"Finn!" screeched Lena in the middle of the night, and scared off the blue lights. "Wake up! Wake up!"

She beat down on his chest, but he had been awake since her first scream.

"What is it?" he asked, tainted by her panic.

"Something is wrong!"

The cave was pitch black, he couldn't see his own hand when he held it right in front of his eyes. 

Finn heard her crying next to him and tried to sense where she was, his heart pumped faster and faster, and his mind worked adrift through the confusion.

"I can't see anything, what is the matter?"

"I can't breathe!"

"You have to calm yourself. Tell me what's going on."

"I just did! I can't breathe!"

The light returned and Finn found Lena laying next to him, trembling, with her eyes sealed from pain. 

Her hands were sprinkled with blood, as if a thousand needles had punctured them, the skin beneath her chin changed from blue to violet in a matter of seconds, and her chest bounced up and down, losing a battle over air.

"What happened?" he finally asked after many failed attempts to say something to her.

"I think it's the berries!"

"What? What berries?"

"The purple berries," she said, debilitated, with the last bit of air left in her lungs.

"You ate the fruit?" he cried, "The fruit I told you not to eat?"

When she made no answer, Finn, on his knees, touched her icy cheek and held her heavy head in his quaking arm. "Don't close your eyes, Lena. Keep them open."

He could not think her dead, but her lips were parted, and after her chest had sunken, it stopped moving altogether.

Finn jerked his head to look behind him when a sound he had heard caught him by surprise, and there stood, with the body of a human but the posture of a baboon, the same figure that had been watching them for days. 

Its face was covered by a mask, with a merry face carved on its surface. It was barefooted, and filthy, with messy brown hair reaching down to its knees. Its coat of leaves hid most of its body,  decorated by strings and dangling stones, and around its neck hung braided oak roots. 

The skinny arm was stretched out, holding the curled stick, and on it swayed a lantern with a weak flame flickering inside it. It was clear now that the light that had enabled Lena to be seen by Finn, had come from the lantern, and not from the insect.

Balked at Lena's condition, Finn found no suitable reaction to the unsought appearance of the strange creature behind him.

"Who are you?" he said, still holding Lena in his arms.

When he spoke at it, it ran away, out of the cave, and into the dark.

"Wait!" hollered Finn, desperately. "My friend needs help!"

Finn's heart beat as rapidly as a jackhammer and felt like it too.

"Please don't die," he said to Lena, then slid his hands beneath her shoulders and knees to pick her lifeless body up with force.

Finn carried Lena in his arms and chased the figure. He nearly lost it in the jungle, but never let it leave his sight.

"Please hold on!"

But it continued to flee through the thickets of bushes and shrubs. 

With every leap Finn made, and with every slice of hope he lost during the hunt, the sky's color transitioned pink, bit by bit, until, when the creature stopped at once, the sun's beams had reached the highest trees.

Finn took halt with an appropriate distance to the figure, to ensure it wouldn't be scared off again. Behind it rose a tree with a trunk as wide as three cars in length. It stared at him but said nothing.

"You need to help her!" he begged, "She ate some berries and then stopped breathing. Please!"

It climbed the tree, like a monkey, toward a construction of wood, which Finn had not noticed till then. Lena's arm dangled, just like her legs and her head.

Finn looked at her eyes; he would have moved a mountain with his bare hands if she would look a return—the most lovely of all existing looks. And if she rolled her eyes at him, he would have valued it just as much.

The construction looked much like a treehouse, but bigger. Far bigger. And the masked mystery had gone through its doors without reappearing.

Finn lowered Lena gently to lay her in the grass but continued to support her head with one arm.

"What do I do? You pleaded and begged me not to leave you with this incubus, and I didn't. Now I beg you too; stay! You owe it to me! Don't leave this horrid place without me!"

Two naked feet landed with a thump next to Finn. The figure had returned, with an object in its hand that resembled a coconut. It bent over Lena and placed it on her lips.

"What are you doing?" asked Finn, protective of Lena, but was given in response a wordless stare.

A black liquid was spilled into her mouth. He watched closely, with sweat on his forehead and his nails digging deeper into the soil. Lena began to wrestle for air and breathed at long last. 

She did not open her eyes, nor did she lift her body, but she breathed, and Finn could do no other than grin from ear to ear.

"She's alive! Thank god!"

"God? My name eez Kassiopeia," rectified the lady that had taken off her wooden mask. 

A fierce face was revealed from beneath the friendly carving. She looked no older than forty years and had blue paint across the upper half of her face.

"You speak! You're human!" said Finn gaily.

She looked at him as if he had called her the worst of all hideous names. Her nostrils dilated, her mouth cramped in disgust and she spoke with a sturdy accent: "Hoomans are blood-zirsty, barbarric, monsters. I vill not be defined by such vile words."

"Well, whatever you are, I can't thank you enough for saving her life."

"Ya. Eez okay. Just don't eat ze berries uh-gain."

"Believe me, we won't."

On hands and feet, she walked to her tree and began to climb back up, to what looked like her home.

"Wait, where are you going?"

Kassiopeia bothered not to look behind when she barred the door.

"Will she be fine?" he shouted up to her fortress without a response.

"Finn?"

"Lena!" he said, pleasantly startled, and his eyes fell back into hers.

She appeared very weak, but the skin beneath her chin had returned to the ordinary, and her palms seemed to be healing briskly.

"Thank you," she said in hushed tones.

As she lost her consciousness anew, her head dropped rearward to Finn's arm, and he sat there, next to her, holding her tightly while the dull colors of the sky blended into bright reds and yellows. 

Dawn had come and gone, and the sun pursued to travel the skies, and as it did, Finn did not let go of Lena. Too concerned to look away, even just for one second, he thought to himself: If by watching over her, she continues breathing, then I want to be by her side, always.