Chapter Text
Willow stood tall, and watched the flames.
The lighter was firm and comforting in her trembling hand. Fire - that old friend who never let her down - fire would surely chase off the lurking shadows, she’d thought. The darkness tried to reach out with claws, snuff out her precious campfire. She drove the grasping hands away, swinging her lighter before her, then returned and set more fires to keep everything lit, stoked them recklessly high. And now that she was looking at her camp like this, in the dancing firelight, there were so many things she could burn. A hulking, tentacled beast scuttled-slithered hastily out of her path and disappeared as she made her way methodically around the camp.
Now the clearing was a conflagration and Willow stood in the center, by the very highest flames, and silently dared the hallucinations to try something. The licking flames were tantalizingly, hypnotically beautiful. Nothing could touch her.
A hairy, charcoal-black apparition, no bigger than a child, stared at Willow from the very edge of the firelight with far too many round eyes. She stared it down, challenging - took her eyes off it to light another fire at her feet. Giggled, shakily. When she looked up again, it had gone.
When daylight came Willow dug through the smoldering ashes for anything she could salvage. It didn’t take long; even the flint heads of her stored tools had cracked and fractured in the heat. She sat down, chewing at a leathery strip of rabbit jerky to satisfy her grumbling stomach, and considered her next move. Idly, she flicked her lighter open and struck a tiny flame, trying to soothe her troubled mind. It danced and flickered, merrily.
Footsteps. Another black figure was approaching, creeping hesitantly closer. Willow glared at it, willed it to disappear like the other apparitions, but it stayed resolutely solid. Ugly thing - it was covered in scrubby black hair, and its mouth was full of misshapen fangs. Eight glassy eyes blinked at her.
“Are you okay, miss?”
The nightmare creature’s voice was rough and hissing, mangled somewhat by those fangs, but quite understandable. Willow continued to stare. It scuffed a foot along the ground, looking down sheepishly. It was wearing a backpack of dried, woven grass, she noticed. Monsters weren’t usually much for backpacks.
“Um-m. We saw your stuff burning last night. And I wanted to come see if you were all right. You aren’t hurt? We saw you standing right in the fire.”
Willow licked her dry lips, responded. “I’m fine. Are you … real?”
The creature perked up, snaggletoothed mouth curving into a smile. “We’re real, we think. What’s your name, miss? Ours is Webber.”
It held out a furry hand, and she took it, with only a moment of hesitation. The fur coating his body proved to be stiff, dry, and prickly, but it could have been much worse. “I’m Willow.”
“It’s nice to meet you, Miss Willow,” he said, the very picture of a polite young boy, apart from the matter of his actual appearance. The spidery limbs jutting from either side of his head twitched as he fidgeted restlessly. “Is there anything we can do?”
Willow shook her head. “I told you I’m fine, thanks.” Her hands played restlessly over her lighter again, flick, flick.
Webber shrugged off his backpack and rummaged through it for a moment, pulled out a bundle of slightly wilted flowers. “Here,” he said, holding them out to her triumphantly - not just a bundle, she saw, but a woven-together garland. “At least take this! We always feel better wearing nice things. If you’re sure you’ll be okay, Miss Willow, we ought to go check on our traps.”
Willow took the garland and fingered the petals for a moment; she had to admit, the flowers were nice, a pleasant mix of reds and oranges and a few yellows. It would look nicer on fire, of course, but it would be best of all to wait until it was completely withered and dry first, and in the meantime she could certainly wear it. Webber’s face lit up in a delighted smile as she settled it into place on her head, and tentatively smiled back.
“G’bye, Miss Willow,” he chirped, settling his backpack back on his thin shoulders, then pointing into the forest. “We live over thataway if - if you ever wanna visit.” Under the hissing, spitting overtones of his voice was a tense, hopeful note. She wondered how long he’d been around, alone. If she remembered correctly, the thick forest in that direction was absolutely infested with spider dens - she'd considered the pros and cons of burning them out, and was, for once, glad now she'd refrained.
“Bye, Webber,” she replied, standing up. No sense wasting daylight, not when she had precious firewood to replace and a camp to rebuild. “Yes, I’ll come visit later. Thank you for the garland.”
“Okay!” Webber gave a discordant little shriek of what was probably delight and scurried off, turning at the edge of the forest to wave excitedly. Willow smiled, waved back, and turned away to begin the long, boring process of rebuilding over the charred ashes of her camp.
The garland dried and crisped quite pleasantly over the course of the day as she worked in the hot sun, cutting trees, splitting the logs into rough, splintery planks. Surrounded by the heady smell of pine-sap and pine-smoke, that night, she tossed the garland into her fire and watched the lovely red petals wither, curl, and burst into gorgeous flames. The lurking shadows that had been plaguing the corners of her vision were all but gone.