The Buttercream Woods

Typhus helped gather firewood as well, grabbing the logs too large for Seren to handle as he stays close to her side. His keen nose picks up the scent of cat and he growls at it as it slinks away. If Typhus had lived the kind of life that involved people telling him, he might have known that a black cat pretended witches. Raised as a pit slave though, his bedtime stories had been the sounds that fists made on skin when a little boy didn't go to bed as he was told. He settles on the ground and Seren lays next to him the fire crackling in the wind.

Seren cut off the description of the stars overhead when Roy called for Ollie -- but Ollie didn't bark back. She immediately pushed herself up to sit, her dark hair flowing all around her.

"Ollie?" she called, looking around, and feeling a bit of panic. The last time Ollie had disappeared, someone had hurt him terribly. Seren moved to get onto her feet and put her hands around her mouth as she called for him. "Ollie!!"

Thinking only of rescuing her dog, she began to walk toward the forest's edge and stopped when she saw the cat. She had no idea that it was anything more than a cat and she bent over to put her hands on her knees, well within sight of Royal and Typhus. "Have you seen Ollie?" she asked the Cat.

The cat looked up at Seren, unimpressed. It meowed at her, before lifting its nose and stalking off into the forest. It walked slowly, its tail flicking back and forth. After a moment, it stopped and turned back at Seren, then twitched its head as though to tell her to follow. Meanwhile, Roy spotted Seren and the cat and hurried over.

"Seren, no! That's not a nice cat! Black cats means witches! Oh, I hope Ollie didn't get kidnapped by a witch."

He glanced around, suddenly realizing how quiet the forest was. There was no wind to rustle the leaves, and no owls hooting in the trees. In fact, the only thing he could hear was the sound of himself, his companions, and the fire.

"We're not supposed to leave the fire...but we can't just leave Ollie out there. The most important thing to do is to stick together, though."

Typhus grinds his teeth in indecision. On the one hand, if Ollie died Seren would be sad and that was unacceptable. On the other, if they went into the woods and it was a witch Seren might be put in danger that was also unacceptable. Typhus could smell Ollie, few people thought to hide their scent, and he could find the dog but... An idea occurs and it makes his chest burn with anger to even consider it but it was the best choice.

Stalking over to Roy he says in that low voice. "You keep Seren safe, if so much as a hair on her head is disturbed I will eat you." Then he turns sharply and crouches next to Seren. "Stay here with Roy, I will go get Ollie." Then he takes off into the woods without a word head low to the ground following Ollie's scent through the woods unerringly steps quick and certain.

"But Typhus--!!" Her words were cut off as he quickly swept into the darkness. She stepped forward and held out a hand, feeling a bit of a panic at being so far from him. Since she had crashed onto this world, she had been with him, usually always within sight. He was her protection, and probably her crutch.

And then another hand took Seren's, smaller and less caloused, and she turned those pretty eyes onto Roy's face and nodded, walking with him toward the fire and sitting down, pulling her knees up to her chest. Her long, starlight hair was pooled all around her, a mirror to the heavens above them, the glimmers of stars in the strands.

"Dragons and witches," Seren said and looked at Roy. "Why do you live in this place?" she asked, genuinely curious. And she hated feeling useless. SHe was restless and wanted to do something, but Typhus had told her to stay, and Roy had told her to stay and...

Roy glanced around nervously for any signs of witches. A cat approached the clearing, but he threw a stick at it and it ran away.

"I don't live here anymore, Seren. And it was nice when I was a kid...at least, that's what people tell me. We always had the witches, but there's witches everywhere. As long as you stay out of the woods, they don't bother you."

He sat down beside Seren, back to the fire. All of a sudden, they heard a soft whisper behind them.

"Such noisy children you are. Nobody likes a noisy child, you know."

Roy jumped to his feet, and saw a hunched, decrepit old woman standing at the edge of the clearing, staring at them. Where had she come from? There wasn't anyone there before! A moment later, Tyhpus would reemerge from the woods, Ollie in his arms. However, in the light of the campfire, it would be clear that it wasn't Ollie at all. Tyhpus held a stuffed patchwork dog, a child's toy. How could this be? It was very clearly a live retriever when he untied it from the dark tree...wasn't it?

As he entered the clearing three things fought for his attention. The first was the sight of Roy and Seren sitting next to each other, his stomach tightened at that and he did no like it. The second was suddenly feeling the rope go slack and looking down to find the Ollie had been replaced by a stuffed doll. Third was the presence of the witch. Typhus isn't sure which one made him angriest but he finally settles on the witch.

Stalking forward Typhus's nose curls and he bears his teeth at the women a low menacing growl rumbling from deep in his chest. If he was going to fight a witch this was a good night for it since there was a waning gibbous out. While he was nowhere near as powerful as the beast while the moon was this full he was stronger and faster than normal, with highly heightened senses, and even some small regeneration and magical resistance. He wasn't the nigh unstoppable engine of death the werewolf was but he could hold his own probably.

Seren frowned, Typhus just to her side and Royal Fletcher in front of her. She did feel a little afraid at the sight of the witch, and she could sense that there was something wrong with the old woman. The sudden burst of the stuffed dog into feathers made Seren jump and glance at it... but then she turned her purple-eyed attention back onto the woman.

"You are not going to eat me," she told the witch with total belief in Typhus' abilities, and Royal's assistance. "And I want my dog back! Give him back to me. I love him very much," she told the old woman, as if that might somehow help to change the witch's mind.

The witch laughed at @seren's indignant response, a dry and unpleasant cackle. Clearly, she had little faith in anyone's ability to prevent her from eating them.

"Oh don't you worry, dearie. Your noisy dog is just fine, see? Just a little bit quieter now."

Reaching under her coat, she pulled out Ollie by his collar. Once the three got over the fact that there was clearly no way that she could have possibly concealed a dog under her coat, they might notice Ollie's frantic eyes and his panicked pawing at his mouth. Only...there was no mouth there. Where one might normally find a barking mouth and slobbering tongue, there was only a smooth, solid patch of furry skin.

"He's so much nicer now, don't you agree? Children like you should be seen and not heard. If you're too loud, someone might come along and eat you, and your little dog too...and we wouldn't want that, would we? Oh no, the twinkling little star doesn't want to be eaten. If only that were the way the world worked, dearie...but you wouldn't know anything about how the world worked, would you? You're far away, up above the world so high...this must all be such a shock to you."

Roy shivered, terrified by the witch. She was clearly very skilled with magic, considering how deftly she'd lifted the bar of chocolate out of his pocket. Was poor Ollie just another illusion, or had she actually hexed him and removed his mouth? He didn't know what to think. 

Typhus wouldn't spot the cat anywhere in the clearing. However, @rosynne would notice a small black cat sitting on a tree branch not two feet away from her face. How had that gotten there? Surely it wasn't there a moment ago, when she'd glanced away? It meowed at her, staring at her with bright yellow eyes that seemed to glow in the darkness.