The Forest.

0.4 The Way

His steps were cautious and he stopped every few seconds to look around him - his mother had left him precise instructions on how to get out of the forest safe and unharmed. Quoted by the ever worrying mother hen herself.

Her instructions were to follow the map she had drawn out with her own two hands. It seemed weird almost how the forest didn't seem to have any effect on his mother. Neither did the alluding darkness. It was something he dwelled upon many nights when his mother would talk about finding a certain fruit. He passed it off as his mother being more assertive and aware of all things around her. Yeah, that's it. Self-awareness. Knowing what can happen. And would do anything to protect her loved one...

A sudden gust of wind attempted to tease the map, clutched in his fingers, away from him. Over the tall trees and into the distance that one is not able to see much of. This action of nature did seem to get the boy out of his blanket of thoughts. He focused once again on the now creased map folded in his hands. Unfolding the map carefully he realised that even to his inexperienced self it wasn't such a complicated route, and he was sure that he could get through the forestry without any harm if he paid attention to where he was going, of course.

Being truthful to himself, he agreed that the bare beauty of the un-ventured forest hypnotised him, his mother never mentioned how beautiful this scenery would be. And how much the bright green would allure him to just reach out and take it all in his hands. She never mentioned how hard it would be to take each step whilst his eyes were focused on his picturesque surroundings.

She never said how easy it would be to lose yourself in all the beautiful things and forget all the small dangers that could anyhow become a harmful issue. So as his feet suddenly slid from underneath him, he stumbled into the undergrowth the vines twisting around his ankles, still unaware of anything. Tugging and scratching the young boy's skin, his smart pants tore and a long straight slit of blood appeared on the side of his leg.

That was when he became aware of where he was and what he was doing. As the small droplets of blood stained the grass underneath him, he dug around through the supplies his mother had given him. He found a piece of cloth to wrap around his leg as he has been taught to do. It didn't help much with the shooting pain he felt but it seemed to stop the bleeding. He stood and shook off the trance he had been in and keeping his eyes on the barely there trail he didn't let any of the views distract him. Every minute seemed like an hour to him as he dragged his feet along. He didn't want to leave the place. It reminded him of his father. When he was still the person the youth knew to be his father all those years ago. The boy felt a close connection with the place. Almost like he belonged there...

Shaking his head he tried to get rid of the delusional thoughts in his head. A dark haze appeared in front of his eyes. Gone again. He didn't think much of it, walking a few more steps. His head twisted towards where he heard a twig snap...it was just underneath his feet, he had made the noise himself stepping on a stray twig. He started listening to every little noise he heard around him.

Wild animal? No. Just the wind making a weird howling noise. A person following him? No. Just a squirrel.

He saw the end of this torturous trip just a few steps away. A few more steps. He would have made it. Safe and sound. See nothing to worry about. Getting all worked up for nothing. He chided his mother mentally, thinking she was being far too overprotective, there surely couldn't be anything highly dangerous of difficult to pass through on just a few minutes walk .. Minutes? Minutes away from the cottage. Nope, it couldn't just be a few minutes. Could it?

He hadn't moved any closer to the opening at the end of the forest tunnel and when he looked down, a cold shot of pain ran through his bandaged leg. He never noticed the pain. Too deep in his own thoughts for it to make a difference, but as soon as he saw the swollen mess it had made he wondered if it really was a good idea to have carried on walking.

The pain was pulsating and it was becoming more and more unbearable. He thought that the cloth was making his leg worse, not better. So slowly he unwrapped the sore leg, flinching as his hand brushed against it. Once the cloth was off he could see there was no blood rather it was just spewing, in a gruesome manner, an unexplainable goo. It was weird and in a moment of insanity, he put a finger to the opening of his cut. His leg somehow became to spasm, yet he felt nothing. Not an ounce of pain anymore. It was like it was never there, the leg... Not the cut. But the leg. He had lost all feeling of his left leg and the snaking feeling circled further and further up. It engulfed his entire left side of his body in a matter of seconds... Soon his frantic shouts for help turned to whimpers as he realised that his time has come. His younger body seems to have witnessed the same fate as his father's just in a matter of moments.

Then he remembered the last thoughts of his. A beautiful flower he had seen his father clasp when he came back to the cottage, was a deep blood red. And here he had seen a similar crimson garnia between the vines he had stumbled upon. Fate repeats itself, in a cruel fashion, what will she go through when she realises that even her beloved son had succumbed to the Forest. However much she fretted. It all ended the same way. The way she feared the most.

A small smile appeared at the remembrance of his mother's fretting self. Then the first glimpse of pain in what felt like days. Then the numbness of his lower right side. Drowning.