All Sorrows Are Less With Bread

[Jack McCarthy]

Jack wouldn’t be surprised that Alex had never heard about the ominously named “Whispering Forest” seeing as no living being had ever come back, assumed either dead or worst, some kind of living death where the forest infect them until their just mindless servants of the dark evil that was in the heart of those trees….



….Really Jack didn’t really understand Alex’s concern at all.



Jack made of short dismissive noise with his mouth flailing his arm in Alex’s general direction as if she was warning him about getting a pet. “Careful? I’m always careful. They call me King Careful” Jack said with a proud smirk on his face before it eventually settled down into a grimmish “....Ok, so they don’t...but they should...I do, but I do, I’m just so careful about it, see?” He said as if he just hit Alex with a verbal check mate. “...And besides, no one is BRAVE enough to go to these places...until now”

[Alexandra Sawyer]

The worry on Alex's face deepened, casting aside the usual smile that permeated her features and seemed to spread into her entire being. She watched him in silence as he declared his bravery and dismissed her concerns. Jack, she knew, was head strong and difficult to divert once he'd set his mind on something. Usually she would humor his often outlandish antics but this she simply couldn't get behind.

"It's not a matter of being brave, Jack." She said. "Bravery has nothing to do with it." Alex stepped closer, refusing to be so easily dismissed in spite of Jack's insistence. Eventually she would have to show she could be just as determined and bull-headed as her more animated friend. "Bravery is a lot of things but it is not running off, unprepared, into danger just because of a rumor. Would it really be worth it?" She asked flatly, her eyes never straying from the taller young man. "A horrible death, or worse, all in an attempt to claim a treasure that probably doesn't even exist in the first place?" Alex reached out and tugged on the sleeve of Jack's tunic as if she was trying to pull him back into reality.

[Jack McCarthy]

You know what? He bet the “Whispering forest” wasn’t nearly as magical as was made out to be, in Jack’s vast experience of the world, it was just a matter of mind over….matter, It was just trees. Animated plants literally rooted into the ground stuck there. Unmoving. They couldn’t attack or hurt Jack if they even were some how living breather abominations given life by some cursed gold. If this was a heavily guarded fortress with guards that could cut Jack in two. THEN. Then Jack can have a cause to be concerned, But seeing as there was nothing concrete to fear, there was no face attached to the obstacles he could face.



Really, why should he be afraid when there was no possible way of knowing there was anything to be afraid of?.



See, Jack knew in his own head. If he knew for a fact there was some kind of demonic evil waiting for him, then Jack would be the first one to panic, the first one one to scream and shout as mental images of him dying in several different ways, all of them painful flew through his mind causing him to have some kind of panic attack,



But now? He consoled himself with the fact that the threat was nothing but a vague one.



….In hindsight he really messed up telling Alex what he planned, for whatever reason she always worried so hard….and he began to realize that Alex was probably not going to let him go, Jack stood there staring into space as Alex tugged against him, before he snapped his fingers as if something just accorded to him



“Oh, did I say the Whispering Forest I meant the forest of….sunshine and rainbows. Yeah that’s the forest I’m going to…



Nailed it.