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Lost
We're born alone, we live alone, we die alone. Only through
our love and friendship can we create the illusion for the moment that we're
not alone.
- Orson Welles
She was
invisible, curled up beneath a pile of leaves. Only the seldom passing animal
may have caught the scent of something out of the ordinary. As if to signify
change, a stiff breeze blew over the leaves, uncovering her position. In her
sleep, she shivered. It would be nightfall again before she woke up.
The woods
around her were all black. She opened her eyes while still lying down and saw a
tilted view of the land around her. She righted herself and immediately
realized she was somewhere unfamiliar. She turned her head, looking around for
something recognizable but saw only blackness. The pale moonlight was the only
thing that afforded her a faint glimpse of the trees very nearby. Slowly, she
stood, the leaves crackling under her. In the distance, she thought she saw a
shimmer in the moonlight though it was gone as soon as she saw it. From her
leafy indentation in the ground, she went straight forward. After she had
walked five hundred feet, she again thought she saw a shimmer in the distance. Following
the direction she thought it went, she turned to the right and saw a faint
yellow light far off in the distance. She followed it, drawing slowly closer
only to watch it grow smaller and then move further to the right. She turned
again to follow it. As she was almost close enough to touch it, it again changed
places and distances. Determined to catch it, she took off running.
Condensation puffs were coming out of her mouth, and until then she hadn’t
realized how cold it was. She could see the yellow spot. It was close; close
enough to touch. She dove at it but it disappeared and she hit the ground on
her stomach, sliding into the indentation that she had woken up in. As her body
cooled down after she had stopped running, she began shivering. She pulled her
brown jacket closer around her but it was too thin to repel the cold forest
air. She crawled back into the indentation and pulled the leaves on top of her.
She looked up into the tree that stood behind the indentation and again saw the
barely visible shimmer. She closed her eyes and noticed the deep earthy smell
of the leaves and ground around her. As she was nearing sleep, she felt
something fall on top of her – something heavy. She jumped up and scrambled,
shedding away any tired feelings she may have had. She couldn’t see what had
fallen on her but in the distance, she heard a voice. It was barely audible but
she did hear it.
“It’s okay. It’s safe to go back over, I assure you.”
She began to frantically look around, seeking out the origin
of the voice. A vestigial part of her brain told her the sound was coming from
behind her. She turned around only to see a large tree. She looked around it
only to see dark endless forest.
“I’m sorry to say that you won’t find me, but I mean you no
harm. Go on, back to your spot. There’s something there you’ll want.”
She walked back over to the indentation and saw a large
brown clump lying where she had been. She poked at it with her foot and it gave
way. She picked it up, seeing in the darkness that it was a thicker dark brown
coat. She shook it off and then shrugged off her jacket to replace it with the
coat.
“There you go. Sleep now and we’ll see what tomorrow has to
give us.”
She felt tired despite having woken up just a short time
ago. She lay down and quickly drifted off to sleep.
When she
awoke, the sun was just coming up. She looked around again and saw that she was
still in the forest. It was much thicker and deeper than she had thought the
night before. Again, the voice spoke to her from nowhere.
“I see you’re up. Good. Time to get going; it’s going to get
very cold here soon.”
She stood up and immediately felt a stiff breeze blow
against her.
“You’re going to want to follow the wind. It will show you
the way.”
She turned and started walking with the wind to her back as
she buttoned the coat. As she was walking, she saw that the forest seemed to go
on forever. There was no visible thinning out of the trees. She stopped walking
and began looking around. She couldn’t see anyone, not even the shimmer she had
seen in the forest the night before. The wind was still blowing and seemed to
get stronger the longer she stood there, to the point that she was almost
buckling under its force. The voice was as clear as it had been back by the
indentation in the ground.
“Come on. I had told you it was going to get worse if we
stayed.”
She turned to face the voice. Her voice was almost
completely lost to the wind.
“Who are you? Wh-where are you? Where am I?”
The wind changed direction, blowing with the same strength
into her back.
“So you do have a voice. Use the strength it took to speak
to me and keep moving. Go on, same way you’ve been going.”
She stood with her back to the wind, placing a foot in front
of her and bracing herself.
“I won’t move until you tell me something.”
“Hmm…I can tell you that it’s snowing.”
She looked around to see specks of white whipping past her.
“It’s only going to get worse the longer you stand here. The
snow will only get heavier, the winds will only get harsher, and the
temperature will continue to drop. Think of how much time you’ve already
wasted.”
She put her head down and stamped her foot onto the ground
to get a better footing.
“NO! Tell me what I asked! Where am I? Who are you?”
She had yelled, and with her back to the wind her voice was
much clearer.
The voice that had been talking to her changed. It was no
longer stern and emotionless but instead warm and hearty.
“Now, now, I can provide you with these answers and more
when you get to where you need to be. That place you need to be is down off of
this mountain and out of the snowstorm that’s about to hit. You don’t want to
be up here when the snow really starts falling.”
She looked around again, looking for the shimmer but saw
nothing but driving snow and bending trees.
She turned
around and continued walking in the direction she had been going. The wind
seemed to have let up slightly but the snow kept falling. It had created a ring
of glare around the sun which she could see a small bit more of through the
trees. The forest was thinning out with every dozen steps. She could see bright
sunlight and blue sky far from where she stood at what appeared to be the end
of the woods. She tried to run but the wind pushed her back as she lifted her
feet off the ground. She pushed harder as she walked and sped up. When she
could finally see the light through the trees, she looked out to see low
ground. As she got to the end of the forest, she looked out at low grassland
covered in yellow flowers just below a two hundred foot drop.
She heard the voice again, the warm
voice that made her feel strangely comfortable.
“You’re going to have to slide.”
The drop wasn’t vertical and it was also snow-covered. She
looked down at the steep white incline and looked behind her. The view behind
her receded back into dark forest slowly being taken over by snow. She again
looked down to the bottom of the drop. The snow ended and turned to hill. She
would have to tuck and roll upon hitting the grass hillside. She took one last
look into the forest before jumping. She hit the snow that covered the hillside
and slid halfway down before abruptly going onto the grass. It wasn’t as smooth
as the snow had been and she quickly shifted sideways before tumbling the rest
of the way down. As the terrain leveled out, she bounced harshly upward before
coming to rest by a small stream. She looked around for only a moment before
blacking out.
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