lost and not quite found ;

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Starvation was a fate worse than death. Living alone in that cabin without Caleb there was torture. They were married for only two years, but in that time, she had fallen madly in love with him. He was everything she could have ever dreamed of. He was a gentleman, funny, kind. Then he was taken from her by that gang. Joanna could never remember their names, but she knew they had robbed and killed her husband for the money he carried. His murder had broken her, shattered her heart and left her on her own.

Joanna woke on a bed of moss, head cradled by the soft plant. Baby blue eyes looked around, taking in the various plants around her. None looked like the plants she had found around the cabin, but some smelled similar. A minty smell surrounded the woman, though she could detect some sage and lavender. But what was the source?

Jo began to lift her head, but paused with a hushed whine. Everything ached, and her muscles screamed in protest as she tried to move around. Jo felt like she had been dropped off the side of a mountain and onto the cold, hard rock below. She was sure she had some bruises along her shoulders and hips, but those were things to check later.

“Oh lord, where have you sent me?” Jo groaned as she sat up. Gone were her days of riding out in the fields, Caleb at her side. Memories of her trying her best to grow a garden, just for the deer and rabbits to eat them before they could bloom. Caleb would laugh and help build the small fencing to keep the area contained. Just the thought of her now deceased husband dimmed her barely there light. But what dragged her from her sorrows was the fact that her usually tanned skin was now covered in pale fur. Her shapely legs and toned arms had turned into canine limbs, also covered in fur. Blue eyes widened as Joanna realized what she had become. A wolf. The very creature her mother's people believed protected them. Perhaps it was a blessing of sorts, a gift granted to her by the Great Spirit. A chance to live a new life without the restrictions her past had.

Joanna rose onto shaky limbs as she tried to orient herself and figure out what this place was. Mushrooms covered the ground and trunks of trees, most oddly colored. They seemed to glow without the light of the sun, as if they had been graced with their own light. They were curious little growths, as when Joanna came closer to sniff at them, a cloud of spores erupted from one of the growths. “Oh gosh, what is that!” She shook her head to try to remove them from her nose.

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notes here

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So, first things first—it appeared that witches had decided to play a game of cosmic hide-and-seek, because Vawraek had scoured every nook and cranny of this miserable world and came up completely empty. He was lost; not just a little baffled, but deeply, existentially lost, navigating a nightmarish landscape that seemed to be crafted from some twisted fairy tale. The glowing mushroom forest enveloped him, its bioluminescent flora casting eerie shadows that danced like devilish spirits, mocking him with every step. He was wildly inhaling spores that didn’t just give him a buzz; oh no. They twisted his mind, leaving him anxious and jittery—far from the euphoria of the normal substances he indulged in.

What if—just what if—he ended up as the unwitting star of one of those horror shows, the ones with mushrooms sprouting from the living dead? Or worse, he ends up as an educational cautionary tale like those ants in those horrifyingly informative YouTube videos about parasitic fungi. And honestly, who the hell thought to call it ‘fungi’ in the first place? Nothing ‘fun’ about this green horror show.

In a warped sense, maybe his fate had already been sealed. Death by spores? Now that was a hilariously inconvenient way to shuffle off this mortal coil.

Sadness. Complete and utter sadness.

An unexpected sound pierced through his spiraling thoughts like a gunshot in a quiet room—a voice, calling out from somewhere in this suffocating magical forest. With nothing else to distract him, he lumbered toward it, bravely ignoring the clenching fear that threatened to swallow him whole. Unfortunately, by the time he stumbled upon the scene, it was already too late to prevent disaster.

“Don’t sniff—ah, fuck, back away!” he hollered, his urgency drowning under the absurdity of the situation, but his warning arrived too late, with the weight of inevitability. Sprinting forward, he was driven by sheer impulse as he lunged at the woman, mouth open wide, aiming for the loose skin at the back of her neck—his last-ditch effort to haul her away from certain doom.

Hell to the no was he going to inhale those spores again. Not on his watch.

And yes, Vawraek fancied himself a gentleman on occasion—though it rarely showed. So, while his idea of gallantry looked remarkably like manhandling the poor woman, at least he was doing something. In a world gone mad, a little chivalry was the least he could offer. Even if it didn’t come wrapped in a pretty bow.

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