Lost and Famous #SummerAdventures2018

Safe and sound,...

I was lost in the middle of nowhere.

I turn around, clinging to that last bit of hope, and my necklace, that maybe maybe my friends are playing some not-funny joke on me?

But the closer I looked, the more I saw that they were not there. I couldn't even spot their footprints on the wet earth from the earlier rain, while I was pretty sure I left them there when I went to the waterfall, beside the reddish tree.

How fast could they have gathered their things and left? Where are they anyways?

My red backpack, ma favorite backpack, the one my father bought me the last birthday before they got seperated, was nowhere to be found. I had no lights, no phone, no compass, no idea where I was, or how I was going to find my way back, and the sun was already close to setting down.

The last thought made my hair rise up.

I looked around. Everything looks so scary without daylight. I hated hikings at night, and I hated jokes. It hadn't been my idea to go out at this hour, but was my friends', the ones who left me here. Are they going to come back?

― Hello? I called in the empty forest, while looking for any motion.  Anybody here? Rosalie? Teric? Shane? C'mon, it's not funny, guys...!The sun is almost down. We need to go back.

I couldn't keep my voice from shaking. When no sound was made, besides some birds with blue bellies clapping their wings, fear, with a seizing amount of pain started to settle in, and I sat down, rocking myself while hugging my knees as I focused on my uneven breathing.

Did my friends leave me too? Like my families? Why do people always leave? What's wrong with the Universe being so hard on humanity?

I never deserved any of this.

I inhaled the fresh rain air from my memories, forcing my eyelids closed before I started hyperventilating. I let them take somewhere else, and I almost fooled myself because when I opened them slowly, the smelling-fire mist previously hanging low was long gone.

I've always loved forests. It's a fact about me, famous sixteen-year-old Alyssa Fridays but I don't think anyone besides my last parents knew that.

But I've always loved forests.

That's why when my father offered me a sejour here with my friends, in our cabin, I couldn't resist finding myself in the middle of the forest's sooth voice or in the arms of the warm lake water..., or just sitting on a rock and letting the soft wind brush my raven hair.

I've always loved forests.

They've always help me to sort things through, or made me smile when I was having a bad day. Forests would associate deep meaning to the "It's a great day to be alive" sentence, the one I tried to convince myself of a lot the past few months, the one I heard my father mumble to himself everytime something doesn't go like he planned.

My father always thanked God for the opportunities he was given. I would sometimes find myself wondering how it would feel to have such a strong faith in God, how it would feel to believe that everything happens for a reason.

How great life would be with those kind of thoughts?

I take off some orange leaves fallen on my hair, and start smoothing them one by one, my green eyes hagard. Unlike my life, the forest had something special about it. It had steady rythm. Everything was inter-connected.  Everything was perfectly under control. There were no surprises while I was always in for some unpleasant surprise,  or twist.