9 Not A Free Lunch

The Nymph's gathering lasted until dusk. I had wanted to roam the woods so I excused myself in the later part of the event. Evelyn planted a small seed of hers on the back of my palm. She said that it would help me find my way back to her tree if I got lost, but I think that she just doesn't want to let go of me just yet.

Calmly, I make my way back to a certain small clearing. It has been a year and a half before I came back. The rebel camp had obviously left long before. Evidences of their existence loiter here and there like a few tents, and a dug out fire pit, which were all covered in mud, moss and grass.

I walk towards the only dilapidated tent there and crouch down to see what they left behind. A few blankets and clothes lay scattered on the dirt, looking stiff from the mud and rain it was made endure throughout the year.

The dying rays of the sun peek through the holes of the tent, giving way for a glint somewhere near me to happen. Rummaging through a few pieces of dirty clothes, a broken lamp, and several blades of stray grass, I see a forgotten necklace made of silver beads; the middle silver bead shaped like a fang. Not once did I doubt it to be silver because I had the same design on my anklet.

The purebred lycans were afraid of silver for it could burn their skins and kill them. Unlike them, the half-lycans could handle silver very well but had a shorter lifespan than those of the purebreds, who could live up to a couple hundred years.

I cannot think of any other person to have taken this from my sister except for Laris. I release the breath I did not know I was holding.

Whatever small hope that tells me that it was my sister who left it here, gets smothered by me. It's useless to think of delusions when Tukare has long been gone.

I stare at the necklace that was supposed to have been left by the rebel camp. Roaming around the place, I deduce that they must have left in a hurry that Laris could not even have the time to pick my sister's memento.

Could they have been ambushed?

I tie the necklace around my neck, gripping the silver fang as I head out of the tent and sit at the middle of the camp to practice.

With the last rays swallowed up from the sky, endless darkness surrounds me, yet instead of fearing it, I feel comfortable surrounded by it. It's as if I'm home with a warm fluffy blanket around me on one of those long winter days.

Glancing around, I can barely see anything, so I merely close my eyes.

Slowly, I try to visualize my surroundings, from the dilapidated tent to the fire pit, to the surrounding trees and waist high grass.

I feel the wind brushing along my elbow-length hair, playing with the naughty strands. In my mind, I paint the outline of the trees in a big black canvas. Feeling my shadow slowly extend from under me to all around me, I try to control it as if it were an extension of my limbs. Unfortunately, they could only squirm on the ground for now.

A lone drop of sweat trickles down the side of my face as I try to meditate and memorize how it feels until I can progress to controlling things under the domain of my shadow.

The moon had long passed by the middle of sky when I was finished, casting a beautiful glow over the quiet forest of the Nymph-kind. I lay down on the soft grass and stare at the moon.

How long has it been since I've seen such a sky?

Feeling thankful of the small things, I drift in slumber, with only a slither of consciousness left awake for vigilance in my surroundings. Although this may be the Nymph-kind's forest, they could only own handful of trees, and could not stop the nesting of different predators in the same forest.

Although, I suppose, the human-kind are the best and worst predators in the end.

The next morning, I walk back to where the Nymphs are. Evelyn's seed seems to have sprouted and grown overnight. It wrapped its sole leaf blade around my wrist, rubbing its pointy tips until I woke up feeling itchy a few hours after dawn; as if urging me to bring it home, back to where Evelyn's tree was.

This was the start of how I became the Nymph-kind's errand boy.

I inwardly sigh. But deep down, I wasn't too dissatisfied as I could keep practicing come night time. I had learned belatedly that it was thanks to Evelyn's efforts that the seal on me had been broken. She had used a fruit she could only grow once every millennium to corrode away the seal that the Lycan's Alpha had placed on me. The only other way to remove a lycan seal was to replace it with a seal from a more powerful Alpha.

All the more reason I wanted to repay Evelyn and the Nymphs by staying for a short while, before I head back home for my coming of age.

Seeing as the Nymphs only had corporeal bodies that allowed them to tie their life to a tree, they could not physically touch objects and other living things except for a handful things. They could only touch their own sisters and things that are very familiar to them for a very long time, such as those fruits from their trees, or the long term occupants they allowed to reside in it.

Otherwise, they use the branches and vines from their trees to control and touch other things but this limits them to so many things. Which is why, my main task was to deliver water to their roots every other day.

The Nymphs treated the water as if some sort of luxury. Sometimes Bertha, who loves birds, would ask me shower the crown of her tree with the water I had fetched. To do so, I had to climb her tree with two pails supported from my shoulders. This seemed so impossible the first time I did it, but getting used to it, I'd just kick various trees to propel myself higher towards the branches and sprinkle the water with a pair of pails that had holes at the bottom.

I should've known there really wasn't a thing such as free lunch.