Even though she was soaked from head to toe, Gwen did not care. As long as she had her mirror again, she was just fine. She quickly sat up in the pond and felt around for her souvenir. Due to the huge waterfall that crashed behind her in this cluster of trees, the area was misty, so she had some trouble finding it in the clear water.
Eventually, she felt something, something hard, and gasped, "Baby!" Sure enough, it was her shield-like mirror. "You're okay!" Gwen shouted. When she pulled it out, she hugged it to her chest and constantly kissed the clear center of it. She cuddled her gift for a few minutes but let it go when she heard splashing not far from her. The bandit. He free-styled over to a small, sandy beach near the foot of the waterfall and lugged himself onto shore. He coughed water out of his lungs as he tried to recover from that tussle and pulled his hood off his head. From where she sat, Gwen couldn't see him very well because he was right where the mist was at the peak of its existence. She just saw a silhouette. However, she knew it was the thief who got her in this situation in the first place, and boy! Did she want to hurt him! She narrowed her eyebrows to an angry position and pushed herself to her shaky legs. For protection, she grabbed her sword and held it at the ready. Sure, she was angry at the bandit for stealing the mirror right from her hands, but at the same time, didn't she technically steal the sword? Gwen didn't think about her mistake. She just wanted to beat the heck out of this bandit. She held her mirror in her left hand, her sword in her right, and started towards the beach where the bandit continued to cough. She could whoop his butt any day, and ho, ho, she was excited to give him exactly what he deserved. Nobody messed with Guinevere Emberblight! After all, she was the daughter of one of the greatest musketeers in Baroque Europe!
On her way over to the shivering bandit on the misty, sandy beach, Gwen tried to think which sword slash she should give him - something that would hurt but not kill. Gwen was not a killer, but she was a pain giver. Then again, her fiery personality came from her father. She hid half her face behind her mirror and tightened her grip on her sword hilt. Still hidden in the mist, the bandit turned his head and glanced at her. At the sight of the insane girl, he gasped. Terrified, he pushed himself to a sitting position and crawled away from her. This is what Gwen wanted. He wanted him to fear her. It was proof that he should not mess with the daughter of a musketeer. She stepped onto the sandy beach, into the mist, and thought of something that would surely hurt. She gripped her sword even tighter, until her fist turned white, and lunged at the bandit.
He crawled his fastest away from her, but his back hit a log. When he saw he was trapped, his first instinct was to hold his hands out to Gwen like a shield. She lunged, he cowered, but suddenly, Gwen stopped. She stopped because she saw what she was about to hurt. She was staring straight into the emerald green eyes...of a teenage boy.
He had to be at least fifteen years old, so a little younger than Gwen but not by much. Surprisingly, he was actually quite handsome. Gwen stabbed her sword in the sand next to him and lowered her mirror so she could stare into his soul. The boy was a few inches shorter than her, considering he was still growing, but he had blonde hair that reached for the bottom of his neck, and his green eyes seemed to sparkle in the rays of the sun that found their way past the mist's border. He wore something that looked like a uniform. Aside from the black, cape-like cloak that he wore on his shoulders, he also wore short, brown boots, black pants, as well as a long-sleeved, white shirt with a leather tunic over it. For a little extra decoration, blended in with the back of his left hand was a similar design that the wolf had on its forehead.
The terrified boy continued to hold his hands out to the bewildered girl. He expected for her to smash him with her mirror, but she didn't. In fact, she was so perplexed that she dropped it, and the mirror crash-landed only an inch away from the boy's foot.
Gasping, he pointed at it and begged, "Please don't kill me!"
He did not have a deep voice, not yet, but it did crack at times. "You can talk!" Gwen observed.
"Of course I can!" the boy yelled, "Last I checked, we are both human! Do-Don't you recognize me?"
"Recognize you?! I've never seen you in my life, kid! Who are you?! Why did you steal my shield?!"
"That's not a shield! That's a mirror!"
"Don't you play dumb with me!" Gwen snapped. She pulled her sword out from the sand and held its blade up to the boy's neck, "Answer my questions! Who are you?! Why did you steal my shield?!"
"I stole it for various reasons of my own!"
"What reasons?! If you don't answer my questions correctly, Half-Pint, you can say goodbye to your pretty, little head! Nobody steals from me!"
"I can't! It's too complicated!"
"What's too complicated? All I asked for was a name and a reason behind your dumb decision!" Sweat trickled down the boy's temples. He grabbed the hilt of Gwen's sword and tried to pull it away, but she only dug it deeper into his skin.
