Prompted Story Snippets

The Meadow and The Forest

People like to say there's another path. 

They must not see how they end.

The other path is a path winding through a perfect field, following the richest sunsets, and ending, abruptly, like everything else. This path ends like everything ends; short, but not slow.

This path would have me dangling over the edge of a cliff, waiting for someone else to walk it only so that they could take my place and I could fall. 

Go ahead. Tell me there's another path. Tell me I could find my way through this. Or tell me that I have to walk this path, that it's the only one I'll ever know. 

Go ahead.

Because I'd rather walk the path through the darkest forest and make my way into the light and not live a life cut short, but oh, would it be short. Would it be short because I want it be short?

It'd be short, not because I'm falling off a cliff, but because I lay myself to rest under a tree in a field and look out over the place that I've found and I think, 

This is the path I would've taken. This is the path that I took, and this is the path where I can be... happy.

The path getting here is hard. I could hear things from the other side; I could hear voices from the path through that beautiful meadow, and they were happy while I fought my way through the shadows. While I tore open the foliage and reached for the sky but the sky never came and the voices only ever drifted. 

Sometimes, I think I heard laughter. Not laughter from the voices but laughter from the trees around me, wondering,

Why are you taking this path? Foolish human, you should not have done this. Foolish human, why are you here?

And every time they laughed I screamed and I replied, 

I am here because I want to be here. I am here because this was the path less taken, because this was the path that I chose to take.

They don't understand.

They don't understand what it is to go all the way to the edge of that cliff, to relieve someone of their spot dangling above eternity and to not take it. 

They don't know what it is to give someone else the relief they want and that they deserve and not be forced to take their burden. To let their burden fall with them, to the edge of time. 

To be able to run from that cliff and pass through the meadow and run by the voices that wonder,

Why are you running? Where are you going? Why are you going back?

And when you make it back to this point in the path, where most only see one but you know you saw another all those days ago. 

And you see it. 

You see another path, and you take it because it's better than the one that you ran from. Because it's better than having to dangle off of that cliff for all eternity.

Some people will make it to the end of the path through the meadow. They'll make it to the cliff and they'll look out but they won't see the person hanging below.

But the path less taken is the one where you see everything, because you were forced to.

You're not traveling through a forest. You're traveling through a world. But when you travel through the meadow, you only see the grasses.

When you're in the forest, you find the forest. You find the caves, you find the treetops, you find every possible way to go through the forest without getting out. 

Most get lost. Sometimes, you'll find someone who was lost along the way but you won't be able to lead them out because they're trapped, running in circles and infinite loops for all eternity. Sometimes you wonder,

Could I find my way out? Would I be back at the beginning or somehow at the end?

Well, you make it through the forest, sometimes. And you come across the tree in the meadow. And you can sit beneath that tree and you'll hear the voices in the meadow next to you. Some of them wonder,

Why are you in this meadow and not the other? What's the difference?

The difference is I fought to get here, and I know I'm meant to be here because I wouldn't have left that forest if I wasn't meant to be here. The forest knows more than I do, and I trust it to an extent.

But if I sit beneath that tree and look out over the serenity of the meadow, even with its swaying grasses and murmuring insects and singing birds it will seem much more peaceful than the screaming and wailing and weeping forest that I clawed my way out of.

Maybe it made me go blind. Maybe it made me go deaf.

But I - I was trapped in that forest so long that when I finally pull myself out it's only to lay myself to rest.

I know which path you really took. I know you took the path through the meadow and you ended up at the cliff and you stared down at the person hanging over the edge of eternity, and you asked yourself,

Am I willing to do this?

But it didn't matter because something pulled you over the edge and you took their spot anyway. 

But me? Well, something let me out of that forest. 

It might've been someone; a higher power or something that pulled me out because I was meant to be out.

Maybe it was the sound of your screams echoing across the cliff and the meadow and the forest and the tree as you were pulled over the edge. Maybe that's what let me out of the forest. Maybe that's what took me to the place where I could rest.

Ironic, isn't it? 

That when someone starts their journey, the burden is already being placed on their shoulders. That when someone finishes their journey it's only because someone is already taking their place.

That could apply to the person hanging off of the cliff or that could be me, finding my way out of the forest. 

Maybe I don't rest. Maybe I have to find my way out of the meadow, away from the tree to find where you are and pull you up from over that cliff.

But I wouldn't know. After all, I'm just a spirit of a tree, waiting for someone else to pass by and lay themselves to rest beneath my branches. Maybe I was the first one here. I think I was.

The path that leads to me is hard, but you rest.

The path that leads to the cliff is easy, but you fall.

And who knows? Maybe falling off the cliff leads to the forest.

Maybe it's different for everyone and some end up back at the beginning of the meadow. Maybe some go back to the fork in the road and maybe some just end up beneath the tree. Underneath me.

Hm. I guess we'll never know.