Interlaced

One

Chtali raced across the forest floor, pursued by a trio of floran hunters. The brush tore at her exposed arms and hips, and left tiny, damaged feathers in her wake. She had lost her sandals many meters back, and now her scaly feet were caked with mud and her claws had strings of plant material stuck beneath them. Her lungs burned and her legs felt as though they may collapse.

The hunters were toying with her. They could have taken down the petite avian woman by now if they so chose to. However, they enjoyed the hunt, evident by their satisfied hisses, clicks, and the way their jaws opened slightly in a wicked, hungry grin. Despite being closer to plantlife than any humanoid race in the known universe, they had an insatiable taste for blood.

Chtali ripped through a wall of dense, teal and violet colored bushes. She was swallowed whole by the underbrush, leaving a clumsy trail of footprints and crashed down foliage behind her. After nearly a minute of fighting spiny branches that grabbed onto her clothes and feathers, she burst through the other side and fell forward.

She gasped, momentarily blinded by the intense light of the star in the sky. She put her hands out in front of her to catch her fall, but she instead tumbled downwards. Head over heels, she fell down a cliffside. Her bags and her spear was torn away from her and she spilled down the grassy slope towards a small decaying manor with black brick nestled at the bottom of the cliff.

The floran, who wanted her alive, found her fall less amusing than the chase. They stopped at the edge of the cliff just in time to hear the muffled thunk of her body coming to an abrupt stop.

She fell hard against the rotting wooden roof and crashed through the ceiling. Shards of soggy wood and slivers of vines rained down on top of her, followed by her heaviest bag. She hit the dark, ornate wooden floor beneath hard enough that her little beak left a dent in the floor. She gasped for air and shoved her bag off of her. She forced herself to sit up and she looked through the dust to see how far she had fallen.

Bits of wood dangled from the plant material above and obscured her sights above. There was a distinct smell of a perfume that was not native to this planet that came from inside. Around her there were piles of leather bound parchment and a knocked over cabinet full of broken plates and unfamiliar, ancient trinkets. A door slammed behind her and she swiveled her head around to a single door. She shoved herself off the floor and threw herself into the door.

The door budged only an inch before being shoved back into place by a force from behind it. "Please," Chtali pleaded, "let me in!"

"No!" spat back a voice from behind the door. It was shrill and mechanical. The door was once again shoved back at her.

"Please," Chtali begged, pounding the door with her flats of her hands, "I've got some floran hunters after--"

"So you bring them into my home?" shrieked the voice.

"You--you're mechanical! They can't eat you!"

The person on the other end, likely a glitch, made a sound like a gasp in horror.

Chtali looked over shoulder at the hole in the ceiling, waiting to see some beady floran eyes looking back at her. "I--I meant to say--"

"Never get between floran and their prey,"

Chtali pounded on the door a few more times before giving up. She stumbled around the room, over the broken bits of wood and other things as she looked for a way out. She found a window that had been obscured by a fallen cupboard and began to pull the debris away to reach it. She aggressively began to throw anything that she could get out of the way behind her. Her desperation to escape left her unaware of floran who slipped in from the hole in the ceiling, one at a time.