Birth Marks

Heather, a later teen, lies awake; staring off into the ceiling late at night, contemplating what she saw was a dream or not. Her eyes eroding with fatigue while she continuously stared at the ceiling. Her hands rested gently on her midi nightdress with a fold, feeling the rough fabric of thick sheer underneath them. Heather's eyebrows gently squeezed together as she tried to make sense of it all. Did she eat a poisonous plant by accident when she was having one of her adventures through the woods? Maybe it was her imagination going too far, or maybe she brushed up against something that causes hallucinations. That must be it, right? - there was no possible way that could've been real.

Her mind ached and swelled as the night boils around her on a summer night, hearing the chirps of crickets constructing an orchestra outside her palladian-style balcony. She could feel the moon's breath underneath her thick sheer nightdress as a cool breeze fills the air around her by the moon's blessing after the sun's prayer. Its quality was a still warm with a speck of lingering moisture from the rainfall before.

Heather tosses and turns, feeling the coolness as she brings herself over, maintaining an appeal of a wrinkled nose and puckered lips gently complementing her squeezed eyebrows the more her mind refused to let the occurrence go. It was a perpetual scene in her head, worsening the ache that resides within.

Heather gently lifted herself up, punching her pillow with a solid thud before flumping her head onto its velvety comportment. A burst of cold air split from both sides, fluttering Heather's hair in a mini paroxysm.

"What was it!" Heather whispers gently, sounding like a muggy crystal, throwing her arms out in aggravation. What she saw wasn't normal. It was like a scene in a fantasy movie, some magical abracadabra content. Where even wishing for it, couldn't make it real. Yet, her mind had solidified with the idea that it was. She felt the sensation, she saw her arm illuminated in the origins of her birthmark, and she heard what sounded like a rustle of wind, just like how magic would have worked.

Heather was stumped, not knowing what was real or her imagination. Was it all just in her head when the sun was high? There has to be a way to know for sure, maybe she can recreate the steps, recreate the scene.

Her pointer figure flies upward and then down onto her right eyebrow, maybe that's it - she just has to reanimate what she did this afternoon. Heather would need to slip out when the time was right. Her butler and the guards were already watching over her were already like a hawk in the skies. Permanently observing at any given moment. Heather had been lucky this morning and the past few days of getting away, but will she be tomorrow?

"That's it!" Her whisper nearly fainted into a causal inflexion as she flung herself up from her bed, looking off into the direction of her balcony. She would need to go tonight, when the moon is high and the stars are bright. Maybe the sound of the choiring crickets can escape her melody.

The silky curtains sway from a breezy disturbance, creating a whooshing disobedience as the fabric wave glistened from the moonlight.

Heather's feet ruffles, feeling a gentle roughness as they slide off the cotton sheets, softly placing them upon the marbled floor, it's complexion a numbing cold. The air wraps around her with a delicate chill, soothing her hair with a quiet push, slightly making her skin prick as she coasts herself out and into the opening. The crickets choir dialing louder than a calming talks-men. Hearing a faint bass of frogs joining the orchestra off in the distance.

As she stands on her balcony, a breeze greets her with the moon's smile, the orchestra below her, a tranquil blessing from mother nature.

"Only for a moment." She says closed eyes, letting herself go as she felt the peace revolving around her. Heather takes a deep breath in, smiling the residue of after-rain, it was like a sweet smelling perfume to her. Maybe if mother nature were a person, her cologne would be this. The air captivated a refreshment for heather, releasing the grasp of fatigue away from her eyes.

She enjoyed the tranquility of the moment, accepting it as a gift the night was presenting. She knew what she needed to do, and the best time to do it was surely now.

Heather placed both hands on the rough, white stone railing of her balcony, feeling the burn as she lifted herself up and then over, fluttering her nightdress with a forceful breeze as her feet placed perfectly in-between the pillars.

Her left foot slowly drifted downwards, guiding herself down onto a hollow piece within the building - a little ledge to place her feet on. The ledge was worn over the many years her and other's alike had sneaked her way out. The ledge nipped with a cold bite with a little puddle greeting her feet. However she didn't mind, it was something molecular opposed to the desire to know. She followed the path, stepping down onto the wet grass down below.

Heather can see it now, her butler standing over her with a motherly expression saying "You'll get sick if you stay out in the cold for too long"

Even if her butler was right, she didn't care. She needed to know, she needed to recreate the steps to see if it was just all fantasy and imagination.

