As Siobhan finished reading a voice that was neither male nor female, loud nor quiet, that rang of magic and strange mysteries, emitted from the paper. In reflex she dropped it to lie in the middle of the table as it intoned, “Wrong place, wrong time. Start where you wish to end, when the moon is full and the ground is ripe and crying out for seed.”
Each member of the group gazed at the paper with their own expression of ‘wha…?” Ivan’s hand rested on the hilt of his sword; two daggers appeared simultaneously in Prairie’s hands; Dan kicked back from the table, pushing his chair away to give himself room to rise and draw his dual hand crossbows; Gwen hefted a plunger (her preferred weapon; there were reasons for it but not time enough in this moment to explain); a ball of fire appeared above Kim’s hand and a mass of shadow writhed between both of Ben’s; and Siobhan hefted her rather large bag and dropped it squarely on top of the pile of paper.
There was a moment of profound silence as they waited for something else to occur. When it didn’t happen, and before the silence could get overlong and awkward, Gwen muttered, “When the ground is ripe and crying out for seed? That sounds dirty.”
Shoulders curving inward on a snicker at Gwen’s quip, Kim redirected the ball of fire into the flames of several of the candles on the table.
“You two are the worst,” Prairie’s soft murmur feigned offense but the twinkle in her eye and the subtle twitch of her lips proved the tone a lie. Gwen leaned around Kim to poke her finger suggestively in and out of the pink ivory wood heart hoops hanging from Prairie’s ear. Prairie jerked her head and looked down to hide the grin birthed out of the promise of her lip twitch.
Siobhan reclaimed her bag, gave the papers an assessing look like any wise person would do given the circumstances and their sudden vocalizing, then picked them back up and made a neat pile of them, but only after flipping them all over with a pen and a canny expression that fair dared the papers to belch out more words.
“Nothing to see here!” Ben called across the pub in the direction of the bar. “Uh,” he looked at the fog of darkness still within his cupped palms, held at the level of his heart, then with a quick wink drew the darkness back into his chest. It made the smallest of popping sounds as it retreated. With a smile bright as the shadow residing in his chest was dark, he repeated, “Nothing to see here.”
“So,” Siobhan said, pulling a ribbon out of her bag and neatly binding the pages, “It seems we have a place to start.”
Enter The Woods 