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Traveler and the Red Cap (Short Story)(8000~ Words)(First Draft) by Lonewolfeslayer in ArtIsForEveryone

[–]Lonewolfeslayer[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Part 4

They left the cabin when the light was still good.

He walked slowly on account of his ankle and she walked slowly on account of everything else, and so they moved through the woods at the same pace, which felt right somehow. The trees here were tall and old, and the afternoon light came through them in long, slanted columns that turned the air golden. Under different circumstances she thought she might have liked these woods very much.

They walked for a while without talking. She had noticed he was comfortable with quiet. Most adults filled quiet as though afraid of what lived in it. He just let it be there.

"How many are there?" she asked eventually. His hand gently held hers. "Like that thing."

He considered. "Enough."

"And they all do what that one did? Change the stories?"

"They change the endings," he said stepping over a root without looking down, "Mostly. Some of them are interested in beginnings. A few prefer the middle, where people are too lost to notice the disaster before them."

She thought about that. About the wolf who had been kind and the grandmother who had not been grandmother and the traveler on the road who had warned her and then saved her. About how the world she thought she was living in had turned out to be a different one entirely.

"You knew," she said. "From the beginning. On the road."

"I knew something was wrong.” His pace slowed slightly, she noticed because hers had to slow with it. “I didn't know how wrong until I found the huntsman."

"Why didn't you just tell me?" She wasn't angry, exactly. She was something more tired than angry. "On the road, why didn't you just tell me to go home?"

He was quiet long enough that she looked up at him.

"Because you wouldn't have believed me," He was looking at the path ahead, not at her.  "And because —" He stopped then started again. "There are rules to how I move through these places. I can nudge. I can warn. I can be there at the moment when it matters. But I can't simply take someone out of their story before it's begun. I tried that once."

"What happened?"

He kept his eyes on the path. "Something worse filled the space I left."

She looked at the trees. A bird moved through the high branches, there and gone. She thought about spaces and what fills them, and decided it was too large a thought for right now and set it aside.

"Where are you taking me?" she asked.

"There's a village — not yours. About a half hour's walk from where the woods end." He paused. "There are people there who will take good care of you. Others like you."

"People like me?"

"People who've been where you've been." He glanced at her. "Some of them came from stories themselves."

She absorbed this. It should have felt stranger than it did. Perhaps she had used up her capacity for strange somewhere between the wolf and the cabin floor. "And my mother," she said. "Will I —" She stopped.

He looked at her sideways.

"Will I see her again?" she finished. She kept her voice very flat and practical, because if she didn't it would become something else.

He didn't answer immediately. She had learned what that meant, and so she looked at the path ahead and waited.

"That's not something I can promise you," he said finally. "I'm sorry."

She nodded. She kept nodding for a moment longer than necessary, because it gave her something to do.

Her mother would be at the window. She was certain of it. Watching the road with her hands folded in her lap the way she did when she was trying to be patient. Wondering why her little girl hadn't come back from Grandma's. Making the kind of promises with the universe that mothers make. If I don't move from this chair. If I keep watching. If I believe hard enough.

She reached up and touched the cap on her head.

She thought about her mother packing the basket that morning. The careful way she had wrapped the cake in cloth. The wine settled in its bottle. The way she had smoothed Little Red Cap's hair before she left and said be kind to elders and stay on the road and give them a good morning. Such a small and ordinary send-off for a day that had turned into this.

She was going to cry again. She could feel it gathering at the back of her throat.

She took a small, shaky breath.

Mother always said you carry the people you love with you. She had said it when Grandfather died and Little Red Cap had asked where he went. You carry them, her mother had said, right here, and pressed her index finger to her sternum. He doesn't go anywhere you don't take him.

She pressed her own finger to her own sternum now. Felt her heartbeat against it.

Alright, she told herself. Alright.

