Not just a walk in the forest

[Cyndi Kingsley]

Professor Kingsley was more of a fan of the forbidden forest than she let on to the students of her house. The last thing she needed was for them to think she liked the forest and then think they'd like the forest. It had not always been that way, but it was usually quite peaceful, unless she ventured too deep in at which point it became creepy. When she went too deep in, she always got the feeling that something was watching her, and in truth, there likely was. The forest was home to a myriad of creatures. Cyndi liked to respect their desire to remain alone in their home, so when she did go in, she typically tried to keep as quiet as she could and to not leave a mess behind. It was so hard to find silence in a castle with hundreds of preteens and adolescents, so the woman took her quiet where she could find it.

Today would not be a particularly quiet day, though Cyndi still expected to enjoy the walk to her destination. She waited at the forest's edge, awaiting her companion. At the beginning of every year, the professor liked to venture into the forest to check on the trees that were meant to be used by her fourth years in the second semester of classes. Sometimes, she determined that a tree had had enough of having limbs cut from it and she'd plant another nearby. Other times, she determined that the tree could be used a bit more. To her great concern when she'd gone into the forest the previous week, the woman had discovered that a whole group of trees looked particularly ill. It had troubled the woman, enough to the point that she'd abandoned her efforts to diagnose the plants on her own and sought the expertise of one of the school's herbology professors. With everything else going on, she'd been especially upset to find another area of her life turned topsy-turvy, and she hoped the professor would be able to put things to rights. That sure wouldn't be happening in other areas of her life so she needed this part to be well.

 

[Professor Landon Carter]

Despite the fact the forbidden forest was forbidden, Landon was not ever afraid of entering it like he knew other people were. He felt confident enough that if danger were to ever come to him that he knew how to defend himself. The man didn't enter the forest too much though as he didn't really have a need to. Many of the plants that grew in the forest he could grow himself in the greenhouses, and he didn't want to invade the creatures' homes too much as he didn't want to come across as rude to them. Everyone deserved a little bit of privacy and so Landon would only enter the forbidden forest if he really needed to - and today was that day.

Landon was happy to be helping out a colleague. It was nice to know that he was needed sometimes and it made him feel happy, even if the situation itself was not that thrilling. The man quickly made his way out of his office and straight to the forbidden forest where he saw Professor Kingsley waiting for him at the edge. "Hello Professor!" he exclaimed, a wide smile on his face. "It's a nice day for it." Landon gestured to the sky where the sun shone brightly and a single cloud was not to be seen. He knew that further inside the forest it would be darker, but insisted to put a bright light on the situation nonetheless.