With the desire akin to a burning flame, her feet scampered across the field, thumping on the cold, wet grass. Squishing and padding as she feels the humid air brush up against her like a wild current. Heather's nightdress fluttering like a bird, free from its cage while she sprints to the forest's edge.

The Forest awaited her, ominous in its presence. Fog willowed up towards the edge, waving a gentle hello with its cloudy tendrils. Heather stood a few feet away, her heart palpitating. feeling a cold rush at her upper chest. Like her veins had grown cold within the area.

She never explored the forest at night, surely had a different tone than it's morning counterpart. With the uneasy swirling within her, the songs of wildlife courses through her ears, hearing rumbling of leaves and breaking of sticks off in the forest. Delicately adding a sense of fear, yet the singing of frogs and crickets deterred her from retreating. It was like a song reminding her to stay present within the moment.

Heather takes a deep breath, inching closer to the edge of the forest, erasing her imagination revolving monsters and wolves waiting for her.

This is just one of many steps she'll have to face in order to satisfy her growing suspicions.

With a reintroducing current of air fluttering her nightdress and hair, she strides into the forest, the branches underneath her feet were a rough jab, but she followed through. Every step she took, she was stepping where she had during morning light.

As the snaring of breaking branches and leaves followed her stride through the forest, another snap of a twig reverberates from the distances. Heather doing her best not to let her imagination tell her that someone was following. No one was awake during these hours, but that snapping sound, resembled that of someone's feet breaking tension.

She takes a huff of breath, releasing the thought. Trying to place herself back within the choir of frogs and crickets.

"Remember, it's all in my imagination." She says softly to herself, patrolling the area where she ate the leaf which she was one-hundred percent sure was edible. However, she takes herself to low-end, placing her nightdress ends onto her lap. Examining the leaf with as much detail as she can from the moonlight beaming through the trees.

"Yup..." She pushes the leaf into the seeable moonlight, seeing the right markings to differentiate between edible and non.

Heather gets up with a sigh after a moment of double checking. "Wasn't that." She looks down the trail, her old foot-prints barely visible within the after-time of rain.

Just as she takes a step forward, another cracking sound of a branch renders from behind. Her mind rushes to the familiar scene within her head.

"Imagination...Imagination." She repeats to herself as she continues to walk down the path, the wet ground acting like a catalyst to her disgust and fear. Maybe she should have taken feet-wear, no. It's too late to regret that, she needs to keep going. Finding out the truth is the most important part on this moonlit journey she set course in.

The shrubby around her acted like a wall between her and the continuous crunching of broken leaves and sticks following close behind her, she's frightened, but as the sting branches through her chest. She dwindles it down with the flame of desired truth.

After a few moments of following her past self, the crackling behind her stops, letting a huff of ease flow out of her as she proceeds.

While on the path, she comes across something that sparks a flair within her mind; the other portion to her question. Was it something she brushed up against through the forest and caused the illusion?

She leans on the tree with her right hand while making a comfortable space between her and the mushroom next to the tree. The bark of the tree was rugged with its wet and scratchy complexion. Heather wants to lean down and touch the mushroom to escape the feeling of the tree, but a voice within her tell her to stay away. Listening the voice, she backs up.

Heather looks around herself to make sure her past self didn't stumble this way, but as to her eyes. She couldn't see a single foot-print, detail, or sign that allures her that she did.

"We can scratch that off..." Heather backs up and onto the trail once more and continues.

Her mind making what she saw form into stone as reality. The only thing that's left was her imagination, and the only way to dispel that...Would to have another pair of eyes or to not happen at all.

She rushes through the path, remembering the moment where she had a flare of joy to jog through the forest. Yet in this sense, she's jogging for another emotion, inquirement. Maybe she needs to feel joy in order to activate it?

As she thought it, she tried to switch her emotion to feeling a false joy, trying to make it real as it could possibly can in order to trigger the exact moment. She was coming up on the spot, and quick. If it happens, it needs to happen soon.

Her heart thumped, and the moisture within the air was clinging onto her like a slime. Heather's breath was getting out of shape, but she forced herself to enter the exact stop where it had happen. But to her reality, nothing happens. She's stuck there wondering if it was truly her imagination at play here, but why did it feel so real..? Why did her mind trick her like that.