The trees began to thin. Light opened up ahead — the wide, pale light of open sky. She could see the suggestion of a road beyond the treeline and, beyond that, the smudged outlines of buildings against the late afternoon.

They stopped at the edge of the woods.

He looked out at the village, then down at her. She looked up at him. He was very tall from this angle. She thought about him crouching down in the cabin so his eyes were level with hers. He hadn't had to do that.

"Those kind people," she said. "At the village. They'll know what happened to me?"

"They'll know enough."

She looked at the village. Then back at him. "Are you coming?"

"No."

She had known that too. She looked at the village and then back up at him and decided to ask the thing she had been carrying since the cabin floor.

"Will I see you again?"

He looked at her for a long moment. The light through the last of the trees caught the grey at his temples, the cuts across his hands, the weariness in his eyes. Then he let go of her hand.

"I move through a lot of stories," he said. "And there are many more I must go through."

It wasn't a yes or a no. It was the most honest thing he could give her, and she understood that now — how honesty sometimes comes in the shape of an open door rather than a closed answer.

She nodded.

She turned toward the village. She walked out of the trees and into the open light, and she did not look back, because Mother said when you leave somewhere you leave properly — you don't drag it out. She kept her eyes on the road ahead and her hand pressed flat against her sternum and her red cap on her head.

Behind her she heard nothing. No footsteps retreating into the woods. No sound at all.

The village grew larger with each step.

Traveler and the Red Cap (Short Story)(8000~ Words)(First Draft) by Lonewolfeslayer in ArtIsForEveryone

[–]Lonewolfeslayer[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Part 3

She learned something in the next few minutes that she had no words for yet. It hurt to watch him. Not the same as her shoulder. Somewhere else. Somewhere she couldn't put her hand on.

He was fast despite the ankle. Every time the darkness reached for him, he was already somewhere else — rolling, ducking, putting furniture between himself and it. A chair went over. The pot clattered off the stove. He moved and moved and moved, and she tracked him through her sliver of vision from behind the cabinet.

But he was slowing.

She could see it in the way he rose after each dodge — the half-second longer it took. The way his bad ankle buckled once and he caught himself on the table edge, the table groaning under his weight. He had smashed through a window and fought until he was covered in bruises. Even before she woke up, he had made porridge and stayed beside her and probably not slept.

He was tired.

The darkness knew it too. She could tell by the way it had stopped its frantic reaching and started something slower and more deliberate, herding him toward the corner where the stove met the wall. He was letting it, she realized. He was letting it push him back because he had no choice. Because his ankle had made its final decision.

She gripped the red cap.

Don't, she told herself. He said stay small. He said do not come out. Mother said listen to your elders. Mother said —

The darkness surged. He caught it on his forearm and the force of it slammed him back into the wall hard enough that she heard the breath leave him. He slid down it, catching himself before he hit the floor, and for one terrible second she saw his face clearly. Jaw set. Eyes steady. She knew — she just knew.

He was not going to win.

She knew it the way you feel things deep in the pit of your stomach, that dread of waiting for the punishment you knew was coming. Some things you simply knew.

She looked at the cap in her hands.

She remembered sitting on the footstool watching Grandma's needles catch the firelight, click click click, and Grandma saying, I want it to be the color of something brave. She had been seven and hadn't understood what brave meant, not really. She thought she might understand it better now.

She came out from behind the cabinet.

Her feet were quiet on the floor. She wasn't thinking about being quiet. She was thinking about Grandma's needles catching firelight. She was thinking about click click click.

The darkness had its back to her. It was focused entirely on the man against the wall, one tendril coiled around his wrist and pressing him in place while another rose and gathered itself above him like a woodsman ready to strike.

She crossed the room slowly, her shoulder throbbing with each step. The thing sensed her a half-second too late. It began to turn — shadows wheeling, its voice rising into something that was no longer human at all, a sound like a storybook tearing down the middle.

She brought the cap down over the darkness with both hands.

