The night arrived, overcast and foggy, not long after Jack and the girls made camp. In order to have some semblance of shelter, they set up a hundred or so feet inside the forest line. It was far enough in to give them full coverage overhead in case of rain and obscured their presence from the outside, but was still close enough to the forest edge that Jack felt comfortable they could get out of it if something inside of it decided they would make a good snack.As they settled in for the evening, Rose suggested they actually cook something for a change, rather than eating cold food for the fourth meal in a row, and asked Jack to heat some water in their iron pot so she could try and make them some soup.
He thought about it for a moment, and broke down the root spellword for fire until he thought he"d isolated the component for heat, and seeing if he was right, placed a hand on the water-filled pot and intoned the syllable.
To his great surprise, it actually worked, and within a minute the pot was boiling quietly on the small cooking stand Rose had set up. Rose pulled a small bag from her backpack, and poured the contents into the pot. From the limited light, it looked like beans. Jack, on her suggestion, also added in some of the dried meat from Ellie"s supplies. Finally, she reached into her pack again and pulled out some kind of large-ish, pie-like pastry, which she broke open and poured the contents of into the pot.
"It"s a pot pie. Only thing we"ve got that has any other vegetables in it." She said when Jack looked at her questioningly.
The three of them ate until there was nothing left, and Jack found himself wishing, despite his full stomach, that they still had some left. Rose"s cooking never ceased to impress.
"Though, Ellie"s even better" Jack thought to himself.
A short time after dinner, the three of them laid out their bedrolls beneath the treetop canopy, hidden in the midst of a patch of ferns that rendered them invisible from more than a few feet away.
For the second time in a row, Jack found himself unable to sleep, his mind restless. The girls, for their part, seemed to be having no issues whatsoever, and from the rhythmic sounds of their breathing were already well into dreamland.
There was something bothering him about this forest, but he couldn"t put his finger on why, and that bothered him even more.
It wasn"t anything overt. The sounds were all normal, the trees and other plants were exactly as they should be, but something deep in his subconscious, instinctive brain told him to be on his guard, almost as if something was stalking them just outside of his range of perception or something.
He tried closing his eyes and slowing his breath, then counting sheep, but nothing was working. He just could not shake his discomfort. After about an hour, he got up quietly and walked gingerly outside of their camp area to relieve himself behind a tree, far enough to avoid being seen by the girls, but close enough to still find his way back easily.
He walked about fifty paces or so away in a straight line, careful to keep his profile low and make as little noise as possible. While he wasn"t sure anything would pay him much mind, he wasn"t about to draw unwanted attention if he could help it.
Looking ahead, he saw a large enough tree, and walked towards it. As he did so, he heard a faint rustle behind him, and he jerked around, but couldn"t see anything out of the ordinary. The sense of unease he"d been having, however, suddenly got much worse, and he found himself suddenly having an overwhelming urge to get back to the girls.
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He turned to go back, and froze in his tracks when a dark humanoid shape rose out of the undergrowth. Then another. And another.
His heart racing, he raised his hands, and began running through spellwords in his head, but was stopped short by the feeling of something pointy and cold held against the back of his neck.
A man"s voice behind him said softly "Now, let"s not be too hasty, friend."