With Season’s Change

[Patris]

He woke in the deep, predawn darkness of the tiny cave, wrapped up cozy in his makeshift nest with the fiery haired Acer saccharum dryad that had followed him home the afternoon before. With summer nearly over his usual season in the wilds had gone by in a flash, and looking down the barrel of autumn meant that before long he’d need to be moving on again to more stable lodgings if he didn’t want to spend the winter like a bear. Careful not to wake her, it took all his willpower to leave the warm bed, especially because she and the entire pile of bedding smelled like fresh baked maple bars.

Bent on his mission he dressed quickly in the darkness, managing to do it quietly even with the bandages still on his hands. Moving to the front of the cave, he dislodged the makeshift door, a thing functioning more like a cork, made from crosshatched branches, leaves, needles, and moss. He paused to cast a last look at his companion, whose time, he knew, was short. Whether she would run off with the next faun or fade away entirely before he returned from his task, he didn’t expect to see her again. “Goodbye, Sugar,” he murmured, before stepping out and fixing the door back into the narrow mouth of the cave.

Greeted in the damp outside darkness by the cheery sound of the stream nearby, he did not waste any time. Moving deftly around the trees of his camp, he gathered the rest of his needed gear, and quick breakfast was a thick slab of dried fish and a semisweet fruit he hadn’t been able to identify, that he’d been calling banapple. He checked on his haul of will-o’-the-wisp essences, secure in their specialized collector, before setting out into the foliage of the deep woods on a trail he’d already struck. As he walked the path on silent feet he gave his bandaged hands the first strong flex he’d attempted since getting burned two weeks prior while collecting sky-touched gems. He was relieved to find they didn’t hurt as much.

It would take some time for him to reach his destination in the northeast where he’d made his trap and would make ambush of the giant forest golems. Still with hours to go before daybreak, he moved like a spectre through the dark and ancient trees.