In the middle of an expansive forest of towering ancient trees, a young woman suddenly appeared. Petite, with large green eyes and long brown hair, she summed up the word [adorable] very well. She had not walked into this place, but most literally appeared from thin air, her very clean, sleek and modern clothes contrasting greatly with the dirty naturalness of her surroundings.
Cora was still laughing loudly, as if she just heard the funniest joke. However her laughter quickly died out and she stood calmly, almost simmering in anger. The canopy of trees covered the sky, leaving the surroundings dim. She could hear birds in the nearby surroundings, and rustling in the undergrowth next to her. Cora’s short fuse finally blew after realizing the entirety of her situation.
“THAT WITCH!”
The ground was damp and cool, the rain had just stopped, water droplets still clung tightly to pine needles, as if afraid to take the plunge. Cora hummed happily to herself, it was after the rain that fruit tasted the freshest, as if washed by mother nature herself. The smell of petrichor wafted through the forest and she could hear thunder in the far distance, like horses galloping away over the hills. It had been months since she entered this forest and she has become so bored without modern technology to pass her time that her imagination has begun picking up the slack, often wandering off to create fanciful images. Don’t know how the ancients lived their lives with the same 24 hours in a day and didn’t die of boredom.
However it truly did have its own good perks. Although she was bored more frequently than not being alone in a godforsaken forest, she found she was capable of things she never considered. Building a shelter took a little serendipity and bruises but she had a decent shack that no longer had any drafts. She even had a small garden where she had transplanted from the forest to her little plot. Her house was built in a clearing in the middle of the forest, a rare swatch of grass for a good distance before the forest swallows it back up again. If the locals were to see where she lived, they would bow in fear, realizing it was a dangerous and holy site high in spiritual energy. For Cora, it simply had good feng shui. She had yet to see anything dangerous, or anything much at all. Not knowing most animals avoided the area, and only brainless animals like birds and rats would run through to look for food.
Humming pervaded the quiet forest, creating an ethereal scene of a fairy walking in peace. Unfortunately there was no one to admire this scene. Fortunately, there was no one to lament when the scene was broken by the fairy shouting with utmost annoyance, “I WANT TO EAT MEAT.”
Cora had survived for three months on fruit and tubers and forest vegetables. She wanted meat, but did not know how to hunt. Depressed, Cora considered, once again, trying to journey out to find a village to get a gun or bow or whatever weapon she would need. And seasoning. And towels.
The shopping list grew.
Time passed for Cora in the blink of an eye once she found this world had special martial arts. Enamored with the magic of it, Cora traded many special forest plants and fruits for manuals and books during one of her grocery trips to the villages on the forest fringe and ran back home to practice. Initially, she wanted to be like Jackie Chan or Bruce Lee, but when it got too difficult and she was about to drop it, she realized she had lost weight and gained muscle from the exercise.
A woman’s eternal struggle is to look beautiful, and she suddenly found her cheat.
Cora became slimmer and stronger, and found its magical properties were so handy. She could now chop down a tree branch with her hand! She could renovate her house with this ability! Her dreams were no longer dreams!
With the power that many struggle to acquire and hone, Cora began her home improvement projects joyfully humming.
A year passed and Cora finally started to feel bored again. Her house was adorable (in her own words), and she had finished reading those manuals and books three times, and transplanted every vegetable she found in the forest into her own garden. She felt like Eve, but she also felt lonely. At least Eve had Adam, even if he did blame her for everything. Her walks into the forest became more frequent, her trips to nearby villages were more frequent as well. She was hoping to find a pretty man to abduct [cough cough], fall in love with. And there were many pretty men, but every pretty man she saw was not prettier than the last. So she would grumble and leave, taking the long walk back to her cottage in the woods.
Barely an hours walk into the forest from a village, she found a dead body. Gasping in surprise, she walked closer and started playing CSI with herself.
“Multiple cuts on his limbs, his clothes are in tatters.
“Underwear still intact, unlike there was any sexual element there. Hmm…
“Blood clot at back of the head, likely the cause of death.”
Cora ignored the disgustingness of the scene that would cause a weak willed person to run away. Truthfully, if it was the old her, she would run away too. Boredom changes people in scary ways, looking for entertainment in all kinds of things.
Turning the body over with a sturdy stick to check for more interesting bits and avoid contaminating the body, Detective Cora gasped at the handsomeness of his face, one of the only intact parts of him… besides his underwear. Tears formed in her eyes at the loss of such an exquisite man in this world, and she was about to pray for his soul when the man’s eyebrows stirred and Cora realized she had written the man off for dead too fast! Overjoyed, Cora settled him down and did a quick dressing of the worst of his wounds, using some of the herbs in her bag to patch it up, and then carefully picked him up onto her back and started carefully walking home, avoiding jostling him. The man groaned a few times and Cora spoke soothingly to him, apologizing for thinking he was a dead body and treating him like entertainment and poking him with a stick and whatnot. She admitted walking an hour into the forest seemed like a bit far to dump a body but if they didn’t want to bury the body then it made sense. Cora rambled on, hoping to keep the man conscious enough to not accidentally slip into the sleep of death on her.
The walk home took longer than normal being so careful not to hurt the man further, so the sun had long set when she reached her cottage. The door was not locked, so she simply kicked it open, the sound of the collision woke the man into alertness. Cora easily found the bed with her night vision and set the man down gently, going to find her medicine and light a fire. The man couldn’t see anything in the darkness, only a dark shadow moving about. He grimaced in pain but didn’t make a sound. Cora mentally gave him manliness points as she cleaned his body off and patched him up with singleminded devotion.
Cora gave the man a sip of warm honey water to soothe his throat and the first thing the man said when he regained the ability to speak with a clear voice, Cora didn’t even hear because she was so enamored with the pleasant smoothness of his voice. Coming back to herself, she asked him politely to repeat it. The man seemed a bit embarrassed to have to repeat it again but instead of words of thanks, the man simply told her, “I am a good for nothing, there is no reward for your efforts to save me.” Cora could hear the implication to stop wasting her time, but honestly, she just felt like laughing. And so she laughed. The man frowned, his brow tightening. He had heard laughter many times since his accident, heard it as the people around him kicked him down. Somehow he wasn’t entirely numb to it yet, and it still pinched his heart.
“I can afford to keep one ‘good for nothing’ if he looks this pretty.”
The man was waiting for her to kick him out like everyone else, the laughter only made his heart sink lower, didn’t expect it to buoy back up like this. He was left confused beyond belief and could only look on dumbly as she stepped away to the kitchen to make him some porridge, humming.
