All It Takes is a Little Pixie Dust

The First Five Minutes

A bitter chill sweeps through the pines and the brush; the moon struggling to illuminate through the clumped and quivering leaves, attempting to maintain the dimly lit path that guided the way of the panicked traveller.

As he hastily stumbles over brambles and navigates around trees, he calls out to someone. His voice breaking with worry occasionally, then settling back to its falsed anger.

"Alfred," it calls. "Alfred, this isn't funny. Just come out now," he peeks his head around forestry, hoping that - by some miracle - his friend would be there. He searched tirelessly, for what seemed to be hours, to find no real avail.

"A loved one?" The trees snicker in unison. "The forest has claimed him now" Their branches teeter and totter, becoming disoriented giggles. Their trunks begin to twist sourly in the wind, taunting the man below them. Beckoning for him to try again at finding what he has lost.

Our little traveller is aware, though. Aware that what has been so easily taken, shall not be so easily returned.

"Damn it! Alfred, I'm so sorry." His knees cave and he falls to the forest-floor. Through broken sobs he confesses, "This is all my fault."

The trees snicker, once again, as the lonely man bolts through the menagerie of trees and out of the woods. 

~~~