The Turning Tree

Ch 2. That's Odd

CLANK! CHINK CHINK CHINK CLANK. CLICK. A whirring, clanking sound, like an old elevator that hadn't moved in years, rattled the forest floor. Sophia felt the vibrations in her feet... and with a jarring clank-boom, it came to a stop.

It was loud. Sophia expected the tree to open and to see a deep stairwell into a secret lab...but nothing happened. She saw nothing. She heard nothing.

Only distant chirps and squacks of disrupted birds.  

Like jumping on a dusty couch cushion, she noticed a fine  purple dust floating around her. It floated in the air waiting for a breeze to take it away. The forest was still. Sophia felt very tired and decided to sit down for a few minutes to see if anything else was going to happen. Slowly, as she relaxed--- her eyelids began to get heavy. 

Sophia awoke with a jump. She  was startled by a loud noise. She became uneasy and started to think she should probably head back home. Just in case something terrible was going to happen, she felt like she needed to tell her parents about the tree, the roughly carved hand, a noise after she placed her hand. She didn't know how long she was asleep, but she had to get home.

On her way back to the path, temporarily felt lost. She began walking the wrong way on the path to head home. She had never gone this far and was startled by the tree... It was starting to get dark in the woods and she felt she had been gone from home way too long. She was starting to panic. 

She realized she was on the wrong path and went back to the bridge. Irridescent fish played in the water. 'How odd' She thought. She had never seen irridescent fish quite like this in anything she had ever read before. 

As she hiked back, she heard a noise which caused her to look up. There was a turtle in a branch right above her head. 'How Odd!' She thought. 'How did he get up there?' She took down the turtle and kept going on her path home. Things were getting weird.

The woods and path were looking familiar. She could tell she was getting closer to her home. As she came closer to the entrance of the woods, she heard a bell in the bushes. 'How odd!' She carefully approached the noise and noticed a sheep in the bushes. She didn't own any sheep! How did a sheep get here? This was beyond strange. She released him and he 'baa'd' in thanks and scurried down the path into the woods. 

She thought: the tree noise, the fish, the turtle, and now the sheep. What is happening? This is so odd.

She was glad to finally get home. 

As she came in she overheard her mom talking strongly to her dad in the other room. 

'It's time to let Sophia know, Moe. She is old enough. You were her age when you learned and now she is ready. The cycle started and I'm sure she saw odd things or will soon. She has to know. We have to explain it to her so it all turns out safely.'

'Egram, I'm not sure it's time yet. I don't known if she can handle everything well and once she knows her reality is going to change. The world is a shocking place and I want her to..."

Sophia was leaning so much into the door that it creaked. Moe, her dad, said 'Sophia?'

She knew she couldn't ignore it. 

'I'm glad you're here,' he said 'that tree you touched... it does something you should know about.'