Heavy footsteps could be heard throughout the forest, hitting the ground in time to her heartbeat. The harsh thumps she heard each time her foot crashed into the soft mud urged her to continue moving, pick up the pace, go faster.
Running - she was running. Running with the wind in a frenzy of panic. Adrenaline pursed through her veins as she could feel herself speeding up, the idea of 'stopping' clearly not something she was planning on doing any time soon. A gentle sensation of pins and needles crept its way into her arms, like two snakes slowly tightening their grip around their preys. They were swinging as fast as they could have. If her arms fell off, she wouldn't have been surprised. She just worried that if they did, she wouldn't be able to find them. After all, she couldn't tell what was going on.
It was all a blur really. The things around her just seemed to blend into a train of colours and shapes that she could barely make out. She could just about see the mixture of trees that she was passing; all a mush of white, brown, pink and blue. Despite being too preoccupied with her manic sprinting, she could just about tell that she was dwarfed; dwarfed in a forest, that she didn't quite remember entering. Reality didn't seem relevant (or important) though, as she felt her heartbeat slowly make its way into her throat. A slight cringe poked at her, the strange combination of thumps and crunches she heard each time her foot collided with the rough terrain made her uncomfortable. It was the only thing she could hear. That, and the strangled gasps that escaped her lips at each rhythmic step. Neither sound was pleasant.
She was out of breath and panting like a manic dog, but alas, her legs were still moving as fast as before. Her chest began to tighten at the realisation that she still wasn't slowing down, even though the rest of her body showed signs of tiredness. It was practically screaming for her to step back. The pins and needles, the numbness in her arms, the exploding heartbeat thrashing in her throat: all things that should've prevented her from keeping up the pace. Or at least, made her slow down.
She had no idea where the energy was coming from.
As that thought came into her mind, she realised something else. Or more so, she had finally acknowledged it.
Last time she checked, forests don't have anything pink or blue.
What was going on?
She tried to slow down but instead skidded violently against the rocky ground of the forest. Stray leaves and mud-splattered everywhere as she could feel herself losing all of that built up momentum. It only took about a second for her to come to a complete stop, and for the first time since she was aware of what she was doing, she finally let herself be still. In pain and in tiredness, but hell, at least she was finally standing in one place. She couldn't help but put her hands on her knees as she was now struggling to keep up with her demand for oxygen. If she was panting like a thirsty dog before, she looked like a fish out of water then. Her bending over didn't help.
Standing there, panting and huffing from the tiredness, questions finally began to appear where there were none before; and the young girl could feel the confusion grab harshly at her throat with an invisible grasp. It made her very dizzy, the bustling swarm of unanswerable thoughts, growing louder by the minute. She could feel a sort of static take over her body. Possibly it was a side effect of her aimless running or a result of oxygen deprivation, but that sensation of swarming thoughts wasn't anything foreign to the light-headed girl. Blinking rapidly, she tried to understand what was going on. Perhaps she could grasp an idea through her blurred vision. Maybe the soil could tell her what kind of forest she was in, or the overall shade could tell her what time it was.
But unfortunately, she was oblivious.
And damn did she hate being oblivious.
A small smirk just barely cracked at her lips as she silently thought that to herself. After all, there really wasn't anything she could do. She might hate not knowing what was going on, but that didn't stop those kinds of situations from arising. All she could do was try to catch her breathe, while letting her thoughts wander further.
Was she going to die?
Okay, maybe not the best place to start, but no point backing out from the possibility. It's not like she was bouncing with ecstasy as she struggled for air. She had only just managed to get a steady pattern going, and even that felt painful, almost like she was trying to breathe in fire.
To be honest, it's not like she would have minded if the answer was a blunt yes; reincarnation always seemed very likely in her eyes. Maybe she would come back as a squirrel or a bird, or maybe get another chance at life and be born a squealing baby. The idea of death, however, only made her dizzier. It didn't matter how bittersweet it was, she liked her life, and didn't want it to be taken from her, even if it would've meant that she wasn't stuck in the middle of nowhere, with no energy to do anything other than let out jagged breaths.
