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CHAPTER THREE: AWAKENING

CHAPTHER THREE: AWAKENING

jay was cold, she was standing on solid ground but couldn't see anything. She was surrounded by a dense fog cover that only allowed the edges of trees to be visible. Jay took a step forward and stumbled over something. She couldn't catch herself and she plummeted towards the ground. She landed in mud filled puddle. What she thought was solid ground was actually a boggy swamp. She closed her eyes and listened to the sounds around her. She could hear a frog close by, the creaks of branches, the hum of crickets. She stretched her sense out even further, she was hopping to find the edge of this forest, somewhere where she could hear human voices. There was a slightly bigger animal the snorted as it dug at the roots of a tree, birds, leaves, water but nothing that was any help to her. Jay wiped the mud from her face on her shirt. She realized with a jolt, she was still in her school uniform. Jay thought back, the fight, Katie, burning pain. There had been a stranger in her room, that was the last thing she could remember. Jay shivered, not from the cold, but from the realization that she must have been kidnapped. She never thought anything like this would happen to her, it was supposed to happen to girls with rich parents who could pay the ransom, not a good for nothing street kid like her.

She heard a laugh come from the fog, it was soft and non-threatening , but it didn't sound right, like the kind of laugh you heard in a movie when a villain was about to kill the hero. Jay searched the fog for the source of the laugh, but there was nothing.

“ hello?” jay called into the darkness. “ is anyone there? I just ... I’d like to go home now.” jay felt somehow miniscule, like the forest had grown in the last few seconds and now swallowed up the world around her.

“ Jayla” a voice breathed from the mist. Her eyes snapped open to find the source, there was nothing, but now she could see a little further than before, the trees closest to her stood out against the fog, surprising her how much they looked like people.

“welcome to my . . . world.” the voice whispered in her ear. The hairs on the back of her neck stood on end.

Jay bolted from her spot, she ran as fast as she could possible manage while tripping over roots and stumbling through the waist high swamp water. Branches and throned vines bite into her flesh, making deep groves in her skin that healed almost immediately. There was the sense that something was jumping through the trees over head, following her on each turn. Jay's heart broke out into a panicked sprint, thumping against her ribs.

Smoke swilled around her, it wasn't the fog, this smoke was black and even more dense. Jay was stopped in her tracks, she had run into the smoke, no a person. A tall man in in a black coat that made him seem like he was floating. He stood before her, his toes barley touching the root he stood on. He looked to have shaggy sandy blonde hair and a tattoo just above his eye, jay was to far away to make out what it was exactly, but it looked like some tribe symbol.

“ do you like it?” he gestured to the swamp around them, as he did the fog cleared like a great wind had blown through. “ i made it for you, you always played in the swamps when you were younger.” this was not a lie, she was always fascinated by swamps, but she never played in them.

“ what do you mean? I hate swamps.” she lied. The man bristled, jay could have sworn his skin iced over for a moment.

“ i understand, you don't remember.” his voice filled with sadness. “ i hope you will some day. I know you will. They promised me.” he was talking to himself.

“ i just want to go home, let me go home.”

“ it is not me who makes that decision, if it was you'd go home.” jay could tell from the way he said it that there was a double meaning to his words.