#1 Forest Flowers

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A/N: This is a one chapter Adventure piece for the Forest contest March 2019!
Love,
EraWildon

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Word count: 1940

Zemira walked down the path like it was her first time, and it was as the hollow trees shimmered in the sunlight with the sun beam dancing with the shadows. She always lived through the tradition of visiting her family home, always asking her brother to take pictures for her but all it would do was urge her to visit herself.

She took a bus ride to a small site of land opposing the starting point of a magnificent canopy of trees. The Teak and Acacia trees laid an entrance mixed with green leaves - blackened to just fallen, white and yellow flowers splattering the pebble filled area. All of the photos of the forest had painted vivid imagery in the back of Zemira's mind but this year the woods were half as alive to her, more dead and quiet than they ever were without her family.

She entered the canopy to find poetic heaven. A split of the shrubs and trees were ahead of her, which led to two mud roads that looked untouched.

One path was lined with Teak trees, their leaves in layers, the lower levels muddy and blackened to the fresh and supple green leaves floating with  fluidity and grace. The other path was lined with Acacia trees filling the mud road with their white and yellow flowers, huddled together like lost lovers.

It reminded her of Frost's 'The road not taken' that her parents loved to read out. They always took their van out to the cottage and hence she never remembered the path and route. The traveler's choice following him till his destiny and changing his entire life.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both

She picked one Acacia flower and one Teak leaf, debating which path she should take looking as far as she could. Zemira does not get lost.

She gave up in five minutes and sat on the ground between the partition.

She looked at her phone and rejoiced at the news that there was no signal to call her brother for the route and she was too lazy to go back out and find one. She decided to contemplate the path to a fuzzy memory of a quiet yet lively cottage.

And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.

Zemira just really liked the flowers. She got up, dusted herself off and she strutted like no one's watching to the flowered road after an intense running around.

Before her decision, she would tiptoe to one end of the undergrowth and run back like a schoolgirl running away from a crush, wearing an attempt of a flower crown that fell apart with a jump. She kept the thought of venturing out into the leafy path for another time but she didn't know whether she would and decided to 'leaf' it alone.

She laughed and heaved at her own joke. It ain't pretty.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

She picked one Acacia flower off of a branch and another and another till her palms were covered by petals. She got deeper into the knitted woody trees, the cooing of tiny birds nestled in the tree trunks grazing her ears.

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