Their Meeting

Rowan fed another branch to the fire. The flames surged — a brief, brilliant flare that swallowed the darkness whole for just a single second — and in that second, something in his memory caught.

It had been a day the sun seemed to have taken personally, bearing down on the earth with the kind of scorching intensity that made the air itself feel heavy. And somewhere beneath all that heat, wandering without direction, without destination, without anything left to her name — was Alisha.
She had been wandering for three days by then. Alisha — daughter of a minor noble family, a household that had spent itself in service to those ranked above them — had been shown the door by the very people her family had devoted themselves to. The charge was simple and, to those who leveled it, apparently sufficient.

She was a witch.

Not the kind born of malice or shadow. The kind born of something softer and stranger and far more unsettling to people who needed their world to stay inside the lines they had drawn for it. Alisha could do things. Small, luminous, inexplicable things — and she did them with such complete and unguarded normalcy that it made people's skin crawl in a way they couldn't articulate and so chose instead to punish. A sweet soul. An open heart.
Worn clothes, no direction, nothing but the stubborn continuity of one foot in front of the other. She wandered where her feet took her, which eventually led her to the edge of a wild forest. It offered shade, at least. She walked in.
The sound of water found her before she found it. She followed it until the trees thinned and opened into something unexpectedly peaceful — a small pond, fed by a modest waterfall that caught the filtered light and scattered it like something alive.

She knelt at the edge. Reached in. Let her fingers drift through the water in a slow, absent wave. Sparkles bloomed where her fingers passed, light threading through the water as though it had been waiting for her touch, as though she had quietly sanctified it without meaning to.
She did not find it remarkable. She never had. It was simply something she could do, the way others could sing or run or whittle wood — unremarkable to her, woven into the ordinary fabric of who she was.
It was precisely that quality — that gentle, unguarded normalcy with which she carried something extraordinary — that the nobles had found so deeply unsettling. It did not fit their world. It did not fit their image. And so they had removed her from it, as simply and as coldly as one removes something that does not match the décor.

"What will I do now?" she whispered to no one, fingers still trailing in the water. "Where do I go?"

A gust of wind swept through the trees without warning, playful and sudden, nearly snatching the ragged cover from her shoulders. "Aah! my blanket!"

"Are you lost, neko?" The voice came from everywhere and nowhere at once — warm, unhurried, ringing through the forest as though the trees themselves had decided to speak. "It is hot, is it not?"

"What? Where are you?"

"Oh?" A pause, genuinely curious. "Not a lost cat but a human? That is rare, actually a first"

She turned in a slow circle, searching the canopy, the shadows, the spaces between the trees. Finding nothing. Her expression shifted from startled to something quietly earnest.

"Where are you speaking from. Or perhaps its the voice of the forest itself. Mr. Forest I am harmless I just came to because i heard the sound of water gushing. I apologize if i dirtied your water."

A beat of silence.

Then laughter — genuine, unrestrained, rolling through the forest like a second wind.

"Mr. Forest! Hahaha —" it took a moment to subside. "Then, my child, do not be frightened. I will not harm you. Come to me. Follow the wind and you shall find me."

So she did. Because she was three days wandered and had nothing left to lose by following a voice through a forest.

The wind led her to a house. A perfectly ordinary house sitting in the most extraordinarily unordinary location — deep in the heart of the forest, completely at home there. On its balcony, on a swing chair, sat a man with a newspaper and the unhurried expression of someone who had nowhere else to be.

"So, neko cha— ahm... hmm, what brings you here, sweetheart?"

"I am Alisha. I just followed Mr. Forest...", she spoke politely. 

"Mr. Forest — hahaha —!" He pressed a hand over his mouth, failed entirely to compose himself, and laughed freely for a full moment before managing — barely — to collect himself. "I am so sorry. I truly could not hold that in." He straightened, still grinning. "It was me. I am your Mr. Forest."

She looked at him with complete composure. "Mr. Forest. Why did you bring me here?"

"That," he said, leaning forward with genuine curiosity now, "is exactly what I am asking you. What are you doing in this part of the jungle? Nobody comes here." He tilted his head. "There are wild animals out there. Monsters, even. All of them very interested in hunting down lost little nekos."

"Is that so. I did not see any"

"That was because I was holding them back." He leaned back. "I was keeping them away."

"Heh? How?"

"Forget that. But what are you doing here in such heat. Come inside, I will bring you something to drink and cool yourself."

"No." She shook her head quickly, taking a small step back. "I cannot impose on you. You have already helped me. I will take my leave now." She bowed her head politely.

Rowan tilted his head. Studied her for a moment. Then, casually — "You understand that the moment you leave, I am not going to protect you anymore. Those wild animals will eat you raw."

She softly said,"Huh, that is... so cruel. What do I do." She almost tears up. Her eyes went glassy at the edges, her lower lip doing something deeply unfortunate.

"Ah — no — do not cry —" he stepped forward, hands raised, expression completely unraveling, "— I apologize, I will not do that, I promise, I was joking, please — just — please do not cry." Rowan is soft to tears especially if its from a girl. 

 "hick... hick... aaahh", she continues to cry louder but there was no fear in it.