Trinket (Reverse Harem)

Something Something Mumble Mumble

Itek had been right: once the preparations had been made, it didn't take very long for us to actually leave Haven.

We simply left the care of the houses to Marcus and well... left.

I rode Ethat, while Itek carried Asund, and Korr took Ormiss. Korr and Ethat carried a large number of carefully wrapped packs strapped just in front of their wings, like pack donkeys. The smaller Itek was charged with carrying items we unpacked and needed regularly, like provisions and combs and soap.

Korr and Ethat agreed that, assuming the weather stayed fair for flying, it would take about a month to reach their home in the far north, but instead of flying overland through the middle of the continent, the route would take us along the edge of the mountains and coast, where there was more water. Although the flight--because of the winds--would be more... exciting.

I spent most of the four weeks and however many days clinging to Ethat while his vines held me strapped to his back to try to make me feel safer.

On the good side of things, Korr appeared to have recovered completely from his injuries. And as for food, there was fishing in the dangerous surf (because Ormiss) when we were hugging the coastline, and prey in the mountains, then we flew over forests unlike anything I had ever seen. From the air, they were gold and red and bushy-looking. I actually got up the courage to watch them as Ethat sailed over them in the chilly air.

"You've never seen autumn forests?" Itek asked when we landed one night at dusk. The air was cold and damp, and rain was coming.

"No," I said, amazed at how the sky was purple-dark in the east and brilliant red-angry in the west and all the trees were lit up like fire and gold. I knew trees changed colors and lost leaves, but nothing in my scattered memories or feelings were familiar. So perhaps I had really never seen these before?

But how could that be? Weren't unicorns from the northern forests? I was used to sad, scrawny, barely-alive trees, not these massive ancient things.

We continued northward, and the forest slowly turned from gold and red to green. Deep, deep green. And trees that didn't have leaves, but needles and brush that scratched, and they smelled amazing.

And oddly familiar. Eerily familiar.

So I must have been from... these far northern forests?

"Evergreens," Ethat told me softly while I felt the sharp, prickly needles and rough, lumpy bark. Ormiss and Asund admired the trees as well, but Ethat understood I was unsettled at best.

"What does that mean?" I whispered.

"They are always green. Like this. Even in the depths of winter." He held me close, with his hand over my belly and the other holding down a branch for me to stroke. He seemed bright and brilliant in the dark, still forest with its carpet of fallen orange-brown needles. Many of the needles clinging to these trees were tinged a dark shade, and their clean, fresh scent smelled dirty and fetid if I inhaled. But overall, the trees were better than trees in the leafy forests farther south, and far better than anything I'd ever seen before. The world smelled fresher, and while the taint was present, it wasn't anything like farther south.

But the curious thing was only the biggest, oldest trees were alive. The forest was littered with numerous other smaller trees--small being relative--that were dead. But not dead from corruption, like the sad trees I'd seen in the south, that had withered, unnatural branches and blackened bark like scorched melted sugars.

"Is this where the unicorns dwelled?" I asked.

"Long, long ago the forests and the plains below them were their domain." Ethat turned me towards the south, but all I saw were rolling hills. Beyond it, though, was the flat expanses of the middle of the continent.