Chapter 12: Chapter 11: Hoofin’ it

Erica’s POV

 

A was… unusual. He… or she… or they… huh, I guess I couldn’t really tell. They were small, fairly soft spoken, and honestly seemed pretty fragile. Not from a physical standpoint, obviously, but there was something about them that seemed like it might just shatter at any moment. I don’t even think they noticed it themself, it’s like whatever pain they were feeling was normal to them, but every now and then it’d rise to the surface, and they’d stare straight at the ground, dead silent, or edge away from me for no reason, or they’d just trail off, mid sentence, and pretend nothing happened.

They were honestly a walking contradiction. Even though they were small, slender, and relatively human in appearance, there was a sense of dread that filled the air around them. That dread was well founded too, in spite of their size there was a lot of strength packed in there. After what they did to me, I’d hate to get on their bad side again.

They were kind of cute too. Not in a lovey dovey kind of way, they clearly had a lot of stuff they had to work through before that'd be any kind of option, and I didn’t really want to think too hard about the whole bull head thing anyway. They were cute in a “Oh my god this little creature means the world to me, I have to protect it” kind of way. The fact that they could easily rip a grown man’s head off but still startled at every shadow only amplified this effect. 

According to A, this “Willow” person lived about 15 miles away, which didn’t sound like much, but we quickly discovered that it wouldn’t be so easy. The rapid growth of the local foliage had turned much of the city into a dense forest, and while animal life was sparse, we certainly weren’t alone out there. More than once on the first day alone, we had to reroute to avoid the sounds of something snuffling or stomping through the bushes. Even though the two of us still had our heads on straight, we couldn’t be sure if the same was true for others, and if plants were affected and humans were affected, I had a feeling animals probably could be too. I wasn’t looking forward to meeting some giant mutated pigeon. 

After a few hours of painfully slow progress, the sun slowly began to set, and the two of us began searching for a place to spend the night.