Young Writers Society

"Follow your soul," the wind whispers to you.

You open your eyes. You are laying in the rich undergrowth of a forest. There is nothing unusual about this forest - the trees are bountiful and green, animals scurry in the brush and the sky above is untouched by the pollution of mankind. A river even gurgles nearby. It is beautiful and picturesque. By all accounts, arriving in this place should be a blessing.

But it is hard to treasure something like this. You keep having flashes of something else, memories of something you knew you should remember but have forgotten. Even more worrying is the feeling that your body is horribly wrong and distorted. You finally look down at your body, and it is then that you get your answer: your body has been changed. It is made of wood instead of flesh and bone, and even its more distinct features are missing. Your clothes are nonexistent.

Your body still moves like it's supposed to. You can get up. You can walk. You can turn your head and look around. But your face is now expressionless.

At least you can still scream.





1. Your character now looks like one of the people above. You can make slight adjustments to the driftwood design, but nothing major. If you're considering something major, let me know what that something is. The driftwood bodies don't have to resemble their actual bodies in the slightest - it's up to you. The "gender" of the bodies might be the same (you can tell in the picture above which one is probably meant to be male and which one is probably meant to be female), but even that doesn't have to stay constant.

2. Your character's voice sounds the same as it normally does.

3. Your character can't feel or taste. They can, weirdly enough, speak, hear and smell.

4. If they have powers that come from their soul, those powers will stay constant. If it comes from their physical body, they won't have them anymore. (For example, a healer might draw their healing power from their soul, while a shapeshifter may need a certain genetic mutation that lets them take on different forms. The healer could use their abilities, while the shapeshifter wouldn't be able to.)

He couldn't feel.

Metaphorical eyes shot open - a sensation he was terrifying familiar with. The world came into focus around him. He could see beautiful trees up above, their leaves as foreign as the body he now possessed. There was no need for him to look down to come to this realization. He could feel the recognition in his soul, a feeling that made his now nonexistent gut twist and churn. Hands, clad in bark instead of flesh and blood, pushed him off up of the ground. He knew he was grabbing onto fistfuls of dirt, but the sensation was little more than a dull application of pressure.

He got to his feet and stared at the forest around him, paying little attention to this new body of his. Acknowledging it meant accepting that this was his new reality, and he knew he would be able to do little once the panic fully set in. He tried his breath exercises - in for four, hold for seven, and out for eight - but he couldn't breath.

He should have expected that, really.

That form had been just the same way.

So now he was facing a panic attack in the middle of an unfamiliar forest, stuck in a body eerily reminiscent of one that he had once possessed. Just as he felt like he was going to let out a strangled cry of frustration and terror, a scream rang out through the forest.

A scream that was surprisingly close by.

He turned to see another person - this one made of the same material as him - stumbling backwards towards him with their hands up near what would have been their face. It was disconcerting to not be able to see a clear face, but years of looking at a face without any expressions in the mirror made it hard to be afraid. What was frightening was the sudden invasion of space. The person tripped over a root and fell backwards, another scream erupting from their wooden body as they fell into his extended arms.

They tried to push him away with their hand, but he stubbornly resisted the urge to give way. The struggling ceased when they realized it would amount to nothing, and the person childishly clamped their hands over their face instead.

"I'm not going to hur-"

A hand was suddenly pressing up against his cheek; he fell silent when the person finally got the good idea to stand up again. "Knight?" a familiar voice - young, masculine, and with an accent that was always hard to place - asked. He hesitantly raised his own hand and touched the one up against his cheek, feeling none of the usual comfort and warmth he associated with his lover's touch.

"Mage?" he whispered back.

The wooden figure nodded.

A second later, they were embracing - mostly out of habit, as his touch was just as unnoticeable as before. He rested his head on his boyfriend's chest, letting himself pretend that - just for a second - he could feel the softness of the shirt he wasn't wearing, and the gentle rising and falling that accompanied the breaths he could no longer breath.

Thytes opened his eyes to a haze. He blinked a couple of times, but the mist that had fallen over his eyes didn't move. Hm. How long had he been up last night? The lion attempted to stretch out and yawn, ignoring the strange creaks and pops in favor of how he couldn't seem to open his mouth. Sleep paralysis?

The lion tried to stay as calm as he could for someone who couldn't take a few deep breathes. However, he started to get the feeling that he was very much awake. His ears caught a vague rushing over his head, while his nose felt almost clogged up. It was about then that he realized he was face-down in the water.

Yanking his head up, Thytes broke the surface of the small creek. What was he doing here? What had he done last night? He was thankful for Aegeas teaching him to be a little less afraid of the water that trickled by and around him, but he couldn't cling onto that feeling of gratitude for long. The lion was in some unfamiliar, if gorgeous place, didn't know what had happened to his clothes, and still couldn't open his mouth.

