The Forest

-10-

Avery struggled to see in the darkness. The campfire's glow was better for warmth than it was light, and snow-flurries kept spraying into his eyes, like sand on a beach. But there was something caught in the snow between his feet, and that something was definitely blue. Through painting he had found that most things lose their colour in the dark- Dark didn't begin to describe the phantasmic gloom of the forest at night. But the creature below him remained as blue as a summer sky.

It wasn't ice; ice wasn't blue, it was grey, and this thing was moving too much to be anything frozen. At first he thought it was some kind of caterpillar. It almost seemed to be writhing against the snow. But the idea that anything so little could survive out here in the harsh weather was ridiculous. He was freezing, and he had been huddled inside the tent with Lucius all afternoon.

The boy knelt, his knees crunching the snow either side of the small blue shadow. He couldn't make out any discernible form, but it looked no bigger than his hand. He was about to reach down and lift it up when the wind suddenly swept it right up out of the snow. It rushed past his face, a streak of colour, and he just managed to thrust out his hand and snatch it before it could go hurtling into the black night. Then instantly regretted it. If the creature had been alive, he had almost certainly just crushed it.

"Hey," Lucius finally caught up to him, panting, "You're such a cheater-"
"Careful!" Avery shoved him backwards. His friend's foot landed a breath away from the shape in the snow.
"Geez, what?" Lucius demanded, holding his hands up. Then he looked to where Avery was pointing and saw the shadow. He squinted his eyes, "What's that?"
Avery looked at the cord between his fingers. "I don't know..." It definitely wasn't a caterpillar. And he thought it was safe to say that it wasn't alive either. The way the wind was whipping it around made the writhings seem like movement, but a closer look revealed it was only a bit of coloured thread.

Lucius frowned. He got to his knees too, so the both of them were leant over the small silhouette. "What is it?" He reached down and carefully nudged the tip of his finger against the shape. And it split in two- literally cracked into two halves, just like that. One part rolled off to the left, the bottom was exposed to the falling snow.
"What did you do?" Avery cried, horrified. Now it really had to be dead.
"I barely touched it!" Lucius protested, panicking. Then abruptly stopped, "Wait- hold on a second." His eyes refocused.
Already the two tiny pieces were being buried under the flurry. There were colours that Lucius could just about make out... green on one part, a kind of yellow on the other. There were stick-shapes that kind of looked like legs, if he tilted his head. Tiny blobs with tinier fingers...

It dawned on Lucius all at once what he was looking at.
"Oh shit."
Avery was startled, "What- what's wrong?!"
But Lucius had already delved his hands into the snow. They emerged with a small mountain of the stuff, and two tiny people buried somewhere within.

Fuck, how had he not realised sooner? Shit, shit- he frantically brushed away the excess of snow. He had almost crushed them! He prayed to their gods and his that they were okay somehow, what the fuck were the little guys even doing out in weather like this? Had they come looking for him? There- he almost missed them and swept them straight back into the snowy carpet. They were no more than fragments of colour in his palm, so impossibly small. What the hell where they doing out here? He had brushed away the majority of the snow yet they still lay ice-cold, motionless aside from the faintest shivering.
Lucius folded his hands together and breathed hot air through the gaps between his fingers. I got you guys. Whatever you're doing out here, I got you. He was already rushing to his feet, "Come on, we need to get them inside!"
Avery was still knelt on the floor.
"Them?" He repeated, clueless. Lucius was already halfway to the tents.