A LION IN SHEEP'S SKIN | The World's Fluffiest Catch

Despite the title that her name carried, Romiriarez harbored an attachment to warmth and all things that bathed in it, and it was her best interests that would even prompt her adoptive daughter Edith to seek an obscure sheep in the most unsettling of places, all for the sake of its coveted fleece. If the store manager said only honest words, then she was assured a magnificently soft blanket at the end of this exasperating venture into the Spooky Forest.

The Winter Lily deserved nothing less for her birthday, after all.

"This place is giving me the heebie jeebies Ede...!" Thia blurted out, rubbing her tiny lavender mits together as she bundled up closely to the little slayer's scarf, "We should turn back...like...now now."

As opposed to actually listening to her exceed, the little Fleur traced an overgrown trail that lured her deeper into the heart of the desolate forest. Shadows crawled thickly against the canopies, blocking whatever light source that threatened to leak from above and naturally causing the entirety of the forest to adapt an ecliptic black atmosphere. Humans who had a tendency to succumb to paranoia far too easily were to find themselves slowly losing their sanity in this place for even the shortest of durations, and that wasn't a surprising thing either.

Though, for Ede, willing her brain to cooperate and fuel her resolve over her fear was the only strategy she had against the devising of whatever malevolent spirit that housed there.

"It's not so bad Thia." Edith mumbled, a ghost smile dancing over her lips in an attempt to comfort her tiny purple companion, "It's just reeeeaaalllyyyy dark. C'mon, nothing to be 'fraid of."

The little Fleur felt her fingers tighten as she spared the road up ahead of her a momentary glance, griping so intensely unto the slender hold of the torch in her dominant hand, her knuckles turning pale as her grip stutters. There was no way to fabricate the fat that small tremors of fear attacked her senses ever so often, and that her only tether that grounded her from turning back was the lit-torch, the flames almost encouraging her, if not beckoning her to pick up pace.

Ede passed a sigh between her lips, the sound oddly restrained and weak. She'd finger Luciole's ornate handle, sliding her fingers across the designs, seeking refuge in her blade's presence. A foreign energy thrummed beneath her touch, as if responding, but it was far too minuscule for her to fully realize the implication. Her hand quickly withdrew from her waist, tipping her cap down as she edged her way between two trees.

Someone else...or something, for that matter, stood by the neighboring tree further the path. And it alarmed Ede as much as it urged the purple crossbreed exceed to scurry back into the slayer's jacket, clinging to her shirt.

'...Someone else is here?' she asked to no one in particular, two blue eyes narrowed into slits as to take in the other being with better accuracy. 'Why...?'