Mansion In The Woods

Chapter 1- Discovering

"I can't believe you spent $3,000 on a plate! Why would you do that?!?!"

"All you do is break the plates anyways, why would you want to get a new one?!?"

"I wanted to keep the house presentable, unlike someone who leaves their music sheets all over their room!"

At least I have talent which you clearly don't, Elodie scoffs.

"How dare you speak to your mother like that?" her father interferes.

"Some mother she is, when was she last here for me? The both of y'all aren't ever home-" before Elodie can finish, she can feel a searing feeling on the side of her face. Her father had hit her.

Elodie holds back her tears as she runs upstairs, her dad scoffing in the background and the pain still lingering on the side of her face. Finally in her room, she closes her door making sure it's locked.

She stares out the window looking at the calm woods, how the tall pine trees stood majestically, the tops of the trees glistening in the setting sun, with different hues of green. The woods radiated a sense of comfort which she had never felt in her own home. Her parents were always either traveling to some European city, leaving her some new nanny or a neighbor. She always wondered why they had her in the first place when both of them were absent for everything, her birthdays, recitals, and tennis matches.

She felt her family was sinking, like a vulnerable ship against the rough tide, struggling to stay upright. Elodie thought she was drowning, letting the sharp and icy water consume herself, water building up in her lungs and she slowly plunges into the depths of the mysterious and dangerous ocean of greed, vanity, jealousy, and lack of love that her parents had.

She slowly drifts back to reality, snapping out of her thoughts, still staring out the window. "They'll never know.."

She gathers her courage and jumps out the window, clutching her phone and sweater. She lands on her feet, and makes it to the backyard.. She slowly pushes the backgate open trying to prevent it from creaking, eventually succeeding. Elodie then turns to the small stretch of road that separates her from the woods. She walks along the road till she's greeted by the smell of pine cones and wet soil. She enters the forest, the dried leaves crunching beneath her feet. Elodie then walks through the rocky trail, brushing her hand along some of the tree trunks. She continues down the trail, and observes in awe, how the trees provide immense shade, the patterns on the tree trunks, the moss on the rocks, the mushrooms that grew on the trees, the few flowers that stood out from the brown and green color scheme.

After a few minutes of walking, Elodie comes across a pond. This wasn't a murky pond, with the water being translucent to opaque, it was a clear one with a tinge of green resembling stained glass. With the spring sun gently hitting the pond, it looked like the sun was peeping through a glass window. Few fish swam in the pond, with their own little ecosystem thriving from the looks of it, and it had some grass and rocks, giving it some shape around it. A few feet from where Elodie is standing, she sees a bench, a stone one, just enough to fit two people. She walks up to it, and dusts it slightly, taking a seat and enjoying the calm lonely forest. 

a/n: hi everyone!, this is the first chapter of mitw. Hope y'all liked it! and do give us feedback. ty :)