Actually, now that she thought of it, dead people don't have to deal with breathing...
Andrea mentally slapped herself. Despite all of the things she didn't understand, she did know one thing. Being stupid would only make herself hurt herself. She lived by that like it was gospel. And thinking about death in such a dire situation, was very stupid.
She could only imagine the amount of harm she could cause herself in the situation she had found herself in.
God.
Finally! She could breathe. Her vision came back to her and she was finally able to straighten her spine. It was liberty to allow her muscles to loosen and to let her shoulders slouch. She hadn't realised how tensed up she truly was, and the relaxation was honestly such a relief.
Finally able to function like a person, Andrea took in her surroundings.
Darkness.
That was the first thing she noticed. The sky lacked all colour and was painted in specks of white. It was beautiful to Andrea, as she could just about make out the little dipper constellation, hiding amongst the plethora of stars that glistened harshly against the void that consumed the sky. She could've probably seen more of them, but the dark outlines of leaves huddled together to make a sparse canopy blocked them from her view. Her gaze followed the tall barks those leaves were attached to, to the lower part of the woodland, where the tree roots could be found.
Mushrooms of all sorts of hues littered the wood's floor, sparkling and glowing in the midnight moon, casting their shadows on the mossy dirt beneath them. They looked angelic, mesmerising and touchable. So, so damn touchable. God, did Andrea want to touch them. But just as she felt her hand start reaching out, she stopped herself.
They were glowing? Was that... was that normal?
She looked around more.
It was dark, but thanks to the illumination the mushrooms provided, Andrea could just about see the rough texture of the tree's barks. Barks that were incredibly thick at the base, with many sticks and branches sprouting out of them. They were most probably oak, but Andrea couldn't tell. After all, she had never bothered to learn the names of trees, because she'd never thought she'd be in a situation where she'd need to know. Yet another thing she didn't know.
Karma just really liked biting her, huh?
Looking more at the tree's bodies, Andrea saw flowers and vines that were sprawled out in crazy patterns. The ivy looked wild and untamed, almost alive in the ghostly glow of the strange shrooms. They crawled around the great trees like lizards on a wall, spiralling like... like... like... those weird never-ending spiral things? Andrea could never remember what they're called.
God, what did she know? What next, she forgets her name?
But as she looked closer, the ivy looked... feral? In some strange, unexplainable way. Almost like it was ready to grab at her poor throat, that still hadn't fully recovered from Andrea's beating heart.
Wait, were they actually moving?
But something else caught her attention before she could look into it further. This time, it wasn't her eyes betraying her curiosity, it was something else.
It was the smell.
Aromas waffled through the air and filled her head with gentle dizziness. Sweetness, saltiness, bitterness. If she had to imagine what a candy factory would smell like, that was definitely it. Was this a room in Willy Wonka's factory? It would explain the magical elements she'd seen so far. Maybe it wasn't her own paranoia making her light-headed.
Wait, how was she smelling taste?
That can't be normal.
None of it could've been.
She spun around in confusion, trying to understand... everything. The trees, the mushrooms, the vile ivy - but all she saw as she did so, was more and more of those very things, stretching for miles in all directions.
Pinching maybe? Ow, that didn't work. Maybe counting on her fingers? One, two, three... okay that also didn't help. Maybe trying to fly? Her ankles clicked painfully as she hit the floor with a very loud crunch. What else could she do to make sure it wasn't a dream? Not much, if those didn't work, nothing would. A sigh of annoyance slipped through her lips, as she crossed off that possibility in her mind.
Her eyes went back to being disorientated, as she let herself theorise further an explanation to the strange situation she was in.
The next reasonable likelihood?
That she was very, very, very, very, very... high.
