this kind aren’t appreciated on Alternia. But then, she showed you the two of you seemed to have more in common than you initially thought. Ashamed, you reply under your breath. ]