the heart of the forest pt. 1 [forest plot]

Wei was an avid reader, but he supposed that that was one of the things that people didn't associate him with, considering his oftentimes less than stellar understanding of the english language, but when he could get his hands on books that were printed in Chinese he couldn't be stopped from drinking deeply from them like sweet fountains. At the moment he only had two books that he read over and over again despite him already knowing how the story inevitable ended, but he needed something to fill his mind with.

Then again, there were also the shelf of notebooks, filled with characters and adventure that he'd written himself over the course of six years or so, filled with characters from his every day life in a position of intrigue and adventure. He rewritten the first book at least three times. It was embarrassing. It was a good thing he lived alone.

But when he heard himself actually being invited to something, in person no less, he gave a big smile. "I'd love to come! Do you read books together? Which one are you reading now? How far into it are you? Should I read it too?"

The monkey listened closely to Hari's words, tilting his head to one side as he explained his new powers. Turning into wood and talking to plants. That sounded like an awesome power. Wei wished he could talk to plants. As it was he just liked to assume that the trees didn't think he was a total asshole from swinging around their branches and picking their fruit.

"That sounds cool!"

When they passed through the trees and the graveyard became visible in the distance, Wei dropped to all fours and began to insistently pick through the trees on their path, his nose easily rooting out small clusters of mushrooms. He could tell apart the edible ones from the not edible ones, and picked a few handfuls of edible mushrooms for his lunch before rejoining Hal and Hari.

"What kinds of stuff do the plants say?" He asked as he carefully reared back up to two feet.

A light tint of pink brushed Hal's cheek at Hari's compliment, "I don't think they are," he said, casting his gaze aside, "I drew them a couple of years ago and they're probably not as good as my new ones." Hal chuckled, "I probably should make a new version of that so it'll be easier on the eyes...!"

As Hal felt the pressure in the air simmer down, he felt somehow relieved. Now that the two seemed to be talking properly to each other now, he started to feel a bit more at ease. His attention never really left the two, his eyes wide at the sight of Hari's skin turning into what looks to be the bark of a tree. He listened intently as Hari explained his new found power and Hal couldn't even start how to say what he thought. For starts, Hal thought it was probably an amazing power to have. Communicating with animals was one thing but with plants was a whole other story to tell.

"That's amazing!" he exclaimed, just at the same time as Wei did. His eyes glanced towards the other boy before looking back to Hari. "I think it's pretty cool," he repeated himself.

As Wei asked another question, Hal added, "So... right now, does that have anything to do with the treasure? The plant communication thing, I mean."

"The Night Circus by Erin Morge... Mor..." Wei looked puzzled for a moment before just shrugging and letting it go. He was sure he could just ask for it at the library and they would hand it over. He hoped anyways..

"Oh, I heard about that too," he said, trying to be as cheery as possible. It was exhausting, but someone had to be chipper. "Well, not a ton about it. Mostly people being like 'I heard there was' about the whole thing."

The monky boy trotted and fell back in line with Hal, looking ahead as they passed by the cemetary. His tail twitched slightly at the sight of the place, overgrown and poorly maintained. He wondered if it was even still used. He didn't see a church attached to it either.

Wei looked over his shoulder at the retreating cemetery before turning back and looking ahead, paying attention to the story about the pirate woman who tried to bury her secret treasure somewhere where it would never be found and ended up falling victim to starvation and beasts. Scary.

He'd seen a bunch of the scary monsters in the forbidden forest, though that never seemed to stop him from going on a few forays into the forest. A lot of them seemed to ground-bound and even the ones that weren't couldn't get him in the higher canopy of the trees. He smiled at the thought of treasure though--it shouldn't be hard to get what they came for and leave if the forest actually wanted to help them like he said.

The monkey bounced ahead as if he'd never seen the forest before. "This place looks a lot different from the ground."

Hearing the story of the squirrel attacking people kind of scared Hal just a bit. He heard a story like that before and he was glad he was never around to come across a probably-rabid squirrel. That would be the stuff of his nightmares and he would like it to stay as nightmares he has at night than to have it in real life, thank you very much.

As they came closer to the graveyard, Hal could feel the atmosphere growing increasingly heavier. The very feeling sent shivers down his spine and as they passed, Hal had to make sure his gaze was straight to the path they were going where his glasses could protect his vision. He wouldn't want to accidentally catch sight of-- too late. He saw a headless ghost sitting on one of the head stones right at the corner of his eye. Fuck.

Hal tried to shrug it off. He didn't want to look scared as he already was but he could feel some of the spirits had turned their attention on them. He prayed in his heart none of them would try anything bad because the last thing he wanted was to turn their adventure into a horror movie.

Trying to forget the haunting images in his head, Hal turned his attention to Hari's story of the pirate woman and her hidden treasure. It felt so much like an adventure he'd only watched in movies but at the same time, he was suddenly worried that their adventure could turn into a suspense movie. A treasure abandoned by a pirate woman who later died with it? Sounds like something that would have a curse. But... he knew Hari wouldn't jump into that kind of danger if that were the case. Maybe the trees had assured him there wasn't a curse?

Hal didn't try to bring it up; he was a little scared that he might come off as a party-pooper or something. Besides.. Hari said so himself: the forest wanted to help them.

Still, it didn't stop Hal from thinking too much. All he could do now was pretend the heavy air wasn't getting to him. Maybe he could just... start some small talk to keep him at ease.

"From the ground? Well, obviously, the angle from above probably gives you wider visibility but the ground has a lot of things growing around. Even under uprooted trees. I mean like that one over there," Hal nodded to one of the trees ahead which looks like it was almost pulled out. Maybe there was a rock there before but has now crumbled and joined the earth, leaving a space between the old roots and the trunk. ... Things like that made Hal think too much about the circle of life thing, really.

"Haven't you people heard of knocking?" came a startled voice. Followed by a the sound of a whip and a clattering of something hollow and solid.

The sight that greeted Hari was one that, to say the least, required a bit of context. As the door swung open, it revealed a lizard person wearing a black cloak splattered with vivid red holding a bloody cleaver, with several other knives as coated, or in some cases even more so, in blood laying on the floor. Her tail was held almost fully upright, straight above a stray foot. There was also a severed head staring out blankly into the distance, and some blood-soaked, severed human limbs that were weirdly stiff.

The lizard girl, Eph, glared in the general direction of the door whilst resuming cleaving forcefully into something, and the sound of stainless steel alloy digging into non-visible flesh for a few moments, and then she stopped, standing up, the sound of some sort of organic mass plopping onto the wooden floor. Upon close observation, most of the floor occupied by the girl and all the blood was covered in a thin plastic sheet.

Eph then stood up and walked over to the visitors, her cloak billowing down to her knees all bloody and a bloody cleaver in one clawed hand. She complained, "Great. Now I have more to clean up."

Then she tilted her head and her eyes upward, as if suddenly considering something. From her stern expression, she went to one of mild affirmation complete with some small nods, and then a bemused one which involved slamming her free hand into her forehead. "Yeah, that probably sounded threatening with me holding a bloody cleaver, didn't it? I - how do I explain this thing - well, I was in the middle of preparing myself food for the next few days and helping with the rampant sheep overpopulation plague when you suddenly opened the door and almost made me miss my swing and make a bigger mess. I could have lost a hand. So... do knock next time, okay?"