Honestly, that didn't sound like a too crazy scenario. Well, it was crazy, after all, she had never taken drugs in her life; but those glowing mushrooms definitely didn't look like something a sober person would be seeing. Or should be. Maybe, just maybe, she had accidentally taken something - an off piece of meat, or even a spiked drink. Anything was possible as the ivy strangled the trees tighter and tighter. Maybe she indeed was soaring through dreamlike scenarios on a carpet of chemicals, without a care in the world.
Okay yeah no, she'd have to be on some military level drugs to come up with a world so tangible, and she sure as hell wasn't carefree. The anxiety was bubbling in the depths of her stomach, as she crossed off yet another possibility.
The longer she stood there, the more unsettled she became. It was quite obvious that standing there, drooling like an idiot, wasn't going to answer any of her questions. As much as she liked coming up with answers of her own, if she wanted the real ones, she knew what she needed to do. It was dangerous and stupid (so damn stupid), but despite how tempting those fungi looked, and how dangerously animate those vines and flowers were behaving, she had to do it. She just had to.
Exploration: a very bad idea, but Andrea's only option.
After admiring the seemingly magical forest for a few more seconds, the first conscious steps were taken by Andrea. Cautious, careful, slow; but at least she was moving on her own accord. To where, who knew? Andrea didn't, nor did she want to. That place looked demonic enough as it did. It clearly was not a place you wanted to be lost in. Why did she think so? A stray vine hanging from one of the trees tried grabbing at her hair, for instance. She turned around too slow and didn't catch it in action, but the slight movement of green she caught in the corner of her eye was enough for her to draw such a conclusion.
How lucky she was to have the pleasure of wandering there at night... not.
The soles of her feet ached painfully as she threaded through the blanket of leaves. She assumed that she must've been running for a while if her feet hurt that much, and she swore silently to herself knowing she could've stopped sooner.
Why did she even keep running? She could've easily stopped sooner, and been less out of breath, and not so far into the mysterious woodlands she was now wandering. She scolded herself in her mind, knowing full well that this was partially her fault. Even if she didn't recall getting there in the first place, she should've stopped running the moment her mind came about.
Then again, she should've done a lot of things.
Andrea shook her head, scaring away more things that were trying to grasp onto her (not that she could see).
There was no point in dwindling on past mistakes.
She had to keep moving.
If Andrea was asked how long she had walked for, she would've answered with an annoyed, "forever", but in reality, she had been wandering for about twenty minutes. Walking in the strange land she had stumbled into, Andrea slowly began to realise her quest for answers was slowly turning into a question hunt. Her basket was beginning to spill.
A bird perched on the branch of a nearby tree, a squirrel scurried across Andrea's path, a fox peeked out from a nearby berry bush. But looking closer, that bird had ten eyes, and the squirrel's body was morbidly huge and the fox's tail was... why was it on fire?
The further she trudged in the damp soil, the more apparent it became that... well, nothing really became apparent, if anything, Andrea began doubting that she was even real.
This whole exploring thing was a stupid idea.
God, she hated having to travel by herself. It would've been so much easier if she had someone there who could, just, tell her what was going on. Granted, she'd probably scare them away by badgering them into insanity; but at least she wouldn't be alone. Alone, in a huge forest, where everything looked like it wanted to bite. Then again, it wasn't much different from school, Andrea noted as she ducked under a hanging branch and tripped on an exposed tree root. She felt a bit like Indiana Jones, travelling through dangerous terrain in search of something.
Even he had a sidekick to help him...
...I wish I wasn't alone...
After walking a little while longer, she stumbled across a lake. It was large and surrounded by rich, green vegetation. There was a small opening to the water from where she stood; a large gap in the greenery, and stones leading gradually into the deep lake waters. One wrong step and she definitely would've found out what was living in those waters, first hand. The body itself was so still, that she could see the stars of the sky reflecting off of its surface. Now, she could count all the different constellations that could be seen mirrored on the lake's stillness, as the forest canopy couldn't cover the water.
