Rorri

　　Navigating the eastern Wilds was surprisingly simple with Rorri`s new sight. Once he found a nice, sturdy, long stick, he quickly got the hang of checking for obstacles with it (which was far easier without other people around), and he rarely stumbled. He could see the light emanated by the flora, he could spot animals and food from far away, and he judged time by the feeling of the sun on his back - unless it was cloudy, and the nights` felt impossibly long. He veered away from the merchant trails, and in his travels, he didn`t meet a single soul. It was better that way. He didn`t have to pretend to be somebody else anymore.

　　Rorri saw Belethlian well before he was near it - a shock, given how recently it had burned, though he supposed he couldn`t have expected such a stubborn place to have stayed dead for long. It glowed brighter and more colorfully than anything he`d ever seen. He was always surrounded by his imitation forest, but Belethlian was the real thing. It seemed more real than anything else he`d encountered since leaving the city. Though he`d dreaded returning before, as the Forest beckoned him closer, he felt a sense of calm he hadn`t expected to feel.

　　In Belethlian, Rorri could see clearly: the trees, the roots, the flowers and bushes and everything that lived. More importantly, everything had a color, and he understood what those colors meant. Where some trees, some vines, some parts of the earth emitted a deep, bloody red, or a necrotic sort of black, he knew not to go poking around there. That was where the Forest felt pain, where it was nursing its wounds, and to disturb it would provoke the same sort of violence one could expect when poking a wounded dog. By the same measure, bright, terrified yellow signaled to Rorri that he ought to tread slowly, calmly, so as not to inflame the Forest`s fear.

　　He could spot wildlife he never could have spotted before - they were always invisible, until they made themselves seen - and the dangerous ones became much easier to avoid. Some were friendly enough that Rorri could approach, and if he fed them for a while, he might even be able to touch them. He performed the M閟poulis on a few, though the results varied considerably. One dog turned against him quickly as he came out of the trance. It had had run-ins with poachers of sorts, and had apparently associated Rorri with them. One bird bonded to him so intensely, it literally wouldn`t leave him alone, ever. It got quite annoying after a while, but there was nothing he could do except let it live with him until it died, a good decade or two of that.

　　He learned he could manipulate the Forest`s magic, but it wasn`t quite the same as evoking his own. He just had to sort of& ask. It didn`t always work, but more often than not, it did, like how he would ask of the spoli when he lived in the Obsidian. It wasn`t his magic to control, but Belethlian was shockingly amenable when it wasn`t constantly being kicked in its sore spots. When he needed a hut, he would ask for one, and the Forest would build it for him. When his hut got tired, he`d move on elsewhere and ask for a new hut. He had to make his own furniture - turned out the trees didn`t like having it ripped out of them, which likely contributed to the destruction of some of their settlements, before - but they seemed alright with him utilizing their dead branches and the like (which struck Rorri as odd, given he was basically mutilating their corpses, but he supposed the Forest`s customs weren`t like his own). It wasn`t easy - he couldn`t see anything that was truly dead - but with a bit of his own magic, he managed.

　　With not much else to do, he experimented with the local flora`s intoxicating effects, and he practiced art as much as he could. It struck him that the same magic paint he stained his skin with before could also be used for actual painting. With it, he could see what he was doing. Nuance was tricky, and he never knew what color he was really` using. He used different flowers for different pigments, working off of the glow he saw, which he knew wouldn`t always match up to the actual color. He`d give anything to see what his paintings looked like to someone with normal vision. They`d either be brilliant, or absolutely bizarre. Maybe a bit of both. But he`d never get to see them that way. He tried not to think about it too much.This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

　　He dreamed about Shacia all the time - vivid, visceral dreams that felt more real than being awake. He felt her skin against his when they touched, and he heard her voice as clearly as if they were in her study together. They laughed and played jokes on each other, just like how they used to, and she even taught him a few magic tricks that actually worked when he woke up. He did her portrait in a dream, once. She posed for him and everything, though he had to keep reminding her to stop moving, and after a while he wondered if she was doing it on purpose, just to annoy him.

　　But one day, Shacia`s dream-voice came to him as barely an echo, and her touch felt as numb as any other figure in the twilight realm. He couldn`t even remember the dream when he woke up - just the vague impression it left, like an abrupt, unsatisfying farewell.

　　*******

　　Centuries passed, judging by the growth of his hair, past his shoulder blades now. Rorri had become a fixture of the Forest, no longer a gnat in its ear. He faced no consequences of disturbing it, because he simply did not. He was more like a barnacle on a whale - neither cumbersome, nor particularly helpful. Just& there. He didn`t encounter anyone from his previous life in Belethlian. They were either all dead, or they`d all moved elsewhere. In some way, it felt as if that life had never really happened, as if his true birth occurred in Iridan, and everything before it was just a dream. As awful as the city had been to him, he still missed it terribly. He sometimes tried to project his consciousness there, or at least his voice, sort of like what Shacia had done while he was in prison, but as far as he could tell, it never worked. Nobody ever answered, anyway. And he couldn`t go back - there was no telling how long the city would remember him, with as conspicuous as he was, between his skin and his silly blindfold. It just wasn`t safe. So he told himself it didn`t matter. All of that was gone. Belethlian was all he had, and at least there, he could see where he was going.

　　In time, Rorri became so attuned to the Forest, its moods and its movements, that he could sense when somebody stepped foot in it. It didn`t happen often, but when it did, it created a ripple of sorts, a faint and specific frequency he could see in the way the colors would flicker and shift. After the first few times, Rorri couldn`t deny his own loneliness. He used whatever influence he had to try and route the newcomers towards him. He called it Go Fish`, but he was fishing for people, this time. Only a handful had ever taken the bait. He could sense them following the path the Forest opened in its shifting vines and branches, but they would almost always veer away, as if suspicious it might be a trap.

　　And it was a trap, Rorri thought to himself on one sad, hazy afternoon. Not a nefarious trap - he would never hurt anyone or force them to stay. It was the sort of trap a parent might lay for their estranged child, promising food or just a quick visit`, only to snare them with desperate, hours-long conversations that they would be too riddled with guilt to step away from. The one young man he did manage to reel in brandished a weapon at him upon seeing the shade of his skin (he had stopped staining it long ago, once he realized the Forest meant him no harm, though he did keep dying his hair - he`d always had fun doing that). Rorri sighed, asked the trees to snatch the weapon away and escort the man out, then disappeared into his lonely hovel to take a nap on his bed of leaves.