CHAPTER 16: the red flowers

Hours passed by before the golden sun finally made his appearance in the sky. Once the light of the sun hit the earth the coldness of the night slowly faded away.

I stretched; my muscles were stiff from sitting in a tree the entire night.

The first one to leave is tent was Alex. He seemed to be up and ready to go. Alex walked over to the fireplace and placed some new wood in it. After this he looked around probably searing for something.

Eventually his gaze fell on me.

"Good morning Gustave. Do you by any chance know where I can find water?"

I tilted my head to the side.

"There is water within two hundred meter in that direction."

I pointed towards where I heard a stream of water last night. After which he grabbed a bucked out his tent and started to walk in the direction I was pointing.

One he left I climbed down the tree I had spent the night in. my fiendish claws left markings in the thick brown bark of the three.

I nearly slipped since the three was covered in morning dew. But I managed to safe myself from falling by piercing the wood with my claws. It was clear to see where I slipped since it left deep markings in the wood.

Non the less I safely reached the ground. The grass was nearly soaked but it wasn't uncomfortable.

Now I was on the ground I had no idea what I had to do. So, I just leaned against the three again.

I stayed like this for around five minutes before someone else came out a tent.

I sighed upon seeing that it was Gert.

("Is he going to make a problem about what happened last night?")

The shards of the sword were still lying on the ground. No one had picked them up, so they hadn't moved since.

Gert looked at me for a second before he started to collect the meat that we didn't eat but instead had dried above the fire. He put it all in a leather bag. When all the meat was in the bag, he put the bag between their baggage.

I could also see that he pulled out a knife from one of the bags. He hung the knife where he used to have his sword. Then he pulled out a map.

He walked over to where he sat before and started to study the map.

I was relieved that he decided not to bother me.

Then minutes later, Alex arrived with the bucket of water. He entered the camp with a bright smile.

"Good morning Gert. I'm glad to see you're up!"

Gert only responded whit a soft grump.

Alex with clear disappointment written on his face started to make a fire.

"I heard from Allenya that you might start to breath fire in the future. That would be much more convenient than my attempts to make fire with flint and steal"

Small sparks landed on some dry clumps of grass as he was speaking. One of the sparks managed to create a small flame.

"Don't get your hopes up, it isn't curtain. besides even if I could I have no idea how to."

Alex's gaze was completely focused on the small flame that was consuming the grass. He carefully placed some small branches on top of it. The flames quickly marched upwards to completely enveloped the branches charring them in the prosses. It released a smell one would call pleasant, if not scarred by a painful parade of memory's caused by a fire.

"Dude, with skin like that it would be weird if you couldn't."

I rolled my eyes. I didn't need a reminder of my red skin.

It didn't take long after our short conversation for the others to woke up.

We quickly prepared food and packed up everything in the camp so we could start moving. At this point there were no paths. We just had to depend on the barely visible sun for directions.

But that was barely an inconvenience since Elisa was surprisingly good at it.

We marched trough the forest for about five ours until we could see a nearly endless field of red flowers. The flowers had roughly the same colour as my skin and reminded me of poppy's. they would have been identical of not for the black outline every vermillion leaf. Also, they reached my knees and the tall ones my elbow.

"It is said that during the great war the blood of the soldiers tainted these fields red."

I looked at Allenya since she was the one who spoke.

None of us said a word and just admired the scenery. It was beautiful yet emitted a dangerous aura of death like the voice luring of a siren. Two birds flew by in the distant sky, hovering free far above the red landscape where so many had fallen.