On a completely irrelevant note, did Andrea really know the names of all the star arrangements, but not the names of trees? She really needed to sort out what information she had in her brain, but that was a problem for future Andrea.
Looking out over the reservoir, Andrea could see the other side, perhaps five hundred meters away, and the rest of the forest right after.
It was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen.
Before she knew what she was doing, she was already looking into the clear liquid at her own reflection, disregarding the safety of the natural opening. She wanted to make sure that she was still the same, even though everything else wasn't. Could she have at least that comfort?
Thank the heavens, she did have that privilege.
Gazing at her reflection, Andrea was pleased to find that she looked like she always did, nothing different. She was still wearing her Winnie the Pooh pyjamas, her hair in low plaits that she had done the night before. Same dull eyes; same empty expression; same old her. But her liberty of having something familiar was soon taken away in a brutal turn of events.
Or rather, in a brutal turn of realisation.
Staring at herself, Andrea couldn't help but feel a creeping sense of unease, despite her looking at the only thing she knew; herself. She didn't feel safe, even though she should've felt security, knowing, that she was the same as ever. Well, she didn't feel safe to begin with; she had no idea how she got there - but there by the lake, looking at herself, she began to feel a sense of dread. A different kind of dread than before. A sort of dread that made her face pale, and made her heart drop.
But what was it?
Andrea tilted her head in thought, wondering what was wrong.
What was it, what was it, what was it, what was it, what was it, what was it...?
Was she finally losing her mind?
That was when it hit her, a lot harder than she expected; and it was a lot worse than she thought.
She looked back into the water, at the reflection, and whimpered, "That's not me."
Nothing was different. Really, if it was any other person, they would've said that she was talking nonsense. However, she knew that that wasn't her looking back. She straightened her head, and so did the reflection. She lifted her hand, and the reflection mimicked that as well. But that wasn't her. She just knew that wasn't her. Why she thought so, she didn't know. Just another question added to her list. She tried to look away, no longer able to bear the unbearable sensation of fear, but something else caught her eye in the water's surface.
Another reflection, only a meter away from where she stood. Shocked, she jumped back and turned her head to confront the new presence.
She couldn't believe it, her prayer was answered. Really? She had only just wished it, yet there they were. A person... or was it? I mean, it looked like a person. Was that a cloak drawn over its broad shoulders? Yes, a long black cloak covered the person, hiding its face and features. It looked soft strangely, almost like it was made of feathers. She wondered what it would feel like if she stroked them if the fuzzy aura would tickle as she brushed over them in gentle motions. Perhaps they were wings, but wings didn't have hoods... did they? She couldn't tell, the darkness of the person was camouflaged into the night's own. The only thing visible was two, glowing, white eyes, at the centre of what Andrea assumed was the head.
Andrea had to cover her own, as a single word crossed her mind: blinding.
The black outline looked terrifying, standing there motionless, staring into Andrea's soul. Andrea however, didn't care. Not one bit. Stuff like that, after all, never scared her.
When she was a kid, she distinctively remembered laughing while watching 'The woman in black'. If she was laughing at the movie or her screaming peers, she couldn't recall. What she did remember, however, was her smiling as the lady appeared out of nowhere, giggling while others screamed. She had such a funny face, she reminisced, but she didn't have time to backtrack and recall her past. She had to remain focused. In the forest, and the stranger before her; because just because she wasn't scared of the shadow, that didn't mean she trusted it... Or should. It looked sullen, with the potential to be hostile, a word Andrea wanted to stay away from.
But... there was no one else. Only her, the person in the water, and a dark shadow. She didn't really have a choice if she wanted her basket of questions to get lighter. To be honest, it honestly didn't matter if it was a little kid called "shorty" or a tall mysterious figure that helped.
Where am I? How did I get here? What's up with that blazing fox? And many more aching questions, just waiting to be set free, reborn, to fly away as answered.