Fortunately, shore wasn't far off. The lion pulled himself up and ran his way over, almost tripping over the slick rocks. Throwing himself onto the grassy shorebed, he flipping himself onto his back and wriggled back against a tree. Not sighing a breath of relief, Thytes tilted his head up as the oak tree overhead, sunlight filtering through the leaves.

He noticed that he didn't quite feel like himself. Instead of fur, something scratched against the base of the tree. Thytes looked down and froze at seeing his wooden limbs.

What had he been smoking last night?

No, he felt very much awake and aware of his surroundings. Twisting his arms and legs, Thytes watched the bark splinter and the limbs underneath tighten and release. Almost like muscles. Now just a little more curious, Thytes willed a flame to appear on the tip of one of his wooden fingers. And it did - small, controlled, hovering just over the wood. Waiting for a few seconds, the lion let it disappear. The finger was fine.

Hmm.



Of all the things Tristan wanted to wake up to, cradling the body of some wooden...person was not one of them. It wasn't even something he would've begun to imagine.

From the way the wood man screamed and jumped back, he (it sure sounded like a he, but Tristan wasn't too sure if trees had gender, and wasn't really sure how to ask) felt the same. Which was a little annoying to Tristan - he didn't look that bad in the morning, did he? But that was mostly drowned out by panic.

As the wood man scrambled backwards and smacked into the nearest tree, Tristan pressed against his own, pointed at the wood man, and screamed. The otter didn't even notice that his own arm was made of wood, that he somehow had the stamina to keep screaming for more than a couple minutes, or that the wood man had any justifiable reason to be scared. Panic wasn't very rational.

Finally, though, the wood man started to sag and relax. Tristan did the same, lowering the arm and trying to take in a deep breath. No luck. Reaching up a hand to his throat, the otter had the sudden realization that it was, in fact, wooden.

Tristan went right back to screaming. The wood man watched for a few seconds, looked down, and did the same.

That lasted for a little while longer, long enough for Tristan to start to recognize that higher-pitched voice. The wood man must have done the same, because a silence quickly settled over the both of them.

"I'm not sure I've got that all out of my system," Kynan said.

Tristan imagined he was smiling. Neither of them had anything resembling smiles, but they (for some strange reason) could at least make it obvious in their voices. "I wouldn't mind screaming some more," Tristan replied.

They finally broke apart.

"I think you're shorter," he said, looking Mage over. It was such a minor thing to notice - and so unimportant - but it was a distraction he desperately needed. One foot of his anxiously tapped the ground, while his hands were curled into wooden fists at his side in the hopes that he could feel his fingertips digging into his palms if he pressed hard enough.

Mage glanced down, then back up at him. "I guess I am." There was a strained sort of amusement to his voice - he would have been giving that little half-smile of his, if he had a face that worked the way it was supposed to. "But I'm still taller than you."

"I'm taller than you in my other form," he quickly shot back.

Mage crossed his arms. Another guess: he would have been raising his eyebrows if he could, the smile growing a little larger. "But we're not talking about your other form right now."

"I still win - Nen says I do."

"Nen's your best friend," Mage argued. "And, if we're going with other people's opinions, Janos would say that your other form doesn't count right now, since we're comparing the heights of our current bodies."

He folded his own arms. "Who's bringing friends into the argument now-"

He was cut off by the sound of screaming. Both of them immediately tensed at the seemingly nonstop noise; his hand went for a weapon that wasn't at his side, and a little strand of darkness tentatively appeared and hovered at Mage's fingertips. There were two distinct, unfamiliar screams from what sounded to be the same area.

"We should go help them," he said.

"But what if they're screaming because there's another person like this?" Mage asked, gesturing down at himself. "We would just make them scream even harder, and they might attack us. You don't have a sword with you, and you can't switch forms. I have my magic, but I don't want to risk using my fire."

He studied his boyfriend. He was panicking, too, but he was quickly realizing that it was for an entirely different reason. Knight could barely handle this situation because it was too similar to what he had been like in the past; Mage was terrified of what other people would think of him. "What if they're screaming because they ended up like us?" he quietly asked. Mage's shoulders slumped down ever so slightly. "If we want to figure out what's going on, we might want to talk to other people."

"...I guess."

"And," he added, taking a not-so-confident step forward, "we could be lucky. It might not be complete strangers. It could be friends, and we don't recognize their screams because they typically don't scream - I know I wouldn't recognize Az's, and you wouldn't recognize Zogin's or Janos'."

Mage let out a sigh. "I guess you're right - but I'm staying in the front, okay?"

He nodded.

