1 Time is drawing near

The sharp creak from a branch a good distance before her had split through the silence and caused her hands stained dark red of poisonous sap to freeze from their motion. Now alarmed, her usual pink flesh turned to a dark red on her arms and face as her skin hardening kicked in.

Retracted claws risen from deep within each finger waited to pounce from their tips, as they remained hidden within the metal mortar she had been making her poison in. Both her eyes lock onto the trees before her with an intense glare.

Greetings and familiar voices came from the ground several feet away and through the trees. It triggered a twitch in her left ear. From their words she could tell they were Meras from the Frontera order, returning from their shift of patrolling the border. Her stiff face melted into a smile at this welcoming news.

"I know it's you," said Rue in a strong voice that reached beyond several trees. Only a minute passed before the air standing still before the dark brown bark of one of the trees before her, began to blur into something black. It's as if the clear air particles started getting swapped with colored ones as something began to reveal from out of nowhere.

It wasn't long before a male Mera rose from a stooped position. His light pink face popped out as he lifted the black hood off his head to rest at the back of his neck. Both his shoulders dropped and his arms hung lifelessly at his side as he spoke to the large tree branch beneath his feet.

"One day Rue, one day I will get you."

Rue's stained hands emerged from out of the metal mortar to grip onto opposite sides on the outside of its mouth. Her focus had switched back downwards and onto her craft.

"Back from greeting your family so soon?" she asked him. "That was fast." She then raised one hand which held a glass tube the size of a pea between her thumb and index finger up to her face.

"Seems to me the Fronteras are just stepping foot back through the gates of the kingdom," her dead-like eyes squinted in disbelief as they focused away from the tube and onto him.

Ezra lifted his head from staring at the ground and began to walk forward so both tips of his black boots stuck out from under the ends of his cloak. He let out a deep breath before he formed both hands into an akimbo and stopped near the end of the giant branch.

"Yeah," he replied loudly from several feet away. His upper torso leaned forward towards her as he said, "I scurried my way there first thing and then here just to see you." --he leaned back to stand upright again-- "as always." He smiled at her before he spoke again. "See my speed is improving."

On her other hand, Rue projected a single claw from her pinkie. She held it close to the minute opening at the top of the glass tube to skillfully transfer drips of red sap drenched on her hand so it flowed inside of it.

"Right," she said in a monotone, as she fixed the red-filled tube into an open slot crafted between the crossguard of a dagger and its blade. She then spun the dagger around her index finger three full turns effortlessly, before she threw it about a foot into the air and caught it in a split second before it passed her hand.

With the dagger held tight in her clutch and the blade's tip pointed towards the earth, her eyes gleamed with light as they trailed the slender flow of red poisonous sap that began to flow from the glass tube. From just below the handle, it travelled along an engraved line on the blade, along the sharp edge, and then finally to the very tip.

His forehead began to furrow as his brows knitted together at the feeling of being ignored. He leaped from the edge of the branch to nearby ones until both his feet came stamping onto the wooden level Rue was stationed on. Unlike the usual soft and stealthy custom of landing known to the Meras. Rue however seemed unhinged by it.

The level was made from several planks of wood laid out flat, its edges shaped smoothly to be circular, and all supported by the massive tree bark it was built around. The top of two tables, one at each of her sides, were both crowded. One with sharp daggers had their metal blades reflecting the red of the fresh twigs of the opposite table.

"Have you decided on it yet?" he asked as he drew nearer.

"What about marrying you? Are you seri--"

"No," he snapped and stopped walking towards her. "What you plan to do with the rest of your life. You know the thing you've been procrastinating--and the choosing ceremony is near.

"Don't be Turill the sluggard, who even after haven graciously been given a chance to change his order, he kept on changing and changing… Now nobody wants his disloyal butt in their order and now spends his life as the kingdom's outcast.

"Have you ever seen the boils on his face? It's nasty, and I don't want such a pretty face of yours ending up like that."

They couldn't see Turill from their distance. But when they listened closely, they could hear the rusty and persistent voice of an elderly Mera begging the Fronteras for food as they stepped through the west-wing entrance gate.

"I'm turning nineteen remember? The choosing ceremony isn't until I'm twenty. I've got time."

"Oh," puffed Ezra as he placed one hand on the table with the daggers and sharp objects, and kept his eyes on her.

"So that's your plan?" he asked her. "You're going to wait until that day to blow it to your father the Chief and head of the Zunbera-xefi, the most respected order of the land--that you never intended to follow in his footsteps. All those five years of training and being at the top of your class will be for nothing. He'll get the impression that you've been lying to him this whole time--"

"No!" snapped Rue who stabbed the table with the dagger she became fixated on. She faced Ezra who stood on the opposite side of the table on her left.