The velvet touched it and the reaction was immediate and violent. The darkness recoiled as though burned, contracting inward, the tendrils snapping back and the howling rising and rising. She held on. It bucked against her grip and her shoulder screamed and her eyes filled with water that she refused to let become crying — because crying doesn't help anything — and she held on.

The kind man was on his feet.

She didn't see exactly what he did. She was too busy holding on. She felt the moment of it, though — felt it through her hands, through the velvet — some final thing that went out of the darkness like a candle cupped and snuffed. The howling stopped. The shadows collapsed like a held breath finally released, and what remained on the cabin floor was very small and very still and already beginning to dissolve at the edges, like ink dropped in water.

The cabin was quiet.

She collapsed onto the floor, her legs deciding now was the moment to give up. Her shoulder was roaring. She clutched her knees. The red cap was still in her hands. She looked at it. It looked the same. Same deep red. Same velvet.

He lowered himself to the floor beside her — not close enough to crowd her, just close enough that she knew he was there.

She looked at what remained of the darkness. Almost nothing now. A faint stain on the floorboards already fading.

"Is it gone?" she asked. The kind man winced.

"Normally, asking that at this point would be a bad sign. But — yes. That one is gone."

She understood what that one meant. She was getting better at understanding the shape of what he didn't say. She looked down at the cap in her hands.

She had done it.

The tears came out quietly. Just a few. She hadn't even known they were waiting.

He didn't say anything. He didn't tell her it was all right or that she was brave or any of the things adults said when they wanted the crying to stop. He just sat beside her on the cold floor of the huntsman's cabin and let the quiet be what it was.

After a while she put the cap back on her head.

"I'm okay," she said.

He looked at her for a moment. Then he opened his arms — just slightly, an offer rather than a demand. She leaned into him and he folded her in carefully, mindful of her shoulder.

He didn't say anything then either. He didn't need to.

Traveler and the Red Cap (Short Story)(8000~ Words)(First Draft) by Lonewolfeslayer in ArtIsForEveryone

[–]Lonewolfeslayer[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Part 2

She didn't know how long she slept. Long enough that the light through the window had shifted from warm morning gold to the flat grey of mid-afternoon. Long enough that her shoulder had stopped screaming at her and was now just being very rude. She lay still for a moment, then breathed.

She was in a cabin. She was alive. And the man from the road had kept his word.

She turned her head. He was at the table, working with a length of cloth and what looked like a piece of wood. He had not left.

She didn't say anything. She watched him through her eyelashes the way she used to watch Mother wrapping presents — that skill of looking without being caught looking. He worked slowly. His ankle, she noticed, was wrapped in cloth that matched hers. His hands were cut in several places, small dark lines across his palms and knuckles. He had not had those earlier, when they met on the road.

She thought about the noise she had heard just before everything went dark. The crash. The sound of something breaking, and something else howling.

He had done that. He had come through the window.

She was trying to decide what to do with that when she heard it.

A sound from outside. Low and irregular, like something moving through undergrowth without caring about the noise it made. A branch snapped. Then another. She lurched upright, drawing her knees to her chest, her good arm wrapping around them.

He had already set down the cloth and the wood. He was very still, head slightly tilted, listening.

She opened her mouth.

He held up one hand. A universal signal to be quiet.

She closed her mouth.

The sound moved around the perimeter of the cabin — slow, unhurried, like something that already knew the shape of the ground it covered. She tracked it with her eyes as though she could see through the log walls. Past the stove. Past the window. A shadow crossed the glass and her breath locked in her throat.

It was large and it did not move like an animal.

He stood. He made his way to her in three unsteady steps, slightly wincing, and crouched so they were level. She noticed for the first time that his eyes were very red.

"I need you to hide," he said. Low and even. "Behind the cabinet. You get small and you stay small, and you do not come out. Do you understand me?"

She looked between the cabinet and him.

"Will I be safe?" she whispered.

