Eating your fill

The next morning, Lara woke up hungry. She hadn't eaten anything except breakfast the last day. After her complaining stomach, she noticed the energy in her was not growing nearly as fast as yesterday. The only energy being drawn in now was the sunshine hitting her skin.

Lara breathed a sigh of relief when she noticed she wasn't harming anymore plant life. She wondered if the plants around her would be able to recover. When she looked at the nearest wilted plant bathing in the sunlight, Lara noticed a very slight glint of energy on it.

After confirming the same in other plants she turned her attention back to her growling stomach. Lara began searching her belongings for food to eat, she always kept several meals in storage. She knew she might not be able to eat what was around her if more adventurers closed in.

The food she kept with her were all root vegetables that she had gathered to keep for situations like these. When there were adventurers close Lara would always prioritize creating distance over having a meal or two. Therefore, she kept enough food in the pouch she had to eat after fleeing.

The raw root vegetables didn't taste very good uncooked, they were always bitter or sour. Lara tried to channel her magic carefully into the small green root in her hand to cook it. The first attempt turned to ashes. Lara frowned bitterly at the wasted food.

After a few more tries she managed to bake the root in her hands to a condition where it was softer to bite into but not charred. The taste had turned much sweeter. Her appetite sky rocketed after having something tasty after several months .

She had carried plenty extra meals for some time now, but at the moment she thought she might eat her entire storage. After spending a long time baking and eating her stored food supply, Lara took account of the remaining few items she carried.

Lara had always had to manage food for herself and the father who lived with her. During the colder seasons they stored root vegetables like she was doing now. When she had ran away it was already mid summer and her ability to store food was becoming a problem.

Since she always had to keep on the move to prevent from being caught. She had never had the chance to store enough food for the short cold season, when finding fresh food in the forest would become difficult. However after discovering the new plants she could sense, her food options had doubled.

The new plants seemed to grow in higher frequency the deeper into the forest she went. They took over for all the plants she had learned about from the traders in town. Lara had tried to collect and test all the new plants she saw but finding animals to feed them to was very difficult.

There were still plants that Lara didn't know and some that gave her the same foreboding feeling as the larger paw print tracks. She realized that the reason she hadn't picked some plants was their aura. Now that her own magic was resting within her she could sense the characteristics of the plants around herself more clearly.

When Lara started walking away from her resting place, she could see the fresh plants in the distance that hadn't been affected by her awakening the day before. When she got close to the edge of the affected area she could feel the auras of the plants in front of her. The shimmering light in these fresh plants started to move her way as she got closer.

Lara felt despair growing, she didn't want to keep destroying the plantlife around her like she had done the day before. When the new energy reached her she tried to reject it. The energy stayed in the air around her, swirling like a small twister.

The area Lara affected to attract energy was lot smaller now than the first time. Only the plants in her arms reach and a little beyond was offering her their light. When she tried to push the energies away more forcefully, using her own magic, the swirling strands of light returned to their owners.

Lara smiled and crouched down to take a closer look at the plants at her feet. She found a yellow flower that had a golden glow and an azure fern next to it that had a blue glow. Lara recognized the blue glow from the shield the doe had made the day before.

She remembered how the blue energy had cooled and kept her burning magic at bay. The feeling she was getting from this fern was so much weaker than wat she felt from the doe. Lara wondered if the doe would have been able to keep shielding even at her hottest.

After thinking about it some more, she thought it was unlikely. Also, she didn't want to force something like that and was glad she had pushed the beast away before it could get hurt. She remembered how the doe had been subservient from the moment their eyes had met.

Lara thought again about the trails of the beasts that had given her a foreboding feeling. She wondered if those tracks were all made of predators that lived in the forest. She knew of a few such beasts, there was a yellow tailed wolf pack and some red fanged boars.

These were beasts that adventurers sometimes would hunt and bring back to the village. Whenever this happened the grown ups would always create a huge stir and celebrate. Lara got the impression that hunting these beasts was very grand and would always ask the adventurers for their stories.