"Okay.." She whispers to herself, closing her eyes. Forcing a focus on what she felt. Her eyes were pinched, eyebrows drawing an x in-between each other as she took it step-by-step.

Nothing but the reintroducing crack of a twig behind her.

Her eyes fluttered open, twisting herself around to see the origins, but like the incident, nothing was there...

Maybe she was loosing her mind, just like her aunt was that took care of her before the butler did, before this arrangement ever happened.

She turns back into facing the opening, taking a step within the circle as she brings herself back to the words that her aunt had spoke of.

"You're special, little one. Very special." She had said, bringing her cotton blanket over her shoulders and parting her hair.

"How am I special, Aunti Lune?" Heather had asked, eyes filled with intrigue.

"You're just like my mother. When she was a little one like you, she used a special gift to get herself out of trouble."

Crack.

A shiver ran down her spine as the familiar haunting sound came back. It was just on the edge between treeline and opening. IT was there, she swiftly spun around, her hair twirling into a vortex.

Her eyes wide, her heart cold. A mass of black fur with glowing yellow eyes staring into hers. It was as if a void of nothingness had a pair of haunting eyes.

Heather's breath expelled sharply, prompting herself into a back-walk as she watches the darkness lurk forward into the moonlight.

Just like the stories had been told to her countless times before; it was the dark wolf that looked over the forest, the dark guardian. And it never took humans for kindness.

The moisture within the air felt horrible against her cold sweat, she wanted to escape this feeling at any cost. Yet she remained, feeling her legs tremble.

"A human after-dark?" A gargling echoed through the woods, forming into words. Can it talk, or was it just her fear?

"And a young one at that..." The voice traveled through the opening like a spinning texture, almost like a gust of wind circling like a crow.

The wolf slowly steps closer and closer to Heather as she backs further and further away.

Her breath was shallow as she tried to remain calm, but it's like the emotion never existed in the first place.

"Humans..." It had said, forcing a deeper growl. It's eyes transitioning into a different color.

The color of blood.

"I smell it on you." The wolf leans in closer.

"Just like that woman!" The wolf lunges at her, snarl with, teeth as sharp blades.

Heather forces her eyes shut, feeling her hearth wanting to rip out of her chest, but as she looks within the makeshift-darkness nothing happens but a glow of yellow light. Just like the time before.

She opens her eyes, feeling the warmth circling around her like a mothers embrace. Her arm extended outwards, seeing her birth mark glow like a vibrant star. It happened, it finally happened.

The wolf froze in mid-air before being jolted backwards, yelping as it got slammed to the ground.

To her surprise, it quickly got back up with a deep snarl.

"You have it! " The wolves eyes jittered in a variation of colors, displaying its inner emotions. The darkness readied a stance before letting out an ear piercing howl, birds and animals alike scattered like wild rats as the ground shook like a tremendous quake while heather held her ears, feeling the pain digging.

She felt its howl trying to rip through her defenses, but she held on, screaming with determination. The air and moisture around her vibrated, feeling every pitch around her body as it went on, it's like the wolf had let out a deep, turmoiling anger which had been residing in the wolf for years, centenaries even.

"This cannot be!" The wolf had said over its howl. Heather's chest can feel a sense of emotion, an emotion that wasn't hers like a deep ache hidden within layers of layers of her own.

Her face reflected; nose wrinkled, eyes a fierce squint as her eyebrows mirrored deep lines.

"Every one of you!" The wolf's eyes began to swallow in tears, her chest feeling a deep sorrow as the light from her birth marked formed a holy aurora around her. Was this the wolves emotion?

"You all killed, hunted every single one of my kind for centuries!" The aurora whipped as if it were a snake striking its pray.

"I had thought I finally avenged my kind for reflecting our pain in kind! - But here one lays!"

"I'm not like them!" She said, trying to cut through the quaking madness.

"I'm not a killer!"

"I wouldn't do that!"

The quaking stopped.

The wolf stood, its fur heightened like protruding spikes.

"Liar!"

As it lunged again, a beam of blue light flickered through the Forrest then out and into the opening, hitting the wolf and knocking it back as it howled in pain.

Heather sparked her gaze to the location, there stood a boy, maybe around her age, dressed in all black - matching his black hair that illuminated from the moonlight.

The blue light dispersed into an aurora of its own, circling back to the boy, his left eye glowing, matching the color of his light.

" Made it just in time."

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