At first nature had been welcoming. The open grassy plains, the blossom covered hills, the dew tipped grasses; all had conspired to instill in me a sense of otherness, of freedom.
"This is not a city life of human confines," I had thought as myrtle eyes surveyed the lighter green of nature.
Indeed, how could one feel imprisoned when so far away from looming walls of ancient brick and rules more archaic than the stones that cobbled the streets? Life away from the city was free. Open. The explosion of colour that the natural world provided had been such a contrast to the greys of my masonry-filled town that I could only barely restrain my excitement when leather sole first met vibrant plain.
And it was with a similar sense of wonderment that I had first approached the forest. So many trees and so much greenery--seemingly untouched by human hands. It begged to be explored and I had blithely assented; the trees seemed only too happy to direct me onwards.
Gracious hosts indeed.
However, as the days had worn on, the trees and their knitted branches had begun to choke my sense of liberation as much as the bastille that was my home town. What little food I had packed was already dwindling and the life of an idle city girl had not schooled me in the methods of hunting. Indeed each plotted, each advancing, each labored footfall had slowly chipped away at my resolve that now, now I was free.
Then the rain had started.
Oh, to others it may have been a refreshing pitter of raindrops, but, to me, in that moment it was an abrupt deluge into the clear skies of my mind. The sudden chill that it brought had halted my movement, bringing me an understanding of sorts. As my cloak hugged closer to my body, the encroaching droplets impinged upon me the realisation that despite my swift departure, I had not, in fact, managed to outrun my problems.
The falling water had become another layer of bars sealing me into the past: transient bars, perhaps, but through weary eyes the rain seemed all the more damning for it. The rain would leave. It would be forgotten, replaced by the warming sol, and discarded from thought. For a day, or a week, or a month... but then it would would return just as abruptly to remind me of troubles past, stirring memories that I had deemed better left untouched.
Damn it so! I was not in the mood for an epiphany, not when so far from home, from friends and from shelter. These sorts of stark realisations were best revealed huddle under comfortable delusions in warm beds, not in weathered forests shrouded in precipitation. My footsteps needed to be measured with a serene sense of unquestionable purpose; doubt was a weakness, a flaw, a sin and one in which I did not wish to bemire myself. Stopping now would be tantamount to giving up, to acknowledging defeat but I possessed a raw form of stubbornness; the sort that only a youth of fifteen years can possess. So, forced out from between blue-tinted lips were well reasoned words, if not wholly insincere ones:
"I am sure there will be some place to stay up ahead." A slight pause in voice, though not in movement, before:
"It's cold and I shall become ill if I stop," to punctuate the sentence and give credence to words devoid of true affirmation, I nodded.
The reverberating of thunder pulled me from my thoughts and, after raising my head, I realised that thick trees had given way to shrubbery and hill. Yet my first feeling was not one of relief at having escaped the forest nor fear at the sound of rolling thunder; it was mere confusion.
"Why is that man laying in the rain?"