Risk

Chapter VI

When she was next aware, she was bouncing up and down on the back of a horse. Her eyes flew open in shock.

Rowan was sitting in front of her. The horse was at a flat out gallop and Jasta panicked, thinking that she would fall off. But as her foggy head cleared, she realized that she had a thick rope binding her to the pack of supplies. The rope was around her middle and it left her arms free. She clutched at the back of the saddle that Rowan sat on, her hands shaking violently. It was one thing to be unsecured on the back of a galloping horse, but falling asleep in a tent and suddenly waking up thinking she would fall off was an entirely different story. Her heart thumped long after she realized that she was safe.

After a while, she got used to the bumping and rocking of the horse and she settled closer against the pack of supplies. The jostling aggravated her already sore muscles, but she just gritted her teeth and ignored it. It was worth it if she was going to get home quickly.

There was a thick fog shrouding the trees in shadow, and through the fog, Jasta could barely just make out the evil-looking, twisting shapes of the black tree branches, spindly and sparse, like skeletal hands reaching up from their graves to pull her down into the black earth. She shivered, not just from the cold droplets of fog misting her face and arms.

She longed for the comfort of her own forest, the spicy smell that tingled in her nose, the familiar terrain, but most of all, she missed her family and her village. She wanted to return so badly, it left a hollow feeling in her chest. She thought about her home, the little pigs, her mother and Rose, Etta.

The horse came to a stop. Jasta decided that they must be in a clearing because the shadow of trees hidden in the fog had gone. She felt like she was in the middle of an ocean, with nothing to see on any side of her for miles and miles.

Rowan swung off the horse, his long coat flapping around his legs. The sound annoyed her. She wondered why he wore it. It seemed so inconvenient to have such a long swatch of fabric tripping you up and getting in your way, not to mention the fact that such a large amount of fabric could be used for other useful things.

He turned to her, his eyes showing mild surprise, probably upon seeing that she was awake.

"I would have woken you up when I left but even though I shook you for a good few minutes, you were still out cold. You must have been very tired." He said, the faint shadow of a smile playing across the corner of his mouth.

"I was really that tired? I didn't feel it." She found it hard to imagine herself not waking up after solid minutes of shaking. Usually, she slept like the wind and could wake up at the drop of a pin.

After a few seconds passed and he didn't say anything, Jasta decided to ask: "Why did we stop? Shouldn't we travel as much as possible if we want to reach Yarul?" it was still clearly daylight, even though the fog blocked so much of the sun's like.

"Yes. But the fog is too thick. If we keep going with the fog like this, the horse might stumble and injure an ankle, and we'd be stranded without a ride until the horse heals. I'll set up camp and we can wait until the fog clears a bit." He replied.

Setting up took much quicker than the last time because Rowan remembered himself didn't set it up for all of his brothers.

The new sparks of fire were a warm ember of light within the gloomy dusk of the evil forest that seemed to go on endlessly.

Rowan disappeared into the trees, leaving her to sit by herself near the fire, trying to remain at least slightly warm.

Even sitting on a log by the fire, Jasta's skin was covered in goosebumps. She started to shiver. The fog made her clothes damp and the cold seeped through her wool shirt and into her bones. Her teeth started to chatter.