The Crow's Nest (1/2)

As Das & Haalfrin step into the gate, there's a strange spark… and the teleportation circle is broken at the last moment.

Das certainly arrives back at the main square they came from originally…, but Haalfrin isn't beside him.

In a rare display of frustration, Das stamps his feet and cracks the floor. Pausing, he looks around to make sure nobody saw that...

Seeing that the streets are still clean from pedestrians, he composes himself, then goes back to thinking rationally.

'I've seen teleportation circles break before... but that's only if they're not properly maintained for hundreds of years…,' Das speculates, 'Hmm… We have so many hired mages to take care of these mundane things, so what are the odds of it happening the one time I'm with a guest?'

He then frowns and gets a sharp glint in his eyes. 'Did Freyya find a way to separate us? What on earth could she be planning?'

---------------------

All the while, Haalfrin lands in the middle of a forest. He coughs a little bit after kicking up some dust, seeing as how he appeared a dozen feet off the ground. "What the-?"

Getting up, he looks at the sky and wonders if he's still in the same world or not. 'Well... mind as well start looking for somebody.' Just in case Das follows him to where he landed, Haalfrin leaves a brief note telling the direction he's going...

Then off into the forest, he trudges.

The forest is thick and green. The place has been so overtaken by nature that there are no walking paths of any kind – only random and meandering animal trails.

As night starts to fall, it begins to rain so terribly that the water starts pooling up on the ground several feet up in the air. In order to keep searching for a way out, Haalfrin ends up having to jump from tree to tree to avoid swimming.

Several hours after nightfall, Haalfrin starts to get really tired, but he has no place to rest... 'Wait... That little hole in that tree trunk looks big enough for me to rest in. Plus, it's dry!'

So, Haalfrin leaps over there, and as he plops his bottom onto the hollow of the tree, he feels something poking one of his cheeks.

Feeling annoyed, he adjusts his hips, only to see that he's sitting on a handle… of a trap door? It must have been too dark for him to notice before... but this is good news! There must be people inside that he can maybe ask for directions!

Feeling excited, Haalfrin knocks on the door pretty hard for a few minutes, and just after he gives up and backs away, the trap door slams open, and a little black-haired head pokes up with a yell, "WHAT!?"

The girl looked at Haalfrin in surprise. "You?"

"Freyya?" Haalfrin blurts out.

"D-did you die already? T-that was fast." She seems nervous for some reason.

The crow goddess then stares at the human as if she's unsure what to do. "How did you get here?"

"Das brought me."

"Why would he want you to visit me?" she asks.

"No," Haalfrin clarifies, "I mean he brought me to the Death Realm. He's trying to convince me to stop fighting."

"Oh...," Freyya says in relief, "then how did you end up HERE, at my favorite house?"

"I'm not sure. Something went wrong with the teleportation circle, and I just ended up in this forest. After wandering around for a few hours, I saw this hole and thought I would rest in it...."

Haalfrin then leans in to emphasize a point, "Is there really such coincidence in the world, or did you cause this?"

"No! Of course, I didn't bring you here! I didn't even know you were visiting the Death Realm."

"Uh huh, sure..." Haalfrin says placidly.

Freyya looks down and sighs, "We've both shared our Yiir Names with each other, so strange luck is always going to cause us to cross paths in the strangest ways."

Freyya looks up and around the forest outside and appears a little nervous.

"What's wrong?" Haalfrin asks.

"Nothing. Just.... come inside, I guess. It's raining pretty bad." Just as Haalfrin is about to come down, Freyya stops him with an outstretched hand, "WAIT! I need to clean up a bit - I mean - fix things!"

She slams the trap door shut, and Haalfrin presses his ear against the trap door. He hears a lot of loud banging and doors being slammed shut and swung open. There's also the sound of pots and pans clattering and presumably being stacked on top of each other.

After a few minutes, Freyya opens the door again and says, "You can come in now."

Haalfrin walks in and notices a few things. First, there's a kitchen immediately to the left, and the sink inside is clearly stacked full of dirty dishes, despite the entire thing being covered by a towel.

Second, the ground is littered with empty food wrappers, and dirty clothes are bunched up in balls and stuffed on every shelf. Of course, Haalfrin assumes the dirty clothes WERE on the ground, and that Freyya's version of cleaning up was merely taking them off the floor.

Third, Haalfrin also sees there are a few closet doors that are bound shut with enchanted rope. Because of all the doors banging, he surmises that the majority of clutter and trash is hidden behind those doors.

'Ah... She must be a very messy person…,' Haalfrin thinks. Well, 'messy' is putting it kindly.

Despite being a neat freak, Haalfrin doesn't want to judge her for her terrible living habits; Das had already told him that traits become more extreme in a person the longer they've been dead. 'She may have been a sort of messy person in life, but that messiness grew WAY out of proportion after death.'

Even still, Haalfrin is a neat freak and a perfectionist – at least, he considers himself to be. Seeing things out of order makes his fingers twitch and his breathing heavy with anxiety. Every fiber of his being is screaming out in protest when he looks at the disorder in the house.

Still, he tries his very best to hide his discomfort. 'I'm the guest here, and it's not my place to speak up about another's house,' Haalfrin tells himself.

"You can sleep over there," Freyya says, pointing to a corner. There's a pile of dirty blankets piled up there.

Haalfrin watches as Freyya goes over to her own pile of blankets and spends several minutes adjusting herself and snuggling up in the perfect, most comfortable position.

As Haalfrin falls asleep, he sees the girl on the other side of the room pull out a book, set a ball of soft light above her head, and start reading.

Haalfrin's internal clock is so scarily accurate that when he wakes up, he goes upstairs, and looks outside to see that the sky is grey as the sun is just about to peek its face out from behind the mountains in the distance.

Looking over the peaceful forest, Haalfrin first remembers the vision of her past that he saw when Freyya presented to him her Yiir Name some 30 years ago.

This forest looks almost identical to the one she grew up in...

Indeed, the dead don't change at all. Even in death, she sought out a place similar to what she knows.

After climbing out the trap door, he sits up and leans back comfortably while taking in the clear, clean air with a content feeling in his heart. Something about being here makes Haalfrin feel so completely at peace that as he speculates when he's going to get home, he doesn't feel the slightest bit of emotional turmoil.

'Hmm…,' Haalfrin wonders, 'Is Das going to show up and take me away? Does Das even know where I am? If Das doesn't show up, is Freyya going to take me back to the living world instead?'

'I remember hearing that Master was looking for me earlier from Das… and it might upset him if I'm gone for too long… Well, at least he knows that it's a god who took me away. I've done all I could do.'

Not liking the feeling of sitting around and doing nothing for too long, Haalfrin thinks, 'I'd mind as well do something useful…'