When I open my eyes, I am sprawled out on the dusty ground of a huge forest. I slowly pull myself up and notice a lonely crow cawing in the wind. Don’t crows usually fly together? Why does this one seem to be peering at me suspiciously as if I know something I shouldn’t? Shaking off that thought, I get up and look around.
The oak trees hide everything from view so I hurriedly find a way out of the forest and into an opening. It took me a while to find a way out though, the confusing path and finding myself somehow not wearing shoes. Briars pick at my feet as I try to make sense of my dream? hallucination? What even is this that I’m in?
I hear more crows cawing and I look up at the sky. Hundreds of crows are swarming in a black mass. I find myself oddly calm, not terrified, as I should be.
A scream pierces through the caws. It’s a woman’s scream and she sounds truly terrified for her life. Some crows on the edge of the group have been fidgeting for sometime now. They finally break away and the scream reverberates towards me, even louder than the first. I break into a run, not caring about the pain the briars are giving my feet, only about the woman and her safety.
I find her in another clearing. She’s not moving and lying facedown. With an insane leap of adrenalin I push through a sea of crows and look at her. Her shocking blond hair is splayed out around her head and is splattered with blood. I kneel beside her and put my hand on her arm. I pull away quickly, for her arm is freezing cold and sticky with her blood. I can see a slight yellow aura radiating off her. I can tell what it is and I don’t know how. It’s her soul.
