Sentiment of a Witness

𝙰𝚗 𝙸𝚗𝚌𝚕𝚎𝚖𝚎𝚗𝚝 𝙴𝚕𝚞𝚍𝚎

I landed rather ungracefully, stumbling over in the bushes, achieving some tiny cuts and magnificent bruises – some more impressive than what the man I had called my father had given me. I pulled myself up from the ground and looked up at the window just in time to hear a heart-stopping CRASH as my door presumably broke open.

Poor door. It didn't deserve that.

I ran around our old house, hoping that if my father was to follow me, he wouldn't know which direction I had gone; I decided to go past the Stolls household and follow the Eastern Trail out of the forest.

When I reached the side of the house, I turned to look at the house I had been brought up in. It was huge, towering over the other houses, but not tall enough to emerge above the tops of the trees. I wondered what our neighbours thought when they saw it, what they thought about my family, the people who lived there.

I crept past the Stolls house, hearing music blasting from the living room alongside voices and laughter. I even chanced a look through one of the windows. They were all there in the living room – Mr and Mrs Stolls and their four children with one set of grandparents. They looked like the picture-perfect family that my mother had been so desperate to look like. I felt an ache in my chest and looked away, tears forming in my eyes for a reason I hadn't known.

But now I do.

As I exited the little clearing where the Stolls and Korrapati households stood on opposite sides, I kept looking back, worried that my father would come after me. At one point, I could have sworn I saw our front door open, but the next second I was blinded by confusion as tiny glittery strands of blue chased each other around the trees as they grew closer together. The Gossamer was odd. It always had been, and I doubt if it ever won't be.

I'd been walking for an hour when I felt a drop of something cold and wet on my shoulder. Looking up, I felt the same sensation thrice more. Splat on my cheek, splat on my forehead, and splat on my nose. It was beginning to rain.

As the rain got heavier, I wished I had thought to bring a coat or jacket of some kind to protect me and my book from the weather. But, instead, I tucked my book under my shirt and held it firmly against my chest, shielding it from the water droplets as they plummeted to the earth.

I walked for a few hours before my exhaustion and pain finally got the better of me, and I near collapsed onto the ground. Going off the main trail a little bit, I found a big tree to provide shelter. It wasn't exactly ideal, but it had to do. I huddled up at its roots, using my arm as a pillow.

The sun was already high in the sky when I awoke the next day, but it was still dark and cold as the storm rekindled. With much struggling and pain, I sat up to look around at my surroundings. It looked very different to the night before – trees and grass bright green, everything had water droplets sitting or hanging from them.

Ignoring the stab of hunger in my stomach, I pushed on, desperate to get out of the Forest of Somerher. Not because it was awful by any means. In fact, it's still to this day the loveliest forest I have ever come across – and believe me, you'll be surprised about how many I've ended up in. And it's always Tommy's fault.

It took me a few hours to find the forest's edge as I had never travelled out of the forest that often, and when I did, we never followed the Eastern Trail – always the Western. I heard the thumping sound of feet on the ground several times throughout my journey and jumped behind some of the brushes, terrified of it being my father or the possibility of it being the man I would have been sold to.

Turns out a lot of merchants take the Eastern Trail as a shortcut to the village on the other side of the Somerher.

Upon reaching the edge of the eastern side of the forest, the heavens decided that it would be a perfectly normal and reasonable thing to start raining. Which meant that if I was to go on to the nearest village, I'd be soaked to the bone and probably catch a cold – something I didn't really want to risk, seeing as I had no way to fight off any illness at the time.

So once again, I found a large tree and huddled up at its roots for shelter, book stashed away from the harmful raindrops and my head resting on my arms, wondering if I would ever have a roof over my head again.

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Wooohoooo! I'm back, y'all! Although some of you would already know this if you've been reading my newest story, Morrijack Short Stories. If you have been reading them, let it be known that I have quite the pile of story ideas, but I also have a few assessments coming in too, which unfortunately means that my time for writing will be limited. Anyway, I actually have no idea where Sentiment of a Witness is going anymore, but I will keep updating and see where it takes us! So stick around for this wild ride! Thank you for reading!

Written: 24 + 25 July, 2021 (first draft written 17 June, 2021)

Published: 27 July, 2021