Welcome to Gaia! ::

Xerxes’ gaze drifted up to the sky, watching as Niamh’s light danced across the darkness. He was beginning to think finding these kids was a lost cause. The forest had to be huge — much bigger than they probably even knew about. And it was a mysterious place, for sure. Xer thought back on the words of the stranger, frowning as he remembered what he’d said about the group and how they weren’t supposed to be able to get past the barrier. He really must have been desperate to break the rules. It made Xerxes all the more curious about what the man was and what kind of system his race had in place — if it meant shutting itself off from all outsiders (Xer would never understand that stance himself).

When he felt something hit the back of his head, Xer jerked around, flashlight following his line of sight. His eyes widened as the light caught the tail end of a kid running back into the trees and out of sight. “Niamh!” he shouted, wanting to run after the kid but also not wanting to leave his new friend on her own. “I saw one, they went back into the trees.”

Xerxes shook his head, frowning. “Just that they went that way,” he said, pointing with the light of his flashlight. “They disappeared into the trees too quickly and I didn’t want to go running off without you. Wouldn’t do anyone any good if we got separated from each other and lost. Plus, I don’t really want to be in this forest alone.” He glanced back in the direction they had been headed, brows knitting together as he thought about their options. “If you’re alright with walking for a little while, I’d say we should at least follow in the direction the kid was going. Now that we’ve spotted one, if we follow in their footsteps, maybe we’ll catch up with them?”

“Ready as I’ll ever be, I suppose,” he called up, a small smile curling up the corners of his lips. Despite his worries in the beginning, he really was having fun chasing after these children. That isn’t to say, though, that he wasn’t taking this seriously enough. He definitely was. There were, quite obviously, a couple of children loose in the forest and they could potentially get into more trouble than either of them had planned on. When the pair moved forward, Xerxes kept a close watch on Niamh’s flashlight and tried his best to watch the area in front of him as well. When he tripped over a protruding root, Xer cursed as he tumbled forward and fell onto his hands and knees. As he’d hit the ground, the grip on his flashlight faltered and it went skittering across the ground, smacking up against a nearby tree — it flickered once, twice and a third time before finally fading and dying completely. Xerxes cursed again, scrambling on his hands and knees in the direction of the thing and snatching it up when his fingers closed over it.

“Great, just great. Good going Xer. Stupid,” Xer mumbled to himself as he sat back against the tree and banged the flashlight against his hand, trying desperately to bring it back to life. “Work, damn it.”

“I’m fine,” he grumbled, hand holding the flashlight slumped against his bent leg. “I just tripped over some stupid roots, is all.” He felt the sting of scrapes under his pants but nothing too major that needed to be concerned about at the moment, so he kept quiet about the scrapes and held up his flashlight. “But I think I broke it. I dropped it when it fell and it hit up against this tree pretty hard. I should have been paying more attention to where I was going.” He frowned and sighed. “I’m sorry I worried you.”