Chapter Text
Trees…
It’s always the same trees.
The same rocks.
The same plants.
The same sounds.
If it isn’t nothing until sunrise it’s this damned forest night after night. A forest she knows well. The one back in Faraway just past the park by the old hangout spot. Not a place she’d ever allow herself to forget willingly or not. If she’s lucky she will be stuck in place in this accursed forest left to listen to the sounds of life mixed with calls of her name. She’s at this point lost count of how many times she’s had this dream, at this point she knows the script better than her own face. She just has to do something she’s gotten very good at.
Waiting for something to happen.
…
…
…
It’s been some time, and she’s beginning to believe this to be one of the luckier nights, the kind where nothing happens but a tug at the sleeve dashes that hope. She knows how this goes but she looks anyway.
A young boy with dark hair and stoic demeanor has appeared next to her and is pointing deeper towards the forest and, like every other time this has happened, she takes the boy’s hand and leads him in the direction he pointed. The boy’s age never stays the same in these dreams but this time the boy seems to be in the eight to twelve range. Despite the boy’s unchanging and stoic face she can read it quite well, there’s a slight sparkle in his eyes and the corners of his mouth are ever so slightly upturned, the boy is clearly happy to be with her.
A tug at her arm.
Looking back to the boy he has stopped and is pointing in a new direction. She knows well enough where this is going but complies and leads the way in the new direction but the boy isn’t holding her hand, in fact he isn’t there at all. Turning around she retraces her steps for definitely longer than they had walked and finds the boy, like every other time, huddled at the roots of a tree letting out small sobbing sounds. His brows furrowed, eyes downward, shoulders hunched. Scared. Sad. Lonely. Emotions she has never liked seeing on this boy.
Approaching the boy she crouches down to get closer to his eye level. The boy looks toward her and stifles a small sob. Before taking hold of her hand once more, the boy hands something to her, a drawing of the two of them. One that is certainly childish and rough around the edges but imaginative and rather good considering age range. Pocketing the drawing carefully she takes the lead once more and walks to where the boy wanted to go.
Some time of walking later the forest has started to darken and the boy has started to keep closer to her. A small voice behind her marks the first words the boy has spoken this go around.
“I’m scared.”
Small and fleeting, but present would best describe the voice, she can’t manage a response.
“It hurts.”
The boy speaks once more, voice again small. Monotone, but a slight warble makes emotion known. Again she has no response. The first time this had happened she did want to respond, to tell him everything is okay, that she is there for him but couldn’t, something she has since resigned herself to simply accepting.
More time passes and they had reached a small clearing where the boy has stopped and tugged at her hand before letting go. Turning back to face to boy she can see he has something and is holding a closed hand to her clearly wanting to give her something. This gets her attention. This is new. She stretches out her hands to the boy and feels something being placed in her hands and she looks down to see what it is.
Fingers. Small mangled fingers covered in cuts and blisters had been placed on her now blood soaked hands.
Her ears start ringing and she can feel her heartbeat in her head. Looking up the boy is no longer there, in his place is a small mass of a tar black color, vaguely shaped like a hunched over child with crooked limbs possessing a face with one piercing white eye and streaks of red reaching the ground to small pools.
The forest begins to fade away as the ringing in her ears is replaced with the continued echoing “You did this.” ever increasing in volume as she is surrounded by growing darkness creeping ever closer. A siren soon joins the echoing chant and. And-
She shoots up in her bed covered in sweat, shrill beeping and her heavy breathing are the only sounds to occupy the room. Looking to her nightstand she sees that her alarm clock is going off. Giving herself a moment to steady her breathing before silencing the offending device and getting out of bed to begin the motions of her morning routine in mechanical fashion, First fixing her bed sheets before looking over to the other end of the room. On the other side of the room sits another bed, pristine and untouched, strewn with plush toys and pillows very much unlike the spartan accommodations she allows herself. She takes a bit of time making sure everything on that side of the room is neat and tidy before stepping out of the bedroom and across her condominium and to her bathroom to freshen up.
Stopping at the sink the woman, Mari, takes some time to examine herself and quite frankly she looks awful. Hair a mess, clothes drenched in sweat, hollow eyes, a slight pallor. If not for the slight puffiness currently in her eyes she’d say she’d make a good stand in for that girl from The Ring. Fitting she supposed because as far as she is concerned Mari, or at least the real Mari, has been dead for some time now. But for as much as she would like to wallow in her own melodrama she had a schedule she had to be on. Shower, hair, breakfast, makeup, car. All done in the mechanical motions of someone acting out of obligation at least today she can look forward to not sitting in a recording booth this time.
The drive isn’t long, Nearby Convention Hall is, fittingly, nearby and she left rather early meaning traffic was light. Concert, meet and greet, leave, that’s the plan for today meaning she can look forward to turning her brain off for a good while and with the volume of attendees, even if unlikely, she does hope that even if she doesn’t find what, or more accurately who, she’s been looking for, at this point she’ll happily take even the smallest lead. After all, blind hope in spite of reason is the only thing that’s kept her going. After gathering her resolve, she gets out of her car already ready for these obligations to be over with.