Mid-Week Flash Challenge - Week 218

This week's prompt picture is another untraceable. I've been trying to track this one which is all over the place, but yet never leads to a credit. Furthest back is to 2013 on We Heart It from a private user. 

More exploring Tricky's stories.  (Last Tricky Tale was on Week 217)

The General Guidelines can be found here.

How to create a clickable link in Blogger comments can be found on lasts week's post here. 

There is also a Facebook group for Mid-Week Flash, if you fancy getting the prompt there.

Forest Friends

She was grateful for them. They knew how to deliver when things were tough. She sent loving energy out along their roots and received it right back. She’d never underestimate the unknown forests of Ferristan again – and never consider them unknown; she’d made friends here.

Tricky stumbled along, following the effervescent leaves they’d created to help her stay on the right path and lead her out. When she looked back they were no longer visible. The trees were keeping her safe. They weren’t going to let her pursuers track her. They’d made that clear further back when she’d heard a crash and a yell and saw one of them trapped under a branch. They were letting their limbs go to block or kill on her behalf. That was loyalty and she would pay it back tenfold once she got out of here and made it to Chestwick.

She thought of returning to her cabin first, but that would delay things and she needed to get to Tumelo and tell him everything in person. He needed to know what was going on from someone he knew and trusted. At least she hoped he trusted her. This wasn’t going to be easy. But she had the evidence. It’s why they were chasing her. Why else would they bother? They’d intended to kill her until she’d got her hands on it, she knew that.

Tricky could feel herself tiring. They’d taken a lot out of her in that torture chamber and not just the pieces of her body. She needed to find out who the masked man was; he had skills that were beyond anything she’d known – even beyond her mother’s. He’d tried to suck her dry of light energy. If she hadn’t been able to block off a part of herself in another time dimension, she’d be dead. She knew that for certain.

And who’d have thought that ponce, Stanislov, could turn time tricks? She’d love to know where he’d learnt that – because it was definitely learnt not a natural gift. She wouldn’t have been able to catch him out otherwise. Someone had taught him how to conjure them. Was it that masked man? She needed to uncover them all.

There was another crash further over to her left and she heard a scream. Another one was down. She had a chance now. But she needed to rest and heal. Her beaten body couldn’t carry her much further.

A line of glowing leaves appeared up a tree trunk. She looked up into the branches.

‘I’d love to deary, but my arms don’t have the strength to pull me up.’

A creaking sound was heard and a looped vine appeared. She sat in it like a swing and held on. It lifted her easily, taking her high up into the boughs to branches thick enough to lie on comfortably. With the dense foliage she didn’t feel high up and clambered onto one, slumping down onto her back and letting herself fully relax for the first time since her capture.

She felt the green tree energy envelope her. She felt her strength returning and her own yellow inner energy growing. She loved the trees. There was no other place she’d rather be than here among them. She didn’t want to leave, but she had to, she had to reach The Baron. But that was only the beginning, until they unmasked all the players in this, none of them were safe.