2"I won't die here…"
Flynn brought his hands up to his head and aligned his middle and index fingers firmly against his temple.
"Breathe." said Flynn.
Sweat poured down his forehead and along his freckled cheeks. His eyelids—closed shut—vibrated from inward efforts to recapture the presence now lost from his mental radar.
It was coming. It was forming.
"Dammit!" Flynn's eyes jerked open. He slouched over in defeat, knees buckling with his hands on his thighs. Several tears disguised as sweat rolled off his chin and hit the pillow of grass under his crowly feet.
"Metty, I don't want to die here. Can you help me?" Flynn's words were not directed towards a person, but to a backpack leaning against the base of a tree, naught but three to four feet away.
"Metty?" said Flynn, irritated at the lack of response, "Are you really going to ignore me?"
His eyes squinted as if the sun shined directly on his face—but it didn't, for where he was the sun's rays weren't competent enough to enter. The visage of discomfort stemmed from a series of headaches, compounded by an onset of dehydration.
"So, this is how it's going to be, is it? When times get rough, you just throw me away?" Flynn stared at the book sack with contempt. He couldn't see it with clarity, but the tint of darkness was just unclouded enough to make out its shape.
To an onlooker, Flynn probably looked like a madman—or, perhaps more appropriately, a "madboy". He was only 13 years of age, naked in a forest, screaming at a backpack. But Flynn knew he wasn't crazy.
Rather, he hoped he wasn't.
But Levi Forest could bring anyone to the brink of madness. It was a labyrinthine woodland, domed by an interconnection of burgeoning leaves. So tightly they clasped, producing a colander-like effect of yellow in some areas; pure and utter darkness in others; and, as with his current location, a kind of twilight darkness.
Flynn rocketed himself upright from his slanted position.
"I… won't die here!" he yelled.
Moisture and mud flung from his disheveled red hair. His glasses loosed from his ears as well; the frame tipping over his button nostrils, threatening to fall at any moment.
"I'm getting out of here with or without you, Metty."
With a pendulum swing of the arm, Flynn slammed his glasses back up to his face using a rigid backhand.
Such fervor—coursing blood through his veins at heightened speeds—only made the headaches more painful. But he needed his brain. He needed for it to work. It was the only way Flynn would make it to the forest's end alive.
Again he readied his hands as if he were withdrawing dual pistols from their holsters. Magnetically, the firm index and middle fingers found their way back to his temples—circulating, massaging.
This wasn't a technique he had learned from any other psychic—he didn't know any other one. But it always seemed to improve his concentration, if only by placebo effect.
It was coming. It was forming. It formed!
Flynn's eyes opened, the look of success was painted across his face. He didn't let excitement throw him off the concentrative path, however. He executed a blink that lasted around two seconds, and, as if he were possessed, his eyes turned towards the one he followed.
"Stylac is about…" Flynn started mouthing incoherent words, calculating too quickly for his lips to catch up, "two miles West!" Flynn's previously dead blue eyes got their shine back. He had been suffering from psychic impotence for so many days now, he had no idea he was so close to his destination.
The subsequent grin was insuppressible. Even when not under dire circumstances, Flynn wasn't one to laugh—his 8th grade classmates saw him as an old fogey—but he let a string of ha-ha's rip deep from within his starving belly.
"See, Metty! You thought I couldn't do it, did you?" Flynn limped over to the backpack and hovered over it, "Me and you are do—."
Flynn's face drooped in confusion when yells and cackles cut through the air.
"How could they be so close already?" said Flynn.
The whites of his eyes were bloodshot now. Any attempts of mental exercise would probably kill him, he thought.
"Let's go, you ingrate!" Flynn grabbed the frustrating backpack and looped it through his arm, shouldering it on one side.
His skinny legs burst forth with a surprising amount of energy. His destination: just two miles West.
Hoots and jeers exploded throughout the forest so loudly the trees seemed to shake around him. Fast approaching was the reason Levi Forest was cut off from humanity.
"I'm sure you know what will happen when they catch up to him." said Valen. The anthropoid poured himself a cup of tea. He moved gracefully throughout the wooden kitchen; carefully placing the pot on a wicker table before plucking the cup of tea with a singular claw.
"I wonder." replied Neven, crouching down in a gargoylish posture, staring down onto the forest floor.
"Is that your fifth cup?" asked Neven, refraining from turning his head.
Valen removed the cup from his green lips, and felt a bit defensive.
"Oh, so now you care about how much tea I drink? I thought you were so wrapped up in that human and his frivolous fight for survival."
Neven was confused by his comrade's annoyance.
The leafy creature stood up. Pieces of grass and other shrubbery fell from his carpeted, lean body. He still faced the long stretch of the forest's womb, West, where Flynn was, but this time he looked at Valen before he spoke.
"I've only known you to drink as such when you're nervous. I suppose that is where my curiosity lies." said Neven.
Valen's talon, the one which wrapped through the cup's handle, elongated. "I am not nervous, dear Neven. I am simply enjoying one of the only redeeming qualities this god-forsaken forest has to offer."
Neven didn't buy it. But he was more interested in the matter of the runaway human who was minutes away from exiting Levi Forest.
"I don't think I've ever seen a man, let alone a boy, make it through here." stated Neven, somewhat hypnotized by the miracle below him.
"Hmph." scoffed Valen, putting the cup of tea down gently. "The Vanara will tear him limb to limb."
Neven was unmoved by the prediction. He could see the Vanara, speeding through the trees, at least four of them. No doubt they'd be on Flynn's backside at any moment.
"Perhaps you're right." said Neven, coldly.
Valen sat on a chair carved from some kind of fine wood. The various shades of brown, patterned in elegant waves—produced by oxidized minerals—created a sparkling sierra beauty. Its style and quality would've probably sold for thousands in the civilian world.
"Of course I'm right." said Valen. "Since I've been here, only that one human comes and goes as he pleases. And the Vanara never even attempt to approach him."
"I see." said Neven with a sigh of disappointment. "It's just, I thought perhaps he'd be the one to—"
"To what?" Valen interrupted, his long ears, shaped like grassy spearheads, pointed upwards in a huff.
"Free us from this place?"
Neven was silent.
Valen got up from the exquisite chair and marched over to Neven. "Now, why would you think something like that?" said Valen.
Neven remained stoic. His eight-foot grandeur put Valen's four-foot-something stature to shame. Size, however, wasn't the chasm which separated their strengths.
"Nevermind. I guess it will be entertainment enough to watch him die." Neven murmured.
"There you go," said Valen, reaching up to slap his mate's sodden back, "It is a must that we make the best of our situation." Valen stood on the pillar-sized branch alongside Neven. "Let us watch together."
Neven's eyes spoke a different story from his morbid words. The deeply yellow orbs, they were filled with hope.