My Beautiful Mind

7.

A bird sings a sweet song in the branches high above my head as I sit with crossed legs on my favorite spot deep in the forest behind my house. I lazily rest my hands on my dark gray dress-covered thighs and simply revel in the idyllic tranquility around me. I have been coming to this small clearing everyday to escape from the much too invasive townspeople who have been stopping by the tiny log cabin uninvited. All because the death of my parents from the epidemic two years ago left me orphaned at the age of seventeen. I never thought it was a problem to continue to reside in our family home alone. Others thought otherwise, especially a certain insufferable son of the town's blacksmith.

I shudder at the vile thought of succumbing to Gabriel Haverford's insistent, unwanted advances and thus to the control the villagers try to impose on me. I suppose a young woman such as myself without a chaperone is not exactly proper. But if these two years have taught me anything besides incapacitating grief, it is how much my bones crave the sensation of having no one to answer to but myself, of running through the forest with bare feet and my unbound fiery red hair flowing down my back without the beast of constraining expectations stalking silently behind me, ready to devour me whole.

Everyone else be damned.

Sunlight streams through in between leaves and branches to hit the forest floor in ribbons of the richest gold. A dazed smile finds a way on my lips as I try to wrap my head around the fact that all of this is real. A mile down the path from my home, villagers remain trapped in their cramped living quarters teeming with garbage and dirty sewage. My mother and father considered all the cons of living in the town and chose well to raise me away from all of it. Now, my eyes stray from the rays of sunshine to rest on a cluster of wildflowers under an ancient oak tree. My fingers itch to turn the vibrant blooms into a crown or necklace of some sort, but I refrain from doing so. It most certainly is not my place to take from and destroy the wildlife, especially since I am not a rightful member of the community.

"I am but a friendly visitor," I quietly say to wild blueberry bush to my right as if it can understand me. It sways back and forth at my words as if acknowledging my good intentions. I am not really sure how long I sit on the tree stump daydreaming about smashing a frying pan into Gabriel's pinched, smug face when I see movement behind a group of shrubs on the edge of the clearing. I furrow my eyebrows in confusion and hesitantly rise from my seat to take a closer look. Judging from the size and shape of the shadow, the mysterious entity appears human-like, but I do not want to blindly assume and I exercise caution.

"Hello?" I call out softly, in the hopes I will not scare whatever it is away. "You need not be afraid to come out. Fear not, I am completely harmless." The blur behind the shrubs laughs and steps out from the hiding place to reveal a young woman my age with white blonde hair and slate gray eyes. She moves her barefooted feet–dirty at the soles much like my own shoeless ones–and approaches me with a knowing, faint smile on her lips. She comes to a stop within an arm's reach, her light blue skirts swaying just above ankles. "Emy, we have been waiting for you," she says, continuing to give me a warm look as if she has known me for years.

I cannot help but blink in surprise. "How do you know my name?" I blurt out, asking the first question that comes to mind. The silver haired maiden gestures to the forest around us, "They have been whispering about you." She signals me to follow her even deeper into the trees, "Come, we have a lot to discuss, Emy of the Wild." She begins to walk back towards where she came from. I stare at her retreating back dumbfounded for a second. A part of me is unsure of blindly following her into a forest I am not all that familiar about, but an instinct tells me she is someone I have been waiting for my entire life. I hurry to catch up before she disappears into the thick brush. "Wait," I panted, "what is your name?" She halts to let me join her side. "Elly," she replies in her calm, soothing voice before we go through the trees together.