She wanted to approach them... no... she needed to approach them.
So she did.
She took three steps.
Three steps towards the figure.
Three steps in the wrong direction...
...Andrea's first mistake.
Thick, dark, ominous smoke rose behind the figure. It grew - the smoke - bigger and bigger, like a ball of electrifying energy. It began to seep at the sides of the unknown being, began to snake its way around the trees, the mushrooms, the vines, the water, towards our precious hero.
Run. Run. Run.
The word echoed in her mind so loud she almost fainted right there on the spot. Her heart began to erupt back into its panicking pace, her feet moving again, somehow faster than they were before. The forest was filled with the sound of crunches and thumps, but that time, Andrea couldn't care less. She was running, yet again, except this time, she knew why; and she hated that that was the first answer she figured out.
While still running, she tried looking over her shoulder to see if the phantom was following her. To be honest she just sort of assumed that she was going to be chased, and wanted to make sure. Maybe it was just their way of saying hello? Who was she to judge, it's not like she's the queen of socialising herself.
But as her head whipped around, she didn't realise...
... She had just made her second mistake...
Just as she did so, she tripped over another exposed tree root, perhaps even the same one from before. Tumbling across the same leaves that she had so carefully walked across before, she hit her head on something hard. Most likely a rock. Pain hit her hard, but she couldn't lie there and cry over her new injury. She looked back and saw that the figure WAS, in fact, moving towards her. Slowly, but still moving. And that was not good.
Right before she scrambled back onto her feet to continue running away, she saw something that caught her eye. Something... rather strange. Stranger than everything she had seen before: the glowing mushrooms, the firefox, the unknown reflection. It was a symbol, glowing on the phantom's body. The wind had blown its cloak wide open, and beneath it was a glowing shape. Did it look like... an eye? Maybe... a sun? She couldn't really tell, because it was muffled out by something else. It was a glowing, golden light at the centre of the symbol's head, that sparkled harshly against the white outline, making it barely visible. Kind of like the iris, but again, it was too bright to make out.
Andrea felt dumbfounded as she gazed at the shape before her. It was hypnotising, she couldn't stop looking at it. Even the pain in Andrea's head couldn't break her trance. The mushrooms were just a warm-up compared to that. Child's play.
The symbol, it was growing bigger and bigger; brighter and brighter. Andrea could only gaze in wonder as its shape was morphing.
Wait no, it wasn't getting bigger, it was something else, Andrea could just.. almost pin down... what it was... wait...
... It was getting closer oh fuck how long was she staring at it oh fuck oh fuck.
The smoke was getting closer; it stank of burning. Andrea, at last, stood on her feet and burst back into a full sprint, ignoring the cries of her body to stop. Through the trees, through that mess of vines, through those thorns and through those hedges. She felt like she was flying, flying with the wind that revealed that weird symbol. She stopped paying attention to her surroundings, escape was her only goal. It was the only thing she could think about, her mind switching off completely as she shifted into autopilot. She didn't need to think when running, she knew what to do. One foot, two feet, repeat as fast as you can. She assumed she didn't need to use her head to do that. Maybe she wouldn't be so panicked if she did...
... And that was her third mistake...
Flying, running, flying, running, flying... until she actually was.
There was no break or warning. No thinning of nature or a warning sign.
Just a sudden drop.
A drop into water, and before she registered what had happened, she was sinking. She couldn't move, couldn't scream, couldn't do anything other than look up helplessly at the surface of the water that she was sinking further and further away from. At the surface of the water, she could see the dark figure peering in, the symbol still on full display.
Andrea shut her eyes. She didn't want that shape to be the last thing she saw. Instead, she focused on the silence of the underwater world she was falling into, the world she was about to become a part of. She swallowed a mouthful of the (surprisingly) sweet water and was forced into letting it fill her lungs.
'So this is the end huh?' She thought, as a soft hum grew louder in her ear. She felt her mind slowly slip into a deep, deep sleep...