10 Disguised Smiling Faces

Like dripping water from the overcast branches, the days flowed by unhindered. With the two wooden pails tied over the ends of a thick long stick placed over my shoulders, I'd start running to a distant river somewhere east of the Nymph's area. I'd go back and forth at least fifteen times, using that time to practice my agility, balance and stealth, by running through the forest and the tree branches with less and less disturbance I could muster each time.

Ten months later, I could easily run by without alerting any animal or trampling any plant. I started to think of leaving no traces as a game.

The only thing that could tip off that I had been there was my scent, and so I ran faster and faster to make sure I'd have the least time in contact with anything I or my feet touch along the way. Sometimes I pretend that there was some lycan chasing after me.

I shake my head at the absurdity.

As of now, I can properly extend my shadow for more or less five hundred square feet around me in all directions, and maintain this shadow domain. After practicing and meditating for two months short of a year, I am able to control anything, inanimate or animate, inside of it just as long as my concentration does not falter. Even the air cannot escape the bidding of my pitch black dome. Although I've come a long way from extending my shadow for a mere few feet, I am still struggling from seeing things in the dark like how Father could.

Perhaps it's a limit that is not for me to overcome. I may not see in dark, nor hide in the shadows like the other Wraiths could, the same way I can only feel a limited sense of another by staring at their eyes for seven seconds, but never freely reading their mind, memories or thoughts.

Another variable that had pushed me to stay with the Nymphs was that I could not connect with any of them no matter how long I stared at them. Perhaps it's because of their semi-transparent bodies, or maybe it's because it's not their real self.

I contemplate silently if I should try staring at Evelyn's tree…

"Have you finished your chores, little Videre?"

I have grown accustomed to the endearment and antics of the Nymphs after such a long time in their presence. Putting down the two big wooden pails sister Adelaine had made for me, I glance to see Clara with Lydia coming my way. Lydia had a crown of small purple and white saucer magnolia flowers over her head.

I motion my head downwards in a brief nod.

"Oh, have you just finished watering Clara's tree", Lydia casually asks as she stares at the beautiful Hawthorn flowers of her sister's tree. "Your flowers are beautiful this year too, Sister Clara."

"Have you seen your tree", Clara argues sarcastically at Lydia. "Have you seen how gorgeous your flowers are?"

Lydia giggles as she caresses the petals on her head.

The fine hairs on my arm stand as I start to feel as if something is watching me. I zone out of the conversation to practice using the shadows of the trees like an unknown radar. Barely can I tell where the beast hid. If it was any race of a human-kind instead of an instinct-ruled feline, I doubt I could have instantly figured out their location.

There. Behind that tree.

I could feel a soft vibration in the air—a breathing.

Growl—

Not long after a large salivating feline charges at us but none of us so much as flinch as it got nearer. Lydia and Clara do not even give it any attention, though Clara seems slightly annoyed at the loud growls that had interrupted her and Lydia's conversation.

"Be quiet", Clara demands.

"…" I simply stare at it as it stops its attack in the middle of the air, two inches away from my face. As this has happened surprisingly a handful of times, I'm not that stunned anymore.

The powerful giant roots of Clara's Hawthorn tree had shot out from the ground abruptly before half of my face got devoured by the beast. The soil and moss lifted up as if some sort of lid for the roots. They catch the feline mid-jump as they twist and turn, strangling the it like some sort of giant snake.

The beast bellows.

"I said. Be. Quiet. Beast." Clara gave the dying feline an angry downward stare, as her roots squeezed and broke all its bones. The snapping sound did nothing to ease the torture the beast felt as it slowly got devoured by what should have been at the bottom of the food chain—a tree. One last dying grunt was issued from the beast as the roots dragged it deep down into the depths of the earth, the soil coming back to its place with no signs of the earlier disturbance.

"Scary~ Look, Sister Narcissa, look how scary Sister Clara looks with her forehead wrinkled~", Adelaine's voice says.

"Ah! Wrinkles?! Do I really have wrinkles?" Clara retracts her frightening look, only to look apprehensive. She touches her forehead and looks at Lydia with a questioning gaze.

Lydia shakes her head vehemently. Clara breathes out a sigh of relief, before snapping her head at the three approaching figures.

"You liar", Clara calls out to Adelaine.

"Ahe~", Adelaine just laughs, trying to act cute.

"Lucky you, Sister Clara. You'd be having new fertilizer for a while, you know", Margarethe says. "I foresee healthier lusher leaves. Lucky you, lucky you."

"Ah, Sister, could I have the bones of the beast after the meat has rot", Lydia asks Clara.

"Sure. But what for?"

"Sister Lydia seems to have started a new hobby of tying animal bones along the branches of her trees, you know", Margarethe replies for her as Lydia excitedly nods.

"The white bones really go well with the white and purple flowers of my trees", Lydia says proudly.

"Oh~! So pretty~", Narcissa praises Lydia's flower crown, making the latter blush.

"That's right~", Adelaine agrees with Narcissa. Having the same kind of tree, I would've expected nothing less than a tight bond between them. They even talk in the same sing-song manner.

An internal premonition tells me to not stay any longer, and so I slip out with no one noticing. I walk to a tree and grab a low branch, swinging myself once before I hoist myself up in the air. I land on a tree branch and start jumping from branch to branch. I hear the last few parts of their conversation as I leave.

"Maybe I should ask Videre to bait a few fertilizers for me too~", Narcissa placed a hand on her cheek in contemplation. "What do you say Videre~?" She and the rest of the Nymphs looked behind them to find not a single male around.

I almost slipped down a branch upon hearing this, if not for the saving grace of the random vine I just grabbed.

It's a good thing I left. The Nymph-kind, save for Evelyn, are scary after all. I need to trust my gut more.