Closing his eyes, he finally shouted,
"My name is Arthur! It's Arthur! Now, just let me go!" It took some thinking, but Gwen eventually did. She removed the sword from his neck, and he checked to make sure she didn't break his skin. "And who are you supposed to be?" he asked when he finally managed to catch his breaths.
"Guinevere." Gwen said after a moment a silence, "Gwen for short, but unlike you, Mr. Arthur, I don't steal."
"And unlike you, I don't try to kill somebody when I first meet them...your welcome."
"I wouldn't have killed you, kid." Gwen admitted.
Arthur cracked a small smile when she said that and sarcastically asked, "Aw, aren't you sweet? What do you even need that piece of junk for anyway? I swear, I could probably put it to much better use than you." When he said that, the strength in his legs returned, and he rose to his feet. However, his soaking wet hair continued to drip, and he still glared at Guinevere.
"For your information, Arthur," she angrily stated, "I'm going to be a musketeer, and a musketeer protects the people from hypocrites like you!" Arthur scoffed when she said that.
He turned his back to the teenage girl, clenched his fist, and rudely mimicked her, "'I'm going to be a musketeer!' Yeah right." With that, he started in the direction of trees behind him and her.
A volcano exploded from Gwen's head, and she shouted at him, "Come back here! You're not getting off that easily, Arthur!"
"Blah, blah, blah!" Arthur shouted back. He hopped over a log and made his way into the forest, continuing to yell at her, "Just go back to the dishes! And it's Artie!" A second volcano exploded from Gwen's head. No Know-It-All fifteen-year-old told her to go back to the dishes!
She wanted to punch him so badly, which was understandable. "Freaking teenagers," she mumbled under her breath, and chuckling menacingly, she followed Arthur into the forest.
He knew she was following him and quickly picked up a few stones.
"Leave me alone!" he shouted, and he chucked the stones in the direction where he knew Gwen was coming from, even though he couldn't see her. It was like he had a sixth sense. Gwen found the stones a short time later and kneeled over them. How did Artie know the path she was taking? She thought she was as quiet as a mouse. She wanted to hit him with a surprise attack so she could turn him into the village mayor.
Mr. Artie deserved a nice sleepover in the dungeon after what he did to her. "Where are you, kid?!"she yelled into the endless, overgrown forest. However, just like what happened earlier that day with her hat, Artie just vanished! He appeared just as fast as he disappeared.
Gwen spent a good hour in the forest looking for him, but she couldn't find him anywhere. She gasped as her dress became caught in a branchless bush, but she quickly pulled it free. What happened next was that there was a huge crash in the forest! It sounded like a tree just fell.
This startled Gwen so much that she took off at a full sprint, but she gasped again when she didn't recognize this section of the forest. "No! No! No!" she begged, and she sprinted around the overgrown area, "Please no!" Her tummy rumbled as the thought of food overtook her mind, and her mouth felt dry. She needed some water, but she couldn't even find a creek of some sort. Her mind jumped all over the place as she tried to remember if she passed that tree or not. Things became so stressful that Gwen's head started to hurt. Her tummy rumbled louder, and she smacked her lips together as she tried to get some water in her system. "I'm not lost! I'm not lost!" she tried to tell herself, but she was 99.9% sure she was. It was that boy's fault! If he just didn't run off into the forest in the first place, then she wouldn't be as stressed out as she was.
The afternoon dawdled on, and Gwen remained lost. Her anxiety only grew worse and worse until she finally just collapsed to her hands and knees on the forest floor. Her breathing turned rapid, and she smacked her hand to her chest. Similar to Elisabeth, she was prone to panic attacks, even though she didn't experience all the horror her mother faced. It was a genetic thing. In Elisabeth's early years, as the war only grew worse and worse, her anxiety levels rocketed, and she must have passed them on to Gwen when she was born. That was another reason why she wanted to have another child. From an early age, Guinevere showed signs of a possible anxiety disorder, so she gave birth to her second child, with hope that he would help the disorder from growing any worse.
Guinevere felt like she was about to throw up. Sweat soaked her hair, and her dress stuck to her skin. She did not blink as she kept on trying to slow down her breathing. She felt like her heart was about to come bursting out of her chest.
Luckily, though, before the attack could turn her into a Baroque Hulk, she suddenly heard, "Are you seriously lost in the woods?" not far from her, "Some musketeer you are!" Artie! It was Artie! He stood on top of a rock in front of the panicking, young woman, seemingly from out of nowhere, with his arms crossed, "Are you having a panic attack?"
"No!" Gwen gasped, "Of course not! Where did you come from, kid?! What happened to you?!"
"Oh, I've been following you."
"What?!"
