Risk

Chapter I

Jasta let out a long, even breath. The sun was sinking lower every second, and she was running late.

She could just see the bright yellow-orange globe through the dense trees. She inhaled, the spicy scent of the clover forest filling her nose. She looked up through the trees, all of them, even those hardly older than saplings, were taller than twenty feet, their leaves were about the length of her arm, their branches about the thickness of her torso. Their pure, white bark glinted in the rays of the setting sun. She reached out her hand and rested it against the smooth, slightly sticky bark of the nearest tree. She knew that the inside of the trees would be as dark as any other wood, a rich earthy color that didn't match the bark at all.

It was hard to pull herself out of her awe for the colossal trees. She loved the forest, but at the moment, she had a job to do. She lifted her eyes up and they flickered faster than light through the trees, searching even the darkest shadows. She spied what she had been searching for, a plump, fat-bodied jagar was hanging on to the bark of a nearby tree. The creature's oval body was covered in thick, black, matted fur. It had small wings sprouting out of its back, useless because of the fatness of the animal. It had eight limbs; four arms, two wings, and two legs. The limbs were short and stubby, the elbow hardly inches from the body.

Jasta pulled the bow from her back. Her family was poor and needed her to hunt the difference that their garden couldn't supply. The jagar that she had in her sights would be the following day's meal. She reached back and slowly brought an arrow to her bow. Her every movement made as small as possible so as not to disturb the stubby creature.

She aimed, carefully measuring the distance and wind to make sure that her arrow struck true. She released the arrow. It flew and, with a sharp crack, hit the creature. She bounded over to the tree, avoiding the dense underbrush by jumping like a deer. The bowstring had been so taught that the arrow had not only pierced the creature, it had plunged a few inches into the white trunk of the clover tree.

Arrows were extremely valuable so she worked for a bit to be able to wrench the arrow from the trunk of the tree. The plump little creature came loose from the arrow and started falling towards the dense underbrush that covered the entire forest floor. She had had this happen thousands of times before, and her hand flashed out, lightning-quick; she grabbed the fat little thing before it reached the ground.

She had been providing meat for her family for years. Even when she had been nearly bedridden with illness, she still found a way to get into the forest and hunt.

She looked up at the western sky. It was getting darker by the minute and she still had some things to do back in the village.

She set out through the forest, nimbly jumping over obstacles. She had lived in and around the forest since she was a baby. She knew every rock, twig, and tree branch in the forest. She ducked, avoiding a low-hanging branch with practiced ease.

She was coming up on the meadow. She inhaled deeply as she reached the big field. She smelled the rich, honey-like smell of the snow flowers. Named as they were for their snow-like appearance. She marveled at the thick blanket of pure white flowers covering the entire meadow. If she looked closer, every plant had thousands of tiny little flowers on it. They looked rather like bells, she supposed. She thought the name was quite fitting and she understood why people had named it in such a way.

However, they looked more like snow when packed so densely together, and less like the bells of their namesake.

She reached under the thick covering of pure white flowers to the grass underneath and pulled up a big chunk. She picked grass until she had a large handful, then she put the wad of grass in her game bag, next to the jagar and pheasant that she had killed.