The tower

Opening

Alexa's daily routine was dull and unlively. She goes to college and comes back, does her homework eats dinner with her father - and repeats.  Dinner was ussually take out, her father doesn't know how to cook, and she's overloaded with school work. Her late Mom used to cook all their meals. Dinner was horrible.  She dreaded the thirty minutes of silence that she was obliagted to go through every evening. 

One night Alexa was woken up by a little girl in a creme coloured dress, pulling at her. Sleepy and confused Alexa asked her what she wanted. The girl replied by pulling at Alexa and then looking at the door. Unattentively Alexa oblidged to the girl let the her lead her. The girl lead Alexa by the corner of her night gown to their cellar. Fully awoken, Alexa asked the girl who she was, but she had no answer in return. The girl was pointing at a box with a desperate look upon her face. 

Alexa woke up a second time, and figured that it was just a dream. It was morning by now and she wondered what the dream meant. Curiously she headed toward the cellar. It's been some time since anyone went there. The door was difficult to open, as if it did not want her to go in. Soon enough, she opened the door. She sneezed as a whiff of dust burst from the room. She looked around, it was dark, but the hallway light illuminated just enough for her to spot the same exact box she recalled from her dream. She had never seen the box before in real life. It was an old hat box, circular, blue and pink outlining it's exterior. "It must belonged to Mom" She contemplated. 

When she opened the box, she found multiple objects. On the top was a golden key woven through a necklace. Next to it were reading glasses and a photo of her mother in black and white, sitting on a chair, wearing a pearl necklace. She had a stern look on her face. The photo was captioned with elegant handwriting: "Maria - 19 years old" That's strange, she was my exact age in this photo - Alexa thought. The pearl necklace she was wearing was in the box two, the beads were relativley large and were a pale pink colour. The last thing she found in the box was a postcard that had a sepia toned image of an enchanting tower. The tower had a single window on top, the window sill was decorated with potted flowers. On the back of the post card was a memo, it read: "From the deep seas of ravenswood, thy flowers bloom and die, their corpses always ly, in the highest grounds of ravenswood.  - Maria" She recognised that name, Ravenswood was the name of the town her mother grew up in. 

That night at dinner, the silence seemed louder than ever. More excruiciating than ever. Alexa wanted to mention her findings, but she knew her father does not like to hear a mention of her mother. After dinner she got the box out again (that she hid under her bed) and contemplated the idea of visiting ravenwood, she doesn't know why exactly, but she feels a massive will to do so. Maybe to uncover her mothers death, or to have some clousure...

She twisted and turned in her queen sized bed. She kept think if she should go or not. What would be the consequences? Reprecussions? Would she really gain anything from her journey? The questions kept flooding her head, one after the other. Until her fatigue took over and she was swept into a deep sumber.

She made up her mind in the morning and decided to go. She packed a duffel bag and wrote a letter to her Dad saying that she was at Ravenswood by the time he came back from work and read this. It was much easier to confront him in this manner, when she was long gone. This way he won't have a chance to object. She climbed into her chevrolet and set the GPS to her destination and off she went...