The Fear You Know

22. Twisted

The sun rose ghostly orange through the fog. Trees were left as red silhouettes over the marshland. A lone bird cawed in the early morning dawn, its flying form an indistinct shape through the trees and mist. It curved around to the side passing over their campsite as Eli kicked dirt into the fire and Peter packed up the bags.

Neither of them spoke.

A layer of frost coated the ground and grasses around them, turning the already colorless swamp into a landscape of silver and white. Eli finished with the fire and Peter offered him his bag. He took it without saying anything, throwing it over his shoulder.

The morning was spent in sullen silence Eli walking at the front, Peter trailing ten to fifteen feet behind. Wink rested on Eli's shoulder staring out into the morning mist. Even he didn't have anything sarcastic to say which left only the crunching of their feet over frosted grass.

The mist burned off early in the morning, giving them a view of the valley stretching on towards the hazy horizon.. The sun seemed somehow distant and cold despite the relative heat compared to the stalk.

A flock of small black dots was circling in the distance, likely, Eli thought, over a recently deceased animal,

Their continuing misfortunes of the day did not go unnoticed. Peter got his leg stuck in some mud. Eli ran his head multiple times into multiple different branches, and the map still wasn't making sense to either of them. Eli had a theory about this place, which would make sense, but he didn't voice it aloud. He still didn't feel like talking to Peter.

He knew he should apologize, that was hardly a question, but his hurt pride and bitterness wasn't above getting in the way. He sighed as he turned his head to look up at the sun, no, he was getting in his own way. It wouldn't due to attribute his actions to anything else, even his own personified emotions.

Instead, Eli tried not to think about it, turning his thoughts back to the landscape around them. A landscape that seemed completely dedicated to.... Accidents or.... Failures perhaps? He would write down his observations when he had time later, hopefully somewhere where he could actually write and read normally.

Off in the distance the line of the horizon darkened slightly, and he thought he could see where the end of the basin opened up. That would be where Twisted started. Despite his travels, he had never actually visited Twisted, and knew only the name of their capital city, Churnin. The Acolytes of twisted were supposedly called the bent, though they weren't known for traveling in the state that it left them, so seeing one outside Twisted's domain was rather unlikely.

His thoughts were interrupted as he almost slipped into a puddle, and was forced to drag himself out as Peter watched from a distance, arms crossed over his chest. Eli stared hard at the ground as he pulled his leg from the muck and continued walking forward.

As the sun rose and the air around them heated, the frost on the ground evaporated, and all the walking was making him hot. He pulled off his jacket sometime before noon, but by the time the sun had ascended over his head, he was hot and hungry, calling for a stop to their forced march so they could eat.

They found themselves a place to sit below an outcropping of trees by another small stream of water unpleasantly humid as a cloud of gnats swarmed around them. Eli chewed his food thoroughly before swallowing, worried that he might somehow manage to choke before the day was over. Peter sat in silence ten feet away on another protruding rock.

The silence was growing awkward.

Eli wanted to say something but knew it would probably be a bad idea. He had no idea how Peter was going to react, and didn't want to say anything that might upset him further. Instead he reached into his bag and pulled out his book on the dreads. He frowned, upon noticing there was a spot of water damage on the upper right hand part of the cover, but looking inside it appeared as if the pages were preserved.