Shelly wondered if Carla was aware of the glow she was emitting. There was a tiredness around her eyes, and a fear that didn’t match the calm she was trying to project. Shelly hurried to check out the three books that were possible clues and walked back to Carla. “Okay, I am ready, Did you by any chance drive here? I don’t have transportation. I am supposed to be meeting with Caitlyn.” Carla nodded and led the way to the car she had picked up from the witch’s neighbor. It had been there since the day they all went skinny dipping.
Once they were in the car and alone, Carla broke down and told Shelly everything. “I don’t know what to do. I couldn’t leave the baby gone! Not that I want to hand our child to the witch, but I am not sure what I can do. Can we please look into what I can do? I am going to be borrowing my Uncle Rick’s houseboat. I am going to follow the rules that the witch gave me. I don’t know what else to do.” As she finished saying that, Carla’s voice broke into a soft sob.
Shelly considered her friend for a moment and pulled her into a hug. She could feel the emotional energy flowing out from Carla. She knew Carla was telling the truth, though she didn’t know how. “We are a family. We will work on finding the solution for all of us. The witch might have made her first mistake.”
They will tell you that you are safe in the world, and you are sometimes. The cities have only people to worry about. Though they can be frightening…it’s the least frightening thing that I know of in this world. The truth is the things that watch you from the forest, that you can never see are more frightening than anything that exists in humanity. Some of them used to be human. They have fallen from who they were to become something else.
The swamps and rain forests have their own life, their own creatures…and those are tales for another time and place. I want to talk to you about the forest, and the things that should not be. The things that watch you…that you never see. In trying to find peace, so many venture out into the forgotten places. This leads to so many deaths.
People have no idea what awaits them in the trees. It is better that way. Those of us that await amongst the foliage enjoy the ignorance…I once was human. Now I feed upon the stupid. I eat those who come out thinking the woods to be a safe place. The foolish ones. There are those who know about me. So much so that they have made even speaking of me taboo.
I am what they fear that they will become. They feel the possibility as they come closer to where I make my home. The smart ones retreat back to their cities. They understand that the evil man does to each other is nothing compared to what the forest can bring them.
Then there is the ones who have the touch of fae to them. They fear nothing in the wood, for they understand not to challenge what they cannot see. There is rules after all. We can only feed on the ones that come looking. Those we can take freely. The divine will not protect the stupid.
Sometimes, being eaten is a kindness…I went looking to see what was looking at me in the woods outside my cabin nearly two hundred years ago now. Transformation was educational. Now I teach those who come seeking…
Would you love me
if I paint myself
to resemble the child
you wanted me to be?
plucking away each
of my differences
making sure I was just
the one you planned me to be ?
The paint is peeling,
perfection an illusion,
not reality…
I cannot make myself
fit the dream of who I should be.
If I paint myself to fit the world
I lose the colors I was given at my birth,
And darkness settles in…
smothering my mirth.
the stones are poking
so painful today,
the box is broken
under my head.
I was laid down
and told to rest
in place filled with
glass from my memory
grounded.
perhaps it was supposed to be
soft silt for me to lie,
but due to the chaos of my broken life
shards of stone and hatred
are poking painfully
under my head.
Pattimouse 