*The idea for this story came to me around Christmas, and that's when it was supposed to be posted but...see the post directly below this...so it's a bit out of date now but oh well...*
Anita Le Fleur is on an exploration...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
There is a wood, dark and deep, where creatures lurk, which never sleep. They crouch and hide, they wait and watch, they look for people, who through the forest walk, and these people, they do stalk. Then suddenly, swift and mean, they attack, and these people are nevermore seen.
Or so the story goes. Mia has heard this cautionary tale more times than she can count. Mia's family lives in a cottage, at the edge of this wood, and from the time she was small, to the 15 years old she is now, her parents have told her that she must never, ever, go into the woods, else vague but sinister consequences befall her.
When Mia was little, she took the matter of the forest very seriously, she wouldn't even go near the edge of it for fear that something especially hungry might reach out and snatch her away. But as the years went by, a doubt crept in. "Why don't we go in the forest?", "What exactly is in the forest that's so dangerous?" These are the questions she asked her parents, and in return she got the same old answers, "No one goes into the forest", "THINGS lurk in the forest, it's dangerous"; and with each unsatisfactory answer her doubts grew, and every year she ventured closer to the forests edge.
Which is how, in this, her 15th year, she came to be standing right at the edge of the forest one morning, mere steps from its shady and silent depths, and right at the edge of her curiosity and doubt.
"This is the day" she murmured to herself, "This is it!". And with that, she stepped into the woods.
Nothing happened. Mia waited, braced for the worst, shaking with fear, ready to flee at the first sign of danger, to run home to safety, to her parents.
After a few uneventful minutes of this, Mia decided that perhaps the danger lay further within. With a deep breath, she carried on.
It would be beautiful and pleasant walk...if nothing were going to kill and/or eat you... is what Mia found herself thinking as she moved though the forest, with its impossibly tall trees with great, reaching branches filled with magnificent green foliage...letting streams of sunlight through here and there to illuminate the cool under story with logs green with moss and festooned with streamers of lichen laying across the clear waters of creek winding between the trees... with every step further into the forest Mia marvelled at the beauty around her, and in her increasing enjoyment, forgot to be scared and prepared for the worst.
A terrible mistake, and that's where it all went wrong...
Is how the story was supposed to go, according to what Mia had been told. But instead, as she progressed through the forest Mia came across something altogether different... A strange thing began to happen, at first Mia thought she was imagining it, after all, trees don't have tiny doors and windows in them, and no one builds tiny wind mills in the middle of a forest...and animals certainly don't have tea parties, especially with a formal dress code...
"Ok....what exactly is going on here?...."
Though Mia said this to herself, barely above a whisper, as she stood perfectly still in the midst of all this...oddness, a voice replied very near to her ear "harvest season".
There were two options really. Pretend a voice had not just spoken to her and try to back away slowly, or turn and find out who the voice belonged to. Mia chose the latter, and would always be glad that she did. Just by her right shoulder, on the back of a tiny bird, hovered a tiny man, no larger than her smallest finger....'well, why not?' she thought. "Harvest season you say? What crops do you um... farm around here?
Mia spent a wonderful afternoon in the company of the tiny fairy people of the wood, accepting invitations to tour their homes by pressing her eye up to minute windows to peer in, eating a feast of honey and blueberries, blackberries and huckleberries (washed down with a cup of tea from a certain nearby gathering, her informal attire was overlooked in light of her guest status) laying in the moss by the stream, discussing farming methods with the locals, and listening to music from the smallest instruments you could ever hope to see.
"So, there are no THINGS in the forest then?"
"Things? There are many things in the forest I suppose..."
"But not...bad things...the attack you and possibly eat you kind of things..."
"Well I suppose that depends where you fall on the food chain really, but, given your size...nothing much to worry about... there must be ENORMOUS creatures where you come from, to stalk prey as large as yourself and-"
"No, no, there are no creatures like that where I come from..."