The two carefully cut through their forest until they reached the source of the screams. As Knight had guessed, the source was two other people just like them. Their bodies looked somewhat masculine, but so did theirs - it was hard to tell if that was the standard, or if it was an accurate representation of their gender.

They lingered in the tree line for a second, trying to determine how to best approach them. The screams had died down now, but, from the little bit of the conversation they had just overheard, they were likely to start again. Should they start speaking first, and hide so they could give them fair warning of what they looked like? Should they just start talking now? Or should they wait until the two noticed them-

He was cut off by a startled cry from beside him. He turned just in time to see Mage tripping and falling right into the small clearing with a loud thud, the strand of darkness disappearing the moment he lost his concentration.

Of course they weren't alone. Of course there were other wood people. Still, even if these ones were bigger, they were certainly a bit too clumsy to be threatening.

That didn't stop Kynan and Tristan from getting off the ground as soon as the stranger fell down. They huddled close together, staring at the two wood people and trying to annoy the intense sense of discomfort at not being able to see each other.

"Who are you?" Kynan said. "How'd you end up here?'



Thytes stumbled through the woods, long arms swinging back and forth. Weird as his body was, and hard as it was to adjust to the rhythms of a moving tree, he liked his grip strength and the bark's traction with the ground. But this whole "follow your soul" thing, which was stuck in his head for some unknown reason, was as mysterious as it was confusing, and the lion was more than happy to turn and walk in the sound of conversation. Hopefully he'd run into someone he recognized.

Mage hurried to his feet; Knight was grateful that his sudden arrival hadn't led to more screaming. He stepped out into the clearing and came to a stop at Mage's side, knowing very well that they had frightened the other two.

"I'm Magestorrow Rian," Mage cheerfully introduced himself, throwing his arm around Knight's shoulder and pulling him close. "This is Knightare. You can call us Mage and Knight, if you want, but our actual names work took. I'm a traveler, and Knight is a ki-"

"Traveler as well," he quickly interrupted. "Neither one of us knows how we ended up here, and I'm going to guess that neither of you know, either?"

Tristan took a step forward. At least one person he could think of wouldn't respond in the same way he was planning to, but Mage and Knight seemed genuine and honest enough, if a little shady. They were a little too happy about this whole wood person thing, to say nothing of Mage interrupting Knight. Still, nothing so bad he couldn't be honest about his name. It wasn't like they knew what his regular body was anyways.

"Tristan," he said, then pointed to Kynan, "And Kynan. We're...mercs, I guess? Out of work? Not interested in going back to work? And yeah, we're not sure why we're here either."

Mage looked over at Knight and gave him what was meant to be a funny look after the interruption registered. Knight didn’t seem to notice; he was too busy watching the newly revealed Tristan and Kynan, if the angle of his head was anything to go off of. Though they had never been in a situation like this before, both of them knew of similar ones. Zogin and Soul had told him about an incident or two, as well as Janos. On Knight’s end, his best friend had been whisked off to a strange dreamscape and had his fellow victims visit the castle a short time later.

...The castle Knight didn’t want to take ownership of.

He went to give his shoulder a tight squeeze, only to pause when he remembered he wouldn’t be able to feel the sensation. Mage had tried his best to ignore that fact; the lack of feeling was strange and uncomfortable. But he still realized that the action would be useless, so he instead tried - and failed - to convey a smile before dragging Knight over to the far edge of the clearing. “Just need to talk to Knight for a quick second!” he shouted, looking over his shoulder at the two.

They stopped underneath a tree.

“Why didn’t you let me say you were a king before?” he hissed, keeping his voice low enough to avoid being overheard.

“I’m not,” Knight replied.

“Then who does the Castle of Blood belong to, then?”

Knight gave him what would have likely been a seething look if he still had a face to give said look. “Just having a castle doesn’t make me a king,” he whispered back, crossing his arms. “I don’t have a kingdom.”

“Tieth says that you’re its king.”

Knight groaned. “Tieth’s my sister - of course she’d say something like that.”

Mage mirrored his posture, staring down at his boyfriend. He knew that wasn’t all of it; he had never really had a problem with him exaggerating on that detail in the past. He might have let out an awkward little laugh or given a hesitant half-smile and tried to explain it, but there was never a straight denial of the truth.

Knight let out a sigh.

"We barely know them," he said. "All we know are names and voices, and both can be manipulated. I don't want to be entirely open with who I am. Besides, it's not like you're being open."

"So you're going to pull a Nen-" He paused, the last line registering. He tilted his head ever so slightly to the side and would have frowned if he had the lips to do it. "I'm being open!"

"Uh-huh."

"Why am I not, then?"

"You said you were a traveler," Knight hissed. "I didn't hear anything about being a war hero in there, Mage."

