Mending Broken Wings Flash Fiction Contest: From Darkness (BEING EDITED)

Chapter 3: Memories

"Where are we going?" Asked Elodie. She and Jacob had spent the last twenty minutes walking on rough terrain and the bottoms of her feet were starting to hurt.

"We are going to my village, Hallen." Jacob said, "It's not too much farther away."

Elodie sighed with relief, she couldn't bear to walk much longer. "Do you have any family?" She asked.

"I have an older and a younger brother, an older sister, a mom, and a dad." Jacob stated. At least those were the people that he lived with, there was a lot more people in his outer family.

"Big family." Elodie said.

"Yeah, it gets annoying at times." He laughed, thinking of times with his siblings. "What about you?"

"I don't remember." She was tired of not being able to remember anything even after racking her brain for the longest time.

"Oh right..." He trailed off. "How about we try this." He stopped, causing Elodie to wonder if he was going to say anything else.

"Okay? What?" She lead on.

Jacob was in thought for a few seconds, and then said, "How about you tell me everything you can remember starting from the very beginning."

Elodie thought back to when she woke up in the church, there was a huge cloud in the back of her mind with... something... she couldn't make out. "I don't know, I did a lot of stuff since I woke up." She said jokingly and Jacob laughed.

"I bet you did, being your pretty self and all."

Elodie blushed, still not used to his random compliments on her beauty. "So, I woke up in this church and I of course have no idea where I am. I found this light coming through a window so naturally I went over to it." Jacob shook his head, signaling for her to go on. "I noticed this key hanging around my neck." She held it up for him to see. "Five notches carved on it. I don't know what it means."

Jacob took the key in his hands and held it up in front of his face. "You mean four?" He turned the key around.

"What?" She took it back and looked it over.

"Four notches. There are four." He said.

He was right, there weren't five anymore. "There were five yesterday, I swear."

"Maybe it's counting down to something..." It sounded kind of stupid, but Elodie considered it.

"To what?" She asked. They could now see smoke rising in the distance and tops of buildings peaking out of the trees.

Jacob shrugged. "I don't know, maybe we'll have to find out. What else do you remember?"

Elodie thought for a moment as she listened to rocks being crushed beneath her feet. The ground was getting a bit softer with wet dirt, giving the bottoms of her feet a break. She came out of the church, went into the trees, and then...

"There was a shadow of some sorts." All she could see in her vision were the glowing red eyes. The eyes that seemed like they were staring into her soul, seeing all of who she was.

"A shadow?" Jacob's face went blank of all expression, almost like he knew what she was talking about.

"Yeah, when I was walking in the woods, I thought I heard something and turned around. It was standing a couple feet in front of me... It was all black... and I almost couldn't see it, but I knew it was there because of the eyes."

"The eyes?" Jacob pictured it in his mind. Something so dark standing right in front of you but you still can't see it. It was the Dark Forest, it was given it's name because it's dark no matter what. During the day it's more of a light dark and you can see everything around you, but at night is where you can't see your own hand even if you stuck it up right in front of your face.

"Glowing red eyes. It was staring at me, watching me." Elodie could still feel the insidious burning that grew in the pit of her gut the night before. She knows the shadow is still out here, she can feel it. The dark aura is still surrounding her.

Then she mumbled, remembering another important detail, "Five fingers."

Jacob put a puzzled look on his face, "What?"

"Five fingers," She said louder. "I think I get it now! You were right, he is counting down."

"What did he do with his fingers, though?" Jacob asked. Elodie was now way ahead of him in the thought process.

"He just held them up. His whole hand, or... whatever it was." Her body got thrown back, but it wasn't because he raised his hand. He was showing her... or possibly warning? "The key, the shadow, they are correlated."

"Hmm." Jacob thought a minute about Elodie's epiphany. "Five days." He then said slowly. "I think he was telling you you have five days."

"Until what?" She was starting to panic a little.

"I don't know, but you have a key that had five notches on it, but now four. And the shadow person. It must mean something."

"I wish I could figure it out." They were now nearing the entrance to Hallen, and there was a break in the trees. Workers and miners were now walking by and exchanging their hello's and good morning's with Jacob and sending nods towards Elodie.

"Maybe my father would know. We should ask him." He whispered to her, careful not to draw someone else's attention to the problem.

They walked through the gateway and were met with much commotion. "Okay." Elodie sighed, almost opting to not know what any of it meant.