Undergrowth

Ily was disgruntled.

At first, she had liked the Viridian Tangle, specifically because it was so hostile. Full of life, yes, but that was what made it so: plants growing so dense the wilderness was truly pathless, thorned and poisonous against the manifold beasts who would eat them, not to mention the more aggressive creatures willing to eat them—and any ketucari unlucky enough to cross their path, and inept enough to lose.

At first, she had enjoyed the sense of superiority that came with making her way through the Tangle alone. But as days and weeks wore on, irritation had set in.

She knew, as well as anyone, these damned ruins were in the area. They were famous for their builders’ stupid, fatal mistake. They couldn’t be that hard to find.

The dampness pervading the air had long since crept into her feathers, and she couldn’t resist the urge to shake it out inbetween ducking under lianas as thick as her neck and weaving between roots taller than she was and crawling between shrubs covered in vividly coloured thorns longer than her dewclaws. It didn’t help, of course. This wasn’t proper water, just air that had gotten too clingy. It seemed to coat the inside of her lungs, smelling far too intensely of the abundance of decomposing plant matter nourishing the growing giants around her.

Given the givens, it was hardly surprising the constant calling and chatter of the creatures in the treetops was starting to grate on her. There always seemed to be some bird or beast whooping or barking or howling above her, probably moving throught the forest with far more ease than she did. At this point, she would have been happy to fight one, if only she could reach. Her only hope was that something would be stupid enough to target her; she knew she was easy to spot. She had shifted to her greener coat, but her white must be far too visible in the shadows underneath the canopy.

Over her aggravation, she almost would have missed the sound of water close by; now annoyed at herself on top of everything, she turned to find it inbetween the confounding mass of leaves and bark, in the hopes of getting a glance of… something. Anything other than plants and shadows and more plants.

She didn’t see it until she broke through what was almost a hedge, and then she suddenly was hock-deep in water. The stream had cut enough of a gap into the canopy the light was almost blinding, even though, after blinking against it a few times, she found the sky was still practically out of view.

Ily wasn’t yet sure how to feel about the water—it was a momentary relief, replacing the sticky dampness with a proper, cleansing, albeit near body-warm current, but she wasn’t sure it wouldn’t make things worse after—before the thought was pushed right out of her head when she spotted the noticably inorganic, angular silhouette looming over the bank further up the stream. It was green, like everything, either from the leaf-filtered light or from mosses and scrub reclaiming it, but there was no doubt she had finally found what she had been looking for.

The Kesembu ruins, and the treasures they might hide, all hers to claim.