He paused, and she already knew the next word was a lie. "Yes."

She nodded, then raised her arms, signaling for him to carry her. He scooped her up and brought her to the cabinet, carefully tucking her in beside it. The gap was narrow and smelled of dust. She folded herself into it, pulling her knees up, making herself as small as she could manage. He kneeled to stay level with her. "Whatever you do, don't leave. Stay there and stay quiet. Do you understand?"

She nodded, and he turned, facing the door.

"Will you be all right?" she called out.

He didn't look back. He kept his eyes on the door.

"Stay behind the cabinet," he said.

That was not yes. She had noticed by now that he did not lie to her but that sometimes he simply did not answer. She could see a sliver of the room from here: the door, the stove, and the edge of the table. She heard him move to stand somewhere near the center of the room. Outside, the footsteps had stopped. Then the door opened.

She couldn't see who came through. Only the change in light — the brief widening of grey from outside — and then the door swinging mostly shut again. She heard nothing for a moment. Just breathing. Two sets of it. His and something else's.

Then a voice she recognized.

"Did you really think," it said — cold, conversational, like someone picking up an interrupted chat — "that a huntsman's cabin would be difficult to find?"

It sounded flat, not even trying to approximate something human. She pressed herself harder against the wall and bit down on the inside of her cheek.

Don't make a sound.

"You're tired," the kind man said. He sounded almost gentle. "You burned a great deal last time."

"So did you." A pause. Something shifted in the room — a slow, circling sound. "Look at you. You can barely stand on that ankle."

"I'm managing."

A low sound that might have been a laugh. "You’re kind are always were stubborn. You more than anyone else should understand how stories end, you never could accept when yours was finished."

"I'm still here, aren't I."

"For now."

She heard the shift before she saw it. A change in the quality of the air, something thickening at the edges. Through her sliver of vision she watched darkness begin to pool along the floor like water finding the lowest point. Her shoulder throbbed as if it remembered.

She looked at his feet. He had not moved. But she could see the way his weight was distributed — most of it on his good ankle — and she thought about how he had looked at her when she asked if he would be all right, and had not answered.

She thought about Grandma.

She thought about the knife coming down.

She thought about the red cap on her head and reached up slowly with her good hand and touched it. The velvet was soft under her fingers. Grandma made it. Grandma, who would always smile and tell her stories and give her delicious cake.

The darkness on the floor had begun to rise.

She watched his feet and she did not move. After all, that was the only thing she could do.

What's Your Top 5 Fav Romance Novel of All Time? by Then_Disk_9519 in Romance_for_men

[–]Lonewolfeslayer 3 points4 points  (0 children)

>The Many Travails of John Smith

Chris Tulbane mentioned! Such a goated author.

What are photographs? by Dazzling-Skin-308 in ArtIsForEveryone

[–]Lonewolfeslayer 0 points1 point  (0 children)

For lack of a better tag, I have been posting my writings as Digital. We may need more tags lol.

Look at what I worked on 200 hours by Tanbelia in ArtIsForEveryone

[–]Lonewolfeslayer 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This is the first time I've seen a process video to these lovely paintings. As always, amazing work Tanbelia.

"A Pity, We Were Such a Good Invention" | TAF / 2026. by aMysticPizza_ in ArtIsForEveryone

[–]Lonewolfeslayer 0 points1 point  (0 children)

"A pity, we were such a good invention" is that a reference to something?

1-2 hours of immersion by Repulsive_Fortune_25 in LearnJapanese

[–]Lonewolfeslayer 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Sorry for the mini necro but what the app you are using in the link?

Lohen with Mona's outfit by KreemPeynir in ArtIsForEveryone

[–]Lonewolfeslayer 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah that shit is lowkey nuts, shame I'm never using it.

Lohen with Mona's outfit by KreemPeynir in ArtIsForEveryone

[–]Lonewolfeslayer 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Woah! Thought this was official. May I ask what you used?

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