🪷 Falling into You

Chapter One

[written by Mira]

Kiara made her careful way through the trodden underbrush, breathing easier with every step she took. The chirping of insects droned all around, while amorous birds sang of sunset and the end of summer.

The nights were already growing cold, and a chill clung in the shade of the familiar copse. Kiara knew she was taking a risk, driving out all this way with dusk approaching, but she was past caring. She needed this, and with autumn and another school year approaching her chances were running out.

The golden hour spilt over the trees in molten splendour. Not long ago the light would have been perfect for one of their shoots, but Kiara had abandoned all pretense, dispensing with the camera equipment and bringing, aside from her clothes, only a glass canning jar.

At last she reached the place she had yearned for ceaselessly since her last departure from it - an unassuming pit of grey mud, sunken in the dark centre of the copse. Teaful, heart racing, she stripped completely, revealing the lines of the fit young body she worked so hard to sculpt and maintain.

Setting her things down on the nearest patch of dry earth, she cried in earnest now. She doubted she could ever come back from this, that she would feel to have any sort of control over her life again.

But she was being stupid; to waste any more time was unbearable. Without hesitating she stepped into the mud, shivering with a transport of pleasure and relief as the longed-for sucking sound was produced by the brief vacuum formed around her staggering feet.

Wading with effort deeper into the pit, she fell forward bodily. Even as she gave in to it, the mud embraced her. Her tears were absorbed in the salubrious clay. No one could possibly understand, for something of singular beauty had happened to her - the stuff of songs in all the ages of humanity and beyond.

She had fallen in love.