Bloom - Greta Van Fleet

Chapter One

Something about the 'Great Outdoors' filled Esme with so much peace. Whether it was the huge expanse of wilderness that was hers to explore or the freshness of the air, she was always filled with so much freedom. Part of her always knew that it was neither reason.

In her youth, she'd been told so many stories about what lived where no human did. Deep, deep in the forest, in a place you'd never stumble upon unless you were looking, there were creatures. Not the average fox or badger, but magical beings with civilisations of their own, living and breathing in a community that could never be disturbed by the outside world.

It was her mother who'd filled her tiny head with the tales of witches and dragons, fairies and goblins. She'd point out scorch marks on the floor, marks that until she was much older, Esme was sure a dragon had made. Tiny doors in trees and collections of small and intricate objects were things that filled the child's head with an endless love for the world around her. Most of her time was spent outside, looking through piles of leaves to try and find a gnome or learning ancient runes to leave messages for the witches that lived deep in the forest behind her home.

Of course, it all changed when she entered school. Elementary wasn't so bad, most of the other children chose to go along with her stories thinking it was just a fun game to play. They'd copy the strange symbols that Esme scribbled in the dirt, all making their messages for the witches. None of the messages they wrote were even close to comprehensible, unlike Esme's. Elementary school wouldn't last forever, though, and soon she had to move on to a middle school. That is where it got bad. The children there were nothing like the ones at her previous school, too bothered about seeming cool to play along with her anymore. Some of them even admitted that they never believed her stories in the first place. Esme became the weird kid pretty quickly.

It was suffocating; she had no friends, and her school was based nowhere near the forest she'd spent her entire childhood. There was no magic where she was, and soon, the magic from her home started to fade too. The longer she was told that everything she knew was false, the less she started to believe it. Of course, the stories her mother told her still meant a lot to her, but she took them with a grain of salt. She now knew that the scorch marks on the floor were left by campfires, and the 'tiny doors' were just natural knots in the wood. She had finally grown up.

Middle school passed in the blink of an eye, and high school followed in the same manner. After that, she went to University, coming out at the age of 21 with a degree in conservation, and soon it was time for the young woman to decide what she wanted to do with her life. As much as she'd matured, there was still that innocent part of her that wanted to spend every second of every day outside. She couldn't describe it, nor did she want to for fear of sounding insane. She knew to her very core that there was no way her mother's stories were real, and yet there was still something inside of her that told her to go and discover something, anything, that would prove them right. Esme wished he could put the feeling to rest, but as more time passed, the want became a need, and before she knew it, she was leaving her entire life behind her.

Michigan was a strange place for Esme to pick, but her mother was supportive, as usual. She paid for Esme's plane ticket alongside helping to buy her a cheap cabin in Hiawatha National Forest. Her last few weeks at home were spent job hunting in the local area, eventually settling on a barista position in the local town. It didn't pay a huge amount, just enough to help her pay her bills and keep her well-fed.

Those few weeks flew by for the two women, and soon enough it was the night before Esme's flight. They spent it together on the couch, relaying the very tales that filled Esme's mind, except this time was different. Her mother stayed mostly silent as she chattered on about what she might find on her travels on the other side of the country, seeming to be focussed on something different entirely. Esme had noticed but chose not to ask; if she knew anything about her mother it's that she would speak when she was ready to. So, Esme left it, laughing to herself as she talked about the first message she ever sent to the witches, asking them if they could somehow make more blackberries grow that year. Blackberry crumble was her favourite dessert after all.