He shifted uncomfortably; he understood the point being made. "Fine. I get it. We'll just be travelers for now, and we'll forget the parts of being war heroes - and, in your case, being a king."

Knight tried to sputter out a protest, but he was already leading him back over to Kynan and Tristan with cheerful strides.

When Thytes reached the edge of the clearing, he found himself at a loss for words. There was a small group of wood people, presumably looking just like he did. That made it much harder for him to approach them. He didn't have expressions to read, faces to focus on, voices to recognize (though, they'd been talking quietly, if at all, since he'd showed up). He felt almost exposed; it was a strange feeling. So he hid behind one of the trees and watched, waiting for some cue or sign that would justify him stepping out and meeting them.



"What were you guys talking about?" Tristan said, taking a step back out of force of habit. They were very...oily, for lack of a better word. He wasn't quite sure he could trust them.

Mage thought for a moment.

"Our relationship," he finally decided. Knight looked - presumably wildly - over at him as the words registered, but he continued on regardless. It was a good answer, and one that did have its basis in a true fact; they were dating. "Being stuck as wooden people really adds an interesting level to the whole being boyfriends thing, and I get distracted pretty easily. Just had to figure that out before we started working on why we've suddenly been turned to wood."

Relationships? Really? Sure, that was kind of a concern now that they were wood, but it didn't seem nearly as relevant as, say, being turned into wood.

Before Tristan could fire back a response though, he felt a hand on his shoulder. The otter froze for a few seconds. Then, somehow finding the ability to move his head and look to his right, he saw Kynan was in the same predicament. He and Kynan turned their heads up to find it belonged to yet another wood person, one that towered both him and Kynan.

"A relationship?" the wood person said. "Tell me more!"

Thytes?

Mage and Knight exchanged a look - or, they tried to. Mage was beginning to see the difficulty in getting messages across without words, which was unfortunately something they had relied heavily on during their travels.

"Well," Mage said, trying his best not to look like he was coming up with this on the spot, "for one thing, we can't kiss each other. We don't have the lips to."

"We also can't feel each other's embrace," Knight added. Even if the answer he had originally given probably wasn't what Knight had in mind for a response, he seemed to be going with it now. "We're pretty intimate."

"Yup," Mage agreed.

"And our heights are thrown off," Knight continued on. Mage spun around and gave what should have been a betrayed look - he knew exactly where this was going. "I'm the taller one, but Mage is taller than me right now."

"No, you're not," he hissed back.

"Yes, I am."

"You're not," he repeated under his breath. "I'm the taller one out of us and you know it."

"I'm just saying it how I see it," Knight innocently replied.

Oh, this was going to be an interesting conversation.

"Apologies," Thytes said, leaning forward, "But that does not seem like our biggest concern at the moment? Still, limiting as these bodies are, that is rather unfortunate. You can at least talk to each other and show affection that way. I find emotional intimacy is often underrated."

“Yeah,” Mage agreed in a cheerful tone, glancing over at Knight, “at least we can do that.”

Knight dug his fingers into his palms once more. He knew it would only remind him of his inability to feel, but he wanted to pretend otherwise. He wanted to pretend that he was flesh and blood. Smooth wood was nothing compared to cold metal; he could try to take solace in that. But then he looked at his boyfriend—who should have never had to go through what he had been through—and he began to shake ever so slightly. It was a habit he had never been able to break; whenever he got too scared or upset, he would tremble.

He wasn't like he was back then. He had been a different person, even if his shaking was trying to prove him a liar.

He was suddenly jerked to the side as Mage pulled him close. “It's alright, Knight,” he whispered, his voice soft and calm. When Knight glanced up, he saw that his boyfriend was still looking in the direction of the others, despite who he was talking to—maybe he was trying to avoid drawing attention to his trembling. “Try doing your breathing exercises.”

“I can't breath,” he pointed out. He didn't want to be so open about his feelings around strangers, but the only option he had left to calm down was talk with Mage. “And I-I can't feel you anymore. It's like it all over again. I thought I was done with that, Mage. Tieth promised she'd never use that spell again. That I-I'd stay me. But I'm not me anymore. Everything feels wrong.”

Thytes pushed past Kynan and Tristan, who immediately grabbed onto each other and held each other close. The otter could understand Knight's frustration over not being able to feel his boyfriend's embrace; that this was not the first time Knight had gone through it made Tristan's heart break just a little bit more. Still, at least knowing Kynan's intentions made up for at least some of that lack of feeling. Hopefully Knight could experience the same around Mage.

The lion, for his part, set a hand on Knight's shoulder. "Sorry," he said. "I did not know that you had undergone such trauma before. If it is not rude of me to ask, it seems that you may have some idea as to how we all turned to wood? At the very least, it should help us come up with some plan of action to fix it."