Windrose & Snowdrift

The trees thinned as Windrose continued on her path.

The sun was brighter through the canopy as she continued her journey, she didn't have a goal in mind, just that she would do what she wanted for the rest of time if she could.

It had taken days to reach the outside of the forest, and as Windrose climbed up the ledge at the end of the forest, she could see stunning mountains as far as she could see.

The wind blew hard making it hard to keep her eyes open but the view was too stunning to turn away from.

In the past, neither Snowdrift nor Windrose ever went too far from the cabin. Snowdrift never knew why she was so attached and Windrose refused to leave her home that still welcomed her, but now she could see what else the world had to offer, even if it was dangerous.

It had been over a month since she had begun her travels as she neared the edge of the mountain range.

Beyond it was a town, made up of hundreds of "cabins" all with nearly the same design.

It was hard to distinguish anything else at this distance but it was something interesting and just so happened to be something she wanted to explore.

Snowdrift hurried her pace to reach the town, it was something interesting while Windrose was more hesitant but couldn't stop her other incarnation from sprinting towards it.

As it turned out, sprinting down a steep mountain where the rocks could come loose at any time did not work out for Snowdrift, he eventually landed on a rock that rolled of resulting in her falling down herself.

The roll, as one would could call it, was extremely painful, not being a smooth roll on a surface with many sharp objects tend to be like that, as she bounced down the side of the mountain.

Windrose was, understandably, quite unhappy with Snowdrift who seemed completely oblivious to the events going on. All that mattered to her was that she was moving while Windrose was in pain as she was a bit embarrassed by the idiocy of Snowdrift.

She would have to teach her other self to learn self restraint-

All Windrose could think about was 'My back!' as the rolling came to an end as she crashed into the soft grass that ended up not providing any cushioning at all.

She had woken up after the sun had gone down but despite all the physical trauma, she saw no blood or flesh, as if she didn't actually have a physical body. She still felt the pain and all the agony that came with rolling down a literal mountain but by all reasons she should have been dead.

It was a pain for her to get up, it wasn't even that she couldn't just that it hurt so immensely to do so and Snowdrift was no help either seemingly having his herself away from Windrose after what had just happened.

The night had fallen yet she saw the bright red of fire in the distance beyond the wide open fields. It was dangerous to stay outside and without shelter during the night and with no other options she started heading in that direction, well dragging was more appropriate of an description.

The glow was now way brighter than it was before and Snowdrift was still nowhere to be found.

The town/village was silent despite all the light the fires were producing. She slowly approached the nearest building as Snowdrift would never let her hear the end of it if she just left after everything they went through.

By now she was behind the house observing as she saw a few humans walking about but while she was detracted she heard from behind her, "Monster! Everyone get to a safe place!" as an intimidating man holding a spear got ready to attack her while other humans started to rely the message.

She backed away slowly not understanding what was going on, sure she was confused on how she understood what the human was saying but what mattered now was her survival.

Windrose didn't think of herself as a "monster" as humans described them, she didn't find joy out of slaughter or torture, neither did she need to commit murder to survive, she was just herself.

Windrose slowly backed up but before she could realize the man had already thrusted the spear through her left front leg.

However, to both Snowdrift and the man's surprise no blood came out, as the spear seemed to have just gone through her as if she didn't exist.

But when she instinctively pulled her leg back, there was a hole there but no flesh or blood, just a simple hole surrounded by fluffy white fur that vanished in seconds.

The man, now looking terrified, starts to shout, "It's a spirit! Someone help!"

Snowdrift did not know what to think, she somehow knew what he meant with each word which had been a foreign concept to her while she was still living her first life. However, she was also scared of what the humans might do to her, she didn't understand why they thought she was a threat.

Despite the man having attacked her, she hadn't done anything. Normally she would have started to maul the man in self defense but she felt no instinctual desire to do that, as if she was now in full control of everything about herself.

Fear slowly began to take hold and she started to back away from the village preparing to run away to a safer location before a circle appeared under her paws, trapping her.

This attempted to leave the weird semi-transparent prison but no matter how hard she pushed or clawed it, nothing happened.

Then another man in more fancy attire asked the guy who had stabbed her, "Is this really a spirit? It's just a fox, it can't even use any spell or abilities, look at it Timothy, what are you screaming about?"

The guard, Timothy, responded, "Sir, I stabbed it but it did nothing, I don't know what to tell you!" in a slightly panicked voice, "...and look, that's more than one tail, it's not a normal fox!"

The other man looked at Windrose and said, "Well you are correct about that but I don't think it came to do any harm, look I know I might get in trouble for this but, Timothy, how about we just let it go, pretend that you lost it-"

"But sir, you can't you might actually get fired if you do that again. Remember last time when you-" Timothy attempted to convince the other man.

Cutting off the other person, "Shush. Shush, I get it, but they won't find out right?"

"Ahhh, that's what you said last time too!" Timothy jested.

This entire time Windrose is terrified of what might happen to her, magic was a foreign concept to her and so she gave up on trying break out accepting any her fate.

"Look I'll make sure to take it someplace far enough away, and then if she comes back then we can decide how we want to deal with it." The other human argued.

Timothy, in a resigned tone could only say, "Your loss sir."