Psyche

Psyche hadn't planned on being kidnapped on her daily walk around the outskirts of the city today, but unfortunately the Fates had taken one look at her wandering along the path and said to themselves, 'Absolutely not.'

Not only had they decided her walk was to be concluded with immediate effect, but they had also chosen to have her kidnapped by a wind. Blown away into the sky, much to the shock of her maid walking beside her.

'What's happening?' she had shrieked as Psyche was swept unceremoniously into the air. Psyche, who privately thought her maid was a bit stupid, tried to shout back 'What does it look like?'

Instead, she began hurtling away through the air, thrashing and screaming and wondering when she was going to wake up from this terrible nightmare.

The princess finds herself flying along high above the ground, her hair plastered to her face, unable to see for tears and limbs numb with cold. The sound of rushing wind fills her ears, so loud it hurts almost as much as the stinging, icy air against her skin.

Minutes pass and, as the initial fear of being hoisted upwards into nothingness and driven forward fades, Psyche stops her thrashing and clamps her mouth shut, concentrating instead on breathing, a task made very difficult given how quickly she is travelling. She clutches at her hair and clothes, desperate to hold on to something (dignity isn't an option anymore), and tries to count in her head, eyes squeezed tightly shut, trying to distract herself from thinking about how she could fall at any moment.

She has almost counted to two hundred when she feels herself slowing; she reaches two hundred and twenty before she finds the courage to open her eyes. Another shriek escapes her when she realises just how high in the air she is: hundreds of feet above the ground.

A forest sprawls beneath her, tall cypresses and olive trees so tightly packed together she can't see the ground. Mountains rise not far ahead of her where she is now slowly descending, clutching still at her dress and hair, the sun sinking with her between blue sky and grey clouds.

Shadows cast by the mountains shroud a large portion of the dense forest, but the part below and just before her is still lit by the sun, the trees painted yellow and orange in the dying glow. It would be beautiful if she wasn't convinced she was about to die.

Despite the view, it is the palace Psyche is focused on, not just because of its expansive grandeur and because it looks so out of place in the middle of the forest, but because it seems to be her destination. There is a large clearing beyond the palace, which grows larger and larger until she is right over it.

When her feet touch the ground, Psyche finds that her legs don't work. She thuds to her knees unceremoniously and the impact pulls the breath from her. She can taste blood. Kneeling in the glow of the great palace before her she wonders if it was built for the sole purpose of hiding, nestled as deep in the dense forest as it is.

It looks much bigger from down here than it had from the air, and far more ominous. She looks down and clutches at the ground beneath her, digging her fingers into the grass and dirt, feeling nothing except her heart pounding against her rib cage.

The sun is still setting behind her, casting an orange glow over the tallest of the palace's turrets, turning the bleached-white brick golden. She feels totally exposed in the great clearing before the palace this far from the trees, and it's this that encourages her legs to remember how to hold her up.

Damp grass sticks to her arms and the smell of wet foliage clings to her as she stumbles forwards towards the palace through the eerie silence. Nothing inside the walls before her can be scarier than the thought of what lies in the cooling forest around her.