OOC: Tags
@Moonie
It was a hot summer day, sweat making her clothes stick as she rushed through the thickets, broad stick in hand, held not unlike that of a soldier's blade. She pressed herself against a tall tree, whose moss grew so thick it masked it like a beard. Several of these grandfather trees grew densely and gnarled in the Fellow'sworth Swamp, and she moved through the marshy grasses and crawled discretely on her hands and knees.
The cattails bobbed in the wind, while the sprouted tips of the tall grasses rustled and mingled in through the golden topped flowers that dominated most of the swamps this time of year. The dense foilage made for an excellent playground for war play- which was exactly what Dahnny Quill had herself in the thick of.
In a few short weeks it'd be her birthday, and that of her best friend, Chase. It was hard for her to imagine he'd finally be old enough for the draft, which had already taken a number of their friends within the past year. She had never considered what a small amount of girls had been born in her village until the draft came along and over half of their friends had gone away.
The war, to her, was like the summer nights, long and unending, but something intangible but real enough she could feel the heat of it. But summer nights, to her, were like a dream, for her village was pretty far North and made these hot long weeks the only hot long weeks the people would see. She knew places farther souht, like Serendipity, and even further south still into Adela, had robust summers and Essyrn- was a place where summer was eternal.
It was hard for her to imagine this, but many nights she did, and even played 'Essyrn Sun' with Chase out in the fields on the hottest of days. Though it probably wasn't very feminine of her, she did it with barely any clothing on- but at the time, she hadn't much on her body to show her womanhood. It wasn't until the past few months that she was beginning to develop that way at all, and the small buds of her bosoms made her feel awkward, and the first time she bled, mortified.
Still, she barely had any hips to her and was rather scrawny, but her face was filling out more in a mature fashion, her eyes giving way to a more exotic tilt, like that of her mothers, which framed her green eyes in a pretty fashion with long, dark lashes. She was pretty, cute before, but pretty now. Her features hinted at her and the potential for her good looks to come, which she could thank to both her parents, which had been handsome in their youth, and still were handsome even to this day. They had married young so were still young, and did her father not have an accident where he lost his arm, he would have been in the army long before she had been born.
So playing war was all it was. A play. Nothing real, but surreal, that happened in a world outside of the village and would be nothing more. She tried to treat it that way as today, she was playing 'soldier' with Chase in the mud. Although this time around she was playing the mage and he, the soldier (as most of the times she always insisted SHE be the soldier, because well, she ought ot be able to at least in play since she never would in reality.)
She'd be the best mage, she promised herself. Hiding and keeping deft, eyes always alert and ears open. It was just her and Chase playing on this day. Maecick and Kalry, whom they always played with (and were at least two years younger than them both) were supposed to come and play as well, but their family insisted they remain in for the day. They had gotten behind on chores. That was one thing Dahnny was lucky. She was always fast at her work and had ample time to seek out play.
She crawled now from one old tree tot he next, moving to lift a piece of heavy moss from old rotter's tree and snuck inside it, it fitting around her like a second skin. And from inside there, she peered out with mischievous glee, hoping to find Chase when he was not expecting it, and scaring him and catching him as the villainous moss hiding mage! She was going to win this! And for most games, she always did, and needed to rub it in his face just how bad of secret soldier he was! Hopefully, when he DID join the army, they wouldn't put him on THOSE types of missions. Surely he'd fail and well, he needed to come back in one piece!
Then she heard a noise and held her breath, waiting to see if it might be Chase walking into the small clearing where a fallen tree lay out in the expose, half canopy of trees. One side the tree was rotting and drying out while the other was entrapped in moss and braids of ivy.
