Chapter 2 Trespassing

The waves flowed, rocking Gosling back and forth as she gasped out desperately trying to stay at the surface, farther away from where she used to reside. While the water pushed Gosling to another forest, chaos continued back at the manor. 

Tauren growled as he stalked past running or frozen guests. Finally, when he found one of his servants, he yanked her to the side. “Find that girl, 

forget the celebration. We need to do it now.” 

“Bu-But what if it doesn’t work?” The servant replied, frantically trying to pull herself away. 

“It should work, I believe in her.” he moved his face near hers glaring down at her. “You dare to disobey me?!” he barked, tugging onto her hair to force her head to tilt up to his. 

A whimper left her lips as the veins behind her scar on her forehead began to pulse. “N-No sir..” she croaked out as some of Tauren’s scouts ran in the direction of the trespasser. 

“Make sure there are no others with them!” Tauren shouted after them, with one more look at the servant  he let go of her with a sneer. “Get it done, we may need her sooner than I thought.” 

The scarred servant  nodded and ran off in the direction others were going but made an opposite turn,  just as another servant  seemed to be coming from where Gosling was once held at. But the scarred servant  kept running in that direction, she didn’t want to know what Tauren would do to her if she disobeyed him again. The other servant  ran into the pact of scouts, from the corner of her eye she saw that one of the scouts had caught the intruder it seems. Who else would be wearing all black clothing and a mask, a white mask of all colors to pick. No one on this night should wear white but Gosling, but I guess it did not matter now that everything was ruined. As she reached closer she was shoved out of the way by no other than Tauren. 

He towered over the trespasser, inches away from snatching off the mask. The trespasser's hands were bound so they had no ability to hold onto the mask-like they would have. "Stop," they growled, the movement of their jaw clenching shook the mask.

Tauren stared down at the trespasser for a moment before snorting with a wide grin, and laughter from guests soon followed. “You must be some fool, you came in here. On my land!” he snarled and tugged them up by the shirt, their feet barely touching the floor. “I could execute you, torture you, give you any slow death I could think is possible. But you’re not even worth the time.” his eyes darkened quickly with each word and it seemed his fangs were more noticeable than before, perhaps getting longer and more piercing.

“Tauren!” the servant  he had shoved before, had a grip onto him. “Let them go.”

“And why the hell would I do that?!” he turned to her, still having a grip on the trespasser but had lowered him.

“It’s a distra-” 

Before the servant  could say anything gas filled the air and hacking soon followed. Some guests passed out while others started to puke. “What is the meaning of this?!” Tauren coughed in his arm while trying to fan the air with his cape, but it was no use. His other hand was free, the trespasser had escaped his grasp and his sight with all the gas. As those in the manor suffered, Gosling had finally met land. 

Her eyes flew open before she hacked up water, sitting up on the cool dirt under her. She heaved in for a while before trying her best to relax her body, but she couldn’t stop tensing up and shivering. Eventually, she pushed herself up off the ground, her legs wobbled a little as she walked. Most of the cape she wore stuck to her body or ran across the wet dirt hitting her ankles and feet, just making the cold worse with it being soaked.

The moon above shined red light between spaces of the branches, down on her and anything else the light could reach. Her dark locks laid pressed to her face, the cape, and any skin near it. Each step she took, a shiver came along with it, but her shaking didn’t stop, it just seemed to happen less frequently and always started back up again. After a moment she glanced over her shoulder, back from where she came from. She had never gone so far from the manor, hardly out of it, nor her own room. 

RRRUGGHH

She froze in her foot tracks, her eyes flew all over the place frantically. She saw nothing, no movement or figures. Her hands ended up grasping her stomach, the noise echoing around her again. A sigh left her lips, her shoulders relaxing before she continued her walk. Her eyes still glanced around as she moved forward.

Everything around her was foreign. The trees, the earth crushed under her feet, and even herself. Tonight she had failed the only real reason for her life, just like any Nightlan before her that had not succeeded on the night of the blood moon. It has been at least eight times in a row now that there was no success, every two decades the red moon hung above and after years of preparation things always seem to fail for the Capulet Nightlans. Was their region bound to fail? 

The sun had eventually begun to replace the moon but hung lowly. Gosling’s eyes were practically closed, her legs still moving but just barely. She may have been dry now, but some sneezes that erupted from her told her that the cold before had already done its work.

The water seemed far now, she couldn't hear the waves crashing. Possibly she was leaving the forest as well. There were fewer trees now so the sky was more in sight. She let out a soft breath before plunging down into the grass. 

The next time she opened her eyes she felt herself moving. Her vision was still blurry from sleep and the sunlight. But she knew she couldn't be sleepwalking, she was sitting down after all. She had been laying against some strange door….riding inside of something that reminded her of a carriage.

She rubbed one of her eyes and then the other. Her vision cleared up on one side, welcoming the view of the stranger that sat across from her.