Creative Writing: A Hero's Journey

The forest had gone.... and the Witch looked much younger. Audette opened her eyes and had found herself upon a brow of white lilies. The shape of the shrouded old woman seemed changed. Having turned around, and opened her mantle to the tearing gusts, Meliza revealed to the young lady two streams of shinging blackness and smooth white flesh. Audette stopped in her tracks.

She absorbed her surroundings as she watched the trees rush by. She saw a large buck grazing on a patch of grass and giggled at the tiny chipmunks that seemed to be everywhere. She’d even saw a bear and thought it a little unusual for this time of year, but it was not uncommon. She pumped her legs and extended her stride. Her lungs expanded as they filled with air, her breath quickened as she waited for her second wind.

The enchanted forest pulsed in, it’s ancient heartbeat, the deep, haunting song sweeping through the swaying leaves. The woody incense of thousands of leaves and branches matting the forest floor filled the air and dominated our nostrils. Soon, the branches will bend to the will of the whispering wind, allowing the sun to fill every nook and cranny with its the lustrous, golden light, illuminating the full grandeur of a forest that is steeped in plushness and opulence. But for now, the sprawling limbs of centuries-old trees still guarded the darkness, blotting out most of the gentle rays of dawn’s light.

"Wake up, partners," the trail boss, James called. I sleepily looked up , shivered, and saw I was the only one not up. "Here," James said, giving me the horses' bridles and saddles. "Take these and get the horses ready. We have a long day today." I groaned in reply and set up the horses for the day's long drag. I was the horse wrangler and this was my everyday job but I still couldn't get use to the idea of waking up before the sun and working. We drove the cattle into open plains against the winter's cold wrath.

It was unclear what exactly woke up the small elf, maybe the unfamiliar sounds of horse hooves against the ground, maybe the bright sunlight shining through the sparse forest, maybe the motions of the carriage from the uneven terrain, or some divine forsaken mixture of the three. When she attempted raising her arms to shield her eyes from the harsh light, she discovered that they had been bound together, and rather tightly at that. 'Great,' she thought to herself.

Once they were there, the quarter-mile trek to their place had to be made. It was a small, circular clearing in the cone-bearing woods. The area around the fire pit was dirt, for safety reasons. On the outskirts of the copper-colored dirt were five large, round logs arranged in a circle for sitting. Just a few feet beyond the logs, the forest began again in copious amounts of vegetation and growth, like an untamed lion. That night’s weather was just right. The cool air was

“The sea and the sky are the same,” uncle always said. At the time he had laughed, but looking out that morning; the cold sea mist clinging to my clothes, I knew he was right.

As Lelia’s belly continued to grow, the winter of ‘55 felt endless, followed by a spring that brought copious amounts of wind and hard-driving rain. As a result, the raw cold air escorting the early springtime rains in Maine kept Lelia and her children chilled to the bone, as well as hardworking: stoking the fires until the end of April.

Soon enough, she found herself standing before the queen. “So, you’re the animal on my trees?” she asked. Chenelie nodded. “And you’re the one who’s shaking the wonderful snow off their branches?” Chenelie nodded again. Then, the queen got up.

The women encircle her, palm to palm, rising, crying, wailing. The Crone Song. Soiled linens make shapes on the floor. A child cries, the earth opens its door. A river rushes, waterfall—red. The wind blows in, her lungs expand. The mound softens, her door open wide. The child arrives, an ocean’s tide. Quaking Aspen shimmers moonlight. Its silver branches cradle the night. Tamarack Thunder, the Earth gives her name. Pipsissewa, small and delicate, but strong her flame.

The forest began to quiver with each syllable of breath, swaying in the affirmation of life. Greens danced, shaking the ashes into the wind, burying them as golden birds sang to their motion. The louder The Fallen’s cries, the louder The North became—as ever vibrant as she was before the darkness charred her skin. My eyes pressed against the soft light dawning over The Furies, seeping in the glory of the morning as if the darkness never was.

Pebble lay in her bedding curled into a tight ball as snow fell through the entrance of the den. (I typed into chat as I stood in the rocky hole we made on minecraft.) She wrapped her tail along her nose as a crisp cold breeze brushed passed by, ruffling her fur. Waterpaw awoke blinking slowly, she yawned and stretched before padding to the broken cliff in the den that kept Pebble hostage in her

Yet were being held down, giving a silent rhapsody of joy and grieving. Along the way fallen timber accompanied thickets of weeds. A lazy mist hazed my vision, making the horizon seem like one from a story book. The area was imperturbable, as if it was keeping a secret hidden deep within itself.

The forests were usually green this time of year, heading into the heat of summer, but everything seemed faded and dingy with the recent drought. Nobody knew why the water stopped coming, although nobody really knew why it came in the first place. It was just always there, forever flowing and giving life and color to the

The bees still buzzed and hummed among the flowers; the deer still grazed softly among the undulating waves of grass, yet in that moment, their movement seemed arrested, held in check by the waning sun.