The woods weren’t as she expected them to be. It was surprisingly calm and not at all like the tales her father had told her. The tales she was told were of monsters and death, of treacherous journeys and nightmares. Edith stops for a moment, spotting a small patch of lavender. She crouches near the soothing scented flowers and picks a few, placing them in her basket. She picks one more and puts it behind her ear, smiling at the scent that reaches her nose.
She stands up and continues her journey. Her boots crunch on leaves and twigs as every so often she glances up at the tree branches hanging overhead when she hears a squirrel chattering or a bird singing. As she gets further and further into the woods she starts to feel uneasy. Her stomach flips over and a wave of nausea joins her uneasiness and she starts to feel like she’s going to through up.
What the heck? She thinks. Why do I feel like this?
She takes the lavender from behind her ear and holds it up to her nose. It’s supposed to be calming but all it does is make her even sicker. She sweats a little and wipes her forehead with the back of her hand
Is… the woods causing this? No… no that’s impossible.
Edith sits down for a second and puts her head between her knees as she takes deep breaths. She just couldn’t believe how sick she got in under a minute. Did the woods not want her to reach Nana’s house?
She swallows the bile in her throat and stands up and starts to walk again. Trees aren’t going to keep her from doing what she has to. She takes a pack of crackers her mother had packed and opens them then pops one in her mouth. She feels a little better after that for which she’s glad.
The takes back what she thought earlier, the woods may be all that her father said. This doesn’t help but it’s good to know her father hadn’t lied. Her feet drag and she coughs into her free elbow to dislodge bits of the cracker in her throat. Behind her, she hears a crack of a stick and she whips around.
Nobody was there. It must’ve been her imagination. She swallows and turns around to continue on her path, this time walking faster. Her eyes dart around, trying to find anything out of the ordinary. She gets shivers as she hears footsteps echoing her own but she doesn’t turn around lest they know that she knows she’s being followed. Her chest is tight with anticipation for something bad to happen.
“Hello?” She says uncertainty, feeling like the girls in those books she read when she is near the killer. Her hand reaches into her basket and grips Kindness.
As time stretches on and there is no answer she becomes to feel stupid. She was just paranoid, there is nobody here. She lets go of her dagger and looks up at the sky. Darkness stretches across it like a poison. Edith sighs and looks for some shelter, if all comes to shove she’ll have to make one.
As she looks she begins to collect firewood to keep animals, rabid and normal, away from her so she could sleep. She rests the sticks between the handles of the basket and smiles when she comes upon a cave. She smiles at her luck and before she goes in she collects more wood to be safe.
She feels a drop of rain on her hand as she reaches for a stick and she glances up at the sky which is now darkened with clouds. She watches as the sky opens up, like a tear at the stem, and water comes pouring down on her. Edith smiles and stands up, putting her stuff and the mouth of the cave so it does get wet, and stands out in the rain.
It’s so beautiful, She thinks, her clothes sticking to her but she doesn’t care. She loves the rain. She tucks her hair behind her ears and tilts her face toward the sky. Finally, she does something she hasn’t done in a long time.
She dances.
She’s not the best but she’s also not the worst. Her movements are graceful like a swan’s but free like a bird’s. She spins around with a laugh of joy. Eventually, after dancing for a while she becomes cold and decides to enter the cave to start a fire so she doesn’t get a cold. What greets her inside the cave is both unexpected and expected.
Half a dozen pairs of eyes greet her and she gasps. She had just entered a den of wolves.
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