The Forest Heart

Simon Part 1

Raven groaned as the cold rain hit her face. She opened her eyes confused, glancing around the dark forest. Something wasn't right. Raven tried to sit up, closing her eyes against the pounding headache.

When she was sure she wasn't going to throw up on herself, she opened her eyes to slits glancing around her. She frowned, unsure what she was doing in the forest so early in the morning.

Swaying, she forced herself to her feet, spinning in a tight circle. Hesitating when she turned on the cliff face behind her. She gasped when she glanced up into the rain. The roots of the mother tree broke out in random places, but her branches towered above her, blocking out the sky from view.

"Oh god." Raven breathed as she suddenly membered everything that had led up until that moment. She stumbled backwards against the rough bark of a pine tree, as she looked at her blood-soaked gown.

The queen was dead. Raven frantically dug into the top of her gown, pulling out the velvet pouch bestowed to her. She quickly opened it, dumping the piece into her palm. She sighed, sinking to her knees. The heart was safe.

Tears rolled over her lashes onto her gown, mixing with the rain. The queen was dead. No doubt everyone thought she was dead too. Her heart hurt for her parents as she sobbed quietly alone in the forest.

How did she even make it out alive? She glanced up through her tears at the mother tree. Adam had shoved her backwards over the railing. She was falling and then...

She shook her head sure she was simply imagining it due to the shock. Trees didn't just catch random people from the air and set them on the ground. Raven paused when she felt something warm and comforting.

She glanced at the bronze and emerald tree, smiling as it glowed softly. The heart of the forest. Maybe trees could do such a thing for the druid amulet piece.

"Thank you. Because of you, I have a chance to see them again." Raven told the piece of metal with a sigh, thinking of her parents. She took a deep breath to steel herself, getting to her feet. She had a destiny to fulfill. It wasn't quite what she had planned for, but she didn't have a choice.

The rain began to let up, letting Raven notice that the sun was just rising. If she had only been out for a night, then that meant she had fallen yesterday. At least she hopped. She glanced at the forest pouting at the amulet.

"You wouldn't happen to know the way to dragon tears, would you?" Raven asked, remembering that the seer had said they would meet there. She shrugged when the amulet didn't respond, tucking it into its bag and back into the collar of her dress. It was only her imagination that the amulet responded to her sorrow in the first place. The forest would protect it, she was sure. Not her.

Pondering on everything she had read; Raven quietly built a map in her head as she wandered back under a tree to keep out of the rain. From what she knew, Dragon Valley was created by the natural mountain range. Trayson forest was nestled into the long neck of the dragon, Salvino in the chest near the heart.

Welpion sat away from the actual mountain range, a field of gold in the center of it all. Raven always wondered what the golden fields looked like, with no trees to block out the weather. Though Hank had explained to her that because of its location as one of the lowest known points in the valley, it rarely rained in Welpion, letting the sun light up the wheat fields.

Raven decided that dragon tears would be at the head of the dragon. So, she just needed to follow the neck. She went back to the clearing she had fallen into, glancing down the cliff side to get a better guess of where she was. That way, she determined pointing. She paused once to glance up at the castle hidden from view, in the mother tree's massive branches.