Perception

LXXXVII

Eli had started pulling tent pegs out of the ground and putting them in their little bag, just as there was a shimmer of feathers in the air and a shiver down her spine.
'Come to the forest.'
She looked up in slight consternation. The voice? But... it was so real, so close, even more real than it had been before. How...
'Come to the forest, Anna.'
She looked at Eli. Jeez, could she even do that to him? He was clearly rattled, wasn't that forest the last place he'd want to be? Yet... how could she not go when called like this?
"Er, Eli?"
Something in her voice made him look up straight away and step closer to her.
"What's up?"
"It's.... It's the voice. It's telling me to come to the forest. I completely understand if you don't want to come, but... I have to go."
He blinked once before squaring his jaw. His eyes went past her to the gate at the edge of the forest. Then he nodded slowly.
"Okay then."
She was already on her feet, the tingling starting now, telling her where to go.
"You sure?"
He nodded again, with that quiet temerity she was beginning to recognise, and she knew there was no way he would be letting her go anywhere alone.

The waggy dog from a few places over pushed its wet nose against her hand as she walked past it and she stroked the silky head once, almost automatically.
"See you in a bit, dog." she whispered as she moved back onto the path.
She took Eli's hand and took quick strides towards the gate. She was feeling so protective of him, suddenly, the images of a cellar and Eli, bound and drugged, still so fresh in her mind, but at the same time she could feel that focus coming over her again. Without fear, though, this time. Maybe she was getting used to this?
The gate creaked open easily under her hand and she instantly walked off the path, treading between the trees with sure paces. She didn't have to look down, her feet found the still-moist moss to step on without any help from her brain. She held Eli's hand tight again, but this time it was light, so he could see where he was going, too.
She walked quicker and quicker, the Bernard sense driving her forward in waves until she was almost jogging, because she had to get there, because suddenly there was a longing in her so deep, deeper than she'd ever felt before. They found themselves on a path again now, a really narrow one with branches closing in on all sides. Still she held his hand and hurried forward, leaving the path once more and running through the trees, until suddenly she broke into a little clearing, surrounded on all sides by dense foliage, the first leaves starting to colour in the September air. There she stopped, and on a whim she sat down on the soft moss that covered the ground of the clearing.

There was that shimmer again, and she could feel the feathers now, so real she could almost touch them. Eli shivered slightly beside her.
"You okay?" she asked him softly.
He simply nodded. "Fine. It's just all sorts of weird, here."
The shimmer became stronger now, and then Eli gasped, because it was turning into a gale of light, of feathers, and suddenly, just like that, the brightest of lights exploded into the centre of the clearing, bouncing off the trees more fiercely than the sun ever could, and out of the shimmering glow the shape of a woman appeared in front of Anna's incredulous eyes.
"Hi, my sweet baby girl."