fandomtownies | Into the Preserve, Friday Early Afternoon

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Into the Preserve, Friday Early Afternoon

Getting a bucket and filling it with salt had been surprisingly easy. As it turned out, even Fosse wasn't a huge fan of the idea of being possessed by interloping ghosts, and Elsa and Cosette were now well armed with all of the salt they could get their hands on after a pit-stop in the school cafeteria for good measure.

Now they were wandering through the preserve, looking for a rowan tree, like the ones that they needed in order to create a dowsing rod. Finding the tree would be easy enough - the preserve was full of them, after all. The trek itself, on the other hand?

"I'm going to stop jumping at shadows any minute now, I promise," Elsa whispered, fingers holding on, white-knuckled, to the handle of the bucket. "Aaany minute."

[OOC: For the partner in crime, but open preserve is open, if anybody wants to wander in!]

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"We'll be all right," Cosette said, her voice slightly louder but only just; it was as much to reassure herself as Elsa, though. "The light's still good, or good enough, and there are plenty of rowan trees out here. We've only got to find one with the right kind of branch."

Which . . . sounded more daunting out loud than it had in her head all of a sudden, so even if it was still daytime out, she fumbled into the pocket of her cloak to pull out her phone and put it into flashlight mode.

Elsa watched Cosette do that, and then with a deep breath, she fumbled to do the same.

"Any tree could have that," Elsa breathed. "It just has to be forked, and branches by their very nature tend to grow in fork-shapes, don't they? All we need to do is find one of the trees with the red berries, and relieve it of one of its branches."

Easy! Right? Super easy?

The easiest thing in the world! Really!

"Yes, simple enough," said Cosette, nodding enthusiastically. "And those bright red berries will only help us find the right sort of tree more quickly."

Just because she couldn't spot one from where she stood right now didn't mean one wasn't just out of sight, did it?

Of course it didn't! The preserve was full of them! Usually! When they weren't looking for those specific trees in particular!

"Especially now that we've got extra lighting," Elsa decided, shining her phone flashlight around. "Really, we can't possibly miss them. We just have to... go in a little deeper, that's all."

Also easy!

"Yes, nothing simpler than that," Cosette said with a little too much emphasis. "I've wandered all through the preserve what seems like hundreds of times, after all. It's only trees in here, nothing to be afraid of."

Which was absolutely the case most of the time! Just maybe not when there were apparently malevolent ghosts hanging around. And why were the trees she had no trouble spotting on any one of her other rambles suddenly so elusive?

"And we've plenty of salt!" She managed a laugh. "One might say we're rather well armed."

"You'd have to be a crazy ghost to try to tangle with the likes of us," Elsa announced, attempting to show at least a little more bravado than she was actually feeling. That was not terribly difficult, as she was feeling not much bravado at all. "The food in the cafeteria is going to be more bland than usual for at least a few months, I think."

She'd be more apologetic about that if she wasn't terrified. Maybe.

"So long as we're all there to be disappointed with how bland it is, that's what matters," Cosette decided.

She swept her phone flashlight around until she caught a flash of something red, and pointed. "There -- let's see if that tree will be nice enough to give us what we need."

Elsa exhaled a breath that she'd only just realized she was holding, and then nodded and hurriedly set out in the direction of the red something that Cosette had illuminated. The undergrowth seemed more dense than usual as she moved forward, which was odd, considering the time of year. A few thorny bushes snagged at the bottom of her dress, and she rewarded them for their efforts by giving them a dirty look and yanking her dress free, every time.

If the fabric tore, so be it. She could just as easily get another dress.

"I think it is what we're looking for," she announced as they got closer. "Which means we only need to get a branch, and then strip it down into a Y-shape. Far more straightforward than anything has any right to be, really."

More of that false bravado. Today was an excellent day for it.

Cosette was having similar trouble with the shrubbery, and on one occasion let out a faint hiss of pain when in the process of disentangling her dress from some thorns another, more enterprising thorn managed to spring up and scratch her just above the top of her boot.

"Yes, and we shall have that rod in no time at all!" Part of that was bravado, but part of it was genuine optimism. She squinted up into the branches of the tree, trying to find one that was close to the right shape.

"If only I'd thought to bring along some sort of knife, or a hatchet . . ."

Neither of which she owned, but details.

"I suppose we could attempt to work a branch off using... sheer brute strength?"

Yes, Elsa, because you were both such big, tough girls, with plenty of experience in destroying trees with your two bare hands.

"I'm afraid I don't have a hatchet or anything of the sort, myself." She frowned at the tree as well, and then, with a shrug of her shoulders, started poking through the lower boughs for something that might do the trick. "I suppose we can tackle that conundrum when we need to. For now, let's find the right branch."

"Perhaps the higher branches might be easier to break off," Cosette blurted out, with the kind of excitement that came with having an idea. Dress or not, she put her phone away and started to climb the tree to get a look. "Did the book say anything about how large the rod has to be?"

Someone not her might have started giggling about accidental innuendo, but that went way over Cosette's head.

It didn't go quite as far over Elsa's, but there was this whole 'regal poise' thing that she was trying to perfect, so she didn't mention it. Besides, most of her giggles were nervous ones, today.

"Just big enough to hold comfortably in two hands," she shared, watching Cosette climb and shining her light up into the branches so that she could better see what she was doing. "I don't think it needs to be terribly large at all."

"Well, that's good to know!" Cosette paused in her climb long enough to give Elsa a quick smile of thanks for the light. "Imagine if it had been necessary for the branch to be as big around as a lamp post! We just might be able to find something we can snap off instead, and that should work just fine."

Having reached a fork in the tree (one that was far too big for their purposes unless they needed a dowsing rod the size of the entire tree), she inched forward toward one of the newer, more slender branches, not much thicker than two of her fingers. It did split off into a smaller fork, if a lopsided one, and she frowned a touch as she bent the branch down.

"Do you think that will do?"

Cosette, this wasn't a competition for the most symmetrical rowan branch.

And, really, they probably didn't have the time out here to be too terribly choosy.

"It can't hurt to give that one a try," Elsa decided, studying the branch as best as she was able from where she was standing on the ground. "Can you get it off of the tree easily? I've... never climbed a tree before, but I could probably get something to cut it free with, if it gives you trouble."

It did get bonus points for not being as big as a lamppost.

"Let's see how easy it is, shall we?"

Cosette reached up to take hold of the branch with both hands, wobbling a bit in the process, and tried to snap it off, but unfortunately it was just a little bit too green, so it broke partway off and then started to split lengthwise instead.

"Perhaps not quite that easy." She gave the branch a scolding look. "Though if we can find, oh, I don't know, a sharp rock it may cut easily enough."

"A sharp rock?" Elsa cast a careful look around the ground near where they were standing, though she was loathe to wander too far in search. Everything around them was twisted thorns and fallen leaves, or rotted wood that would be of no use to them.

She frowned, and then pulled in a deep breath before taking a couple of the fingertips of her glove between her teeth (she didn't dare put away the phone, either), and then pulling it off. Another deep breath, and she was holding out her hand, willing a sharp, solid piece of ice to form in her outstretched palm.

"Will this do?"

... She was doing an admirable job of not freaking out, at the moment. There was a day that needed to be saved, or something of the sort.

Edited 2014-12-06 05:25 (UTC)

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Into the Preserve, Friday Early Afternoon

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