"Well that's a relief to hear, you wouldn't want to go to such a place I shouldn't think... and certainly not live there..."
"Oh I don't know, I think I would recommend you look into a place, rather than just trust the stories, you just never know..."
Suddenly, Mia realized how dim the light was becoming in the forest... "Oh no! I've been here all day! And no one knows where I've gone, I've got to go home!" A flurry of activity ensued, making arrangements for her departure. Meanwhile, small flowers with glowing centres opened near the tiny doors and windows in the surrounding trees, illuminating the trunks and branches and creating a pool of light around the central area where Mia stood, and spreading out in little paths into the forest.
"Um, what is...that?" Mia ventured, as a black bird almost as tall as her, with a blue face and a ridge across the top of its head appeared out of the dark. "This is a cassowary, he will take you where you need to go, he'll deliver you swiftly home". Mia thanked her gracious hosts and climbed aboard the cassowary's back, as she started off quickly into the night she called back, "Wait! I don't know the way!" to which the fairies called back "Yes you do, you will find it!"
Sure enough, as they sped through the forest, Mia remembered, and guided the cassowary towards the edge of the forest and the lights of her home. At the edge of the forest, the cassowary stopped. Mia climbed down and thanked the giant bird, who then disappeared back into the forest. Then she ran down to the cottage, coming across her parents on the way who were out looking for her.
"Where have you been?? We've been so worried! You didn't go into the forest did you?? Are you alright?? You're lucky to be alive! Why would you do that??" When they had calmed a bit Mia explained about the forest, and the amazing things she had seen, and the wonderful day she had had, and the entire lack of anything trying to attack or eat her.
"Mum and Dad, I know you're scared and worried, but I think maybe, sometimes we need to be bold, and take a chance and loose our way to have the very best adventures..." Mia said.
"Oh, and Dad, have you ever considered wind mills by the way?..."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Anita? Anita?? Anita where are you? It's time for bed!"
"Um...dear, I think I may have just seen...yes, the Christmas tree just moved...There it goes again".
"Anita! Are you...in the...? What are you doing in there?? Could you help me dear, she's right in there by the trunk, sitting in the lower branches. Honestly Anita, what were you doing in there?..."
Well blogging, we meet at last. I’ve had mixed feelings about the practice of blogging since I first heard of it and thought “Really? That’s the name you’re sticking with?” But it has finally reached a point where I think, well why not? Now I’ve never kept a blog, and I don’t actually know that much about them despite being part of “that generation” that should apparently have a manual of some sort in their brain for all basic computer programs and functions, in which case I don’t know if there’s some sort of formula to blog posts or some kind of blog management etiquette, but I’m sure I’ll figure things out. I only mention it so that if there are accidentally 20 posts in a row of the same thing or something you’ll be forewarned of the experimentation and learning period in progress.
So, the theoretical point of this blog is to be somewhere for me to post things that I write. And I do mean ‘things’ because I tend to write short snippets of fiction, though sometimes there are short stories and such too. I suspect most of my posts will come from an intriguing book I have which is called ‘642 Things To Write About’. It’s simply a collection of short (anywhere from a couple of sentences to just a word) starter phrases designed to get you thinking and writing. For instance, “The greatness of sandwiches” or, “Go to a café and closely watch two people interact. Then write a scene about to people in a café” or “Create an imaginary friend (human or not)” (I have high hopes for a hedgehog being involved in this one), and so forth. As you can see, they’re diverse, so posts on here could be pretty random. Just the way we like it I say. I imagine there will also be some first-person posts from me, who can say? But when things come from “the book” I’ll use the prompt as the post heading and then my writing about it as the body of the post (I say confidently, like I’ve already mastered my heading/post functions).
I’m not sure yet how often I will post something because I’m not sure yet how this blog and I will feel about one another, but I will try to post with reasonable frequency because, really, it’s just stagnating and taking up space in the ether otherwise. That being said, welcome to my blog invisible people!
No comments:
Post a Comment