The Forest of the Forgotten

A gentle breeze brushes along the leaves of the neighboring trees. I'm lying in the grass, tall and overgrown as far as the eye can see, making it almost impossible for me to see. The sound the wind makes had always brought a smile to my face, especially here.

Across from me sits a mirror perched up against the tree, a reflection of myself lying in the grass reflects at me. I don't mind, though; I ignore it anyway.

The air feels so nice here! I wonder why I don't come here more often...

I begin to doze off to the cooling whistle between the blades of grass before "Ellie! Hey, Ellie!" I raise myself from the grass, lean against my elbows, and look toward the foreign sound. Sloshing through the thick, lush grass, inching toward me, was Amnity, the purple-haired witch. "Ellie! I thought I'd find you here," she proclaimed.

Amnity had one hand on the strap of her satchel and the other was at her side, keeping her balanced as she ventured toward me.

"Hi, Ams. What brings you to my little piece of Nova?" I ask, lying back down in my spot. Nova was the name of the land we both were from and have always lived. It was a quaint little Island that took a year to go full circle, if you're into that sort of thing. It was full of life; some spots were even overpopulated, but it was also full of abandoned towns and forgotten landmarks from ancient civilizations. There are even some places, like here, that remain untouched and ever-growing. Amnity, finally standing next to me, smiled and then politely asked if she could sit next to me. I knew by now that she was asking the grass that.

Amnity finally sat down next to me; her once long, flowing, dark purple hair was now lighter and shoulder-length, and swooshed outward on either side, revealing more of her face than it had at the beginning of the year.

I watched, side eyeing her, as she closed her eyes and thanked the ground in silent prayer.

I couldn't help but smile; she was such a gentle soul.

"So" Amnity began to speak again.

"Hm?" I asked, closing my eyes, I thought if I couldn't see her, maybe I could hear past her and listen to the air around us, ignore my disrespect.

"Eleazar is looking for you," Amnity said, finally getting to the point.

I let out a regrettable sigh and sat back up. "Of course he is," I said through my teeth softly. "Hey, you didn't tell him where I was, did you?" I asked.

"I never do." Amnity smiled.

Somewhere else deep inside the woods sat an old hole inside a dying tree. Deep in that hole sat a mirror, and reflecting out of that mirror was Ellie and Amnity. Talking softly as they sat in the middle of an overgrown grassy field surrounded by an even heavier thicket of healthier-looking trees. Ellie stood from the spot she had been lying in and walked towards the mirror. Amnity followed.

"Can you carry this back?" Ellie asked through the mirror.

"My satchel is big, El, but I don't know-"

"-it compacts, see? Here?" Ellie interrupted, pointing to the hinges on the mirror.

"Sure." Amnity smiled more softly.

"Thanks, Amnity." I smiled in return. "Meet you at the Hut tonight for tea, okay?" I said before stepping into the mirror. It was a bit drafty, I always noted that, when I was in between mirrors, that the air was always kind of crispier and unnaturally icier than I was used to. When I was younger, learning how to travel through mirrors, I had noted it always felt like winter in summer clothes, except colder, between the two doors.

Amnity collapsed the mirror once I had fully stepped through the mirror and slid it into her satchel, which had always been a tad bit bigger on the inside; inside her bag were a couple of diaries and a white hardback grimoire with golden rimmed leaved pages, it was gifted to her on her tenth birthday and proved quite useful on many of our adventures and endevers through The Forest of the Forgotten.

***

The sun was setting just behind the trees when Amnity turned the corner. I smiled and waved at her before filling the emptiness between us. We stopped in front of the Hut and smiled at one another. Amnity reached into her satchel and pulled out my compacted mirror.

"Here you go," Amnity said with a smile on her face.

"Thank you," I smile back, taking the mirror and pulling out its sister mirror that I had climbed out of in the dead tree earlier that afternoon. I tied them both together with a little bit of string made from canvas yarn and put them back in my bag. It had been a minute since these two mirrors had been together.

"Did you see what Eleazar wanted?" Amnity asked.

"Nah, I'll let that old rabbit wait," I said.

"Ellie..." Amnity hesitated. "...you know how he gets."

"Yeah, I'll let that old rabbit wait, though. Right now, I'm more interested in tea at the Hut." I said.

The inside of the Tea Hut was rightfully darker than the girls had anticipated it would become; it was always so atmospheric during the day, but with the sun almost completely set it was eerily darker than they had cared for. The walls were dark with twinkling fairy lights that hung from the ceiling and dangled down, taking up half of the wall and as a twinkling curtain against the empty darkness outside.

Each table sat two and was lit by tea candle, the Hut looked almost empty when Ellie and Amnity walked through the old wooden door. They sat at their usual table across the room and up against the wall before getting to talking again.

It was good and dark outside when Ellie and Amnity were done having tea at the Tea Hut. The air was surprisingly cooler than it had been the following nights before it had been. The girls thought to themselves, silently rubbing their arms and laughing it off as they walked with each other to their next destination, which for the night, was back at Amnity's Magics' Shoppe. It acted as a magic shoppe during the day and living quarters at night. Pretty standard here at Nova. The people of the Forest working out of their homes was pretty common.

"See you tomorrow?" Amnity asked.

"We'll see, Eleazar really doesn't 'look for me' unless he needs me to run an errand," I said before yawning a little.

"Can you swing by the shoppe before you do?" Amnity asked.

"For you? Sure" I smile.

"Thank you, get home safe," Amnity said. She watched as I took a half step back and turned to walk away before entering the loft.

On the walk home, I met with an elf named Pasley, anytime Eleazar goes looking for me, it's usually because he has an order waiting for pickup at Pasley's. Sure enough, they had an order ready for Eleazar and handed me a box. I scoffed at the box and knew by now that whatever was inside the box was probably stolen from someplace else.

I took the box, heavy and bent in one of its corners and smiled as we said our polite goodbyes before continuing down the steps of the nearby park where a couple of Novasian Mirrorette Children were smoking a bowl. They noticed me as nothing more than what I was - a common criminal, just like them in a way.

I sighed and shifted my arms - the box getting heavier as time passed. By the time I reached The Hole, Eleazar's dump trunk of trinkets and parts, I was ready to put the box down.