Alone on the Colorless Field

Part 1: Huntress

Alone in the Dark

Flickering firelight faintly illuminated the dark, gray grass in a circle around her. Comforting warmth from the flames provided a sharp contrast to the threatening, moonless darkness outside the circle of fire. Darkness that was neither silent nor still. Shapes brushed by the edges of the firelight, swishing in the long, colorless grass as they circled around and around, searching for an entrance into her fiery circle. Strange, cackling laughter came from all directions, seemingly bouncing from one night-blurred shape to another.   Hok hated nights like these. Surrounded by the cackling darkness, protected only by a ring of hastily constructed campfires. No laughter or conversation to drown out the darkness. She should have stayed a fisherwoman.   With a long sigh, she pulled her legs toward her chest. Her parents would have liked that. She might have liked it too, had she given it a chance. But no. Nobody remembers a fisherwoman from Dutywhiskered. Nobody remembers an anything from Dutywhiskered. They remember hunters like Bal Heldblunt.   With a shiver she pulled her blanket close around her and looked up into the mass of dark, cackling shapes. They never got quite close enough to the fire for her to see their shapes. Just glowing, cat like eyes and luminescent red teeth. Supposedly they only haunted adventurers who traveled alone.   She gritted her teeth and met one's glowing, evil gaze. It screamed into the night and spat a nauseating string of insults, dancing all the more fervently around the fires.   Eerie creatures.   Absentmindedly, she uprooted a blade of grass. Yes. She was a huntress. People would remember the huntress Hok Cleanskins.   She threw the grass into the fire and watched as gray flames shriveled it. There was a strange beauty in the Colorless Field. Few in Dutywhiskered ever took the time to notice it. She had seen places near the Colorless Field where grass was a strange shade of green, and spotted with yellow and blue flowers. That was certainly pretty, but she enjoyed the subtlety of the Colorless Field. The mesmerizing scintillation of the miles and miles of gray grass and white flowers shifting in the wind. She wondered where all the colors went.   One more time she tended to the fires. Ensuring that they would last until morning. That done, she curled up in her bedroll and tried to ignore the cackling and cursing. She did miss her real bed sometimes. Maybe she should visit Dutywhiskered again. . . . It couldn't hurt to buy a tent. . . .   She drifted into an uneasy sleep. . . .