"I have to say it is quite amusing to watch you panic over such a little thing." Arthur plopped down on his rock and crossed his legs. He set his elbows down on his thighs and propped up his head.
Guinevere glanced at him and yelled,
"I'm not having a panic attack, Half Pint! It's these bugs! Yes! These bugs are killing me!"
"Half Pint? Oh." Artie cracked a smile and reached for his lips, "That's wonderful. I'll have you know that I've spent all day away from school, and I could really use an insult right now."
"Just get me out of this forest!" Gwen begged.
"Get you out? Why should I? After all, you're the one who tried to kill me in the first place." Proud of himself, Artie rose up off his rock and slid down the side of it like how the wolf slid down the side of the platform that morning.
He came within reach of Gwen and crossed his arms again.
"Fine! I'm sorry!" she shouted, "But look who's talking tough now! The amateur who stole my shield for his own 'various reasons!'"
"Look who's talking tough now." Artie repeated after her, "The amateur who stole a sword."
Gwen blushed, but she continued to yell, "Please, Half Pint! Just get me out of here!"
"I will, but on one condition." Artie held up one finger to emphasize his point.
Still freaking out, Gwen asked, "What do you want?"
"You see, girl," was Artie's answer, "it hasn't been easy following you around in this overgrown chicken coop, and my poor legs are killing me. So therefore, I think you should cut this little, fifteen-year-old some slack and carry me out of this forest."
"Carry you?! Oh, forget it, Half Pint! I'm not going to carry you!" Gwen rose to her unsteady feet and placed her palm on a tree trunk in order to stop herself from falling forward.
Artie let out a sarcastic sigh and admitted,
"Well, then I guess you're stuck in here forever. Boo hoo." Gwen glared at him. Why was this kid so darn annoying? He uncrossed his arms and placed his hands on his hips, asking, "You do want to get out of here, don't you?"
"Yes!" Gwen sobbed as a fountain of tears escaped her tired eyes.
"Then it's settled!" Artie picked up her shield-like mirror and put it on his back. Once he made sure it was nice and snug, he jumped up on Gwen's back and wrapped his arms around her neck, "Let's march! March! March! Fi-fie-foe-fum! The giant's on the run!" Gwen groaned, but she started forward. Her sword shook like crazy in her hand, but she tried her best to not smash it across Artie's head.
As she made her way through the seemingly endless forest, he continued to get on her nerves,
"Make a left! No, a right! A left! Take a few steps back!" CRASH! "That's a tree!"
"UGH!" Gwen shouted into the atmosphere. She wished she could find a way to just make him shut up!
Even though Artie's directions were so darn annoying, he did know where he was going and succeeded with leading Gwen out of the forest. They winded up at the foot of Blacksmith Village at sunset. Out of breath and dying from hunger and thirst, Gwen collapsed to her hands and knees in the middle of the dirt road. Arthur, not tired at all, unwrapped his arms from her neck and hopped down from her back.
He placed his hands behind his back and stepped in front of her, saying, "Well done, my good lady. Thanks to my amazing directional skills, we made it out of that forest alive." Guinevere growled with disgust from where she rested and gave him the evil death glare. Part of her messy, blonde hair covered her left eye, and the braid her mother put in it earlier was starting to come undone. She needed a nice, long bath.
As she tried to recover from that physical and psychological torture, Artie's emerald green eyes rolled up to the setting sun, and he gasped, asking,
"Is it really that late?" The sun's rays found their way down to the blended design on the back of his hand, and he suddenly cringed with pain. Stumbling back a few feet, he shook out his head but quickly smiled again. He focused his attention on Gwen for the second time, "Well, I'm off. Here's your mirror." That was strange. He didn't try to steal it this time. Instead, he took the mirror off his back and handed it to its rightful owner. All Gwen could do was merely stare. Next, Arthur reached into the pocket of his tunic and felt around in it. Pulling something out, he told the bewildered, young lady, "Sorry if it's a bit broken, but here you go." What he held in his hand was a piece of bread, and he plopped it down on Guinevere's shield, "I'm not going to eat it, so you might as well instead. Well, lovely to meet you, Gwen." He made a peace sign with his hand and backed away from her, "Peace. Maybe I'll see you again sometime." That was the last thing mysterious Arthur said to Gwen that day. He turned on his heel, glancing up to the setting sun one last time, and took off back into the forest.
Left behind, Gwen's zombie-like form from that morning overtook her body again. The mirror and piece of bread Artie gave her rested in her lap as she tried to make sense of everything that was happening to her right now. This had been a very strange day for her, but it would only grow stranger from here. The wolf, Artie, suitors, and what happened to her in the village when she tried to challenge Sir Elwin was only an inkling of what was to come.
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