#sncinder15k

I couldn’t escape it. Not when piping icing on cookies in the kitchen, nor when huddled around the fireplace as sappy holiday movies blared and hot chocolate was guzzled.

It was a constant thrumming in my ears, a twang of longing with every beat of my traitorous heart.

Come see. Come see. Come see.

As if luring me in so the forest could devour me in a tangle of thorns and sweet sorrow.

With every jibe taken against my lack of motivation and clumsy use of my education, with every praise given to my younger brother who was “making it,” I slipped further and further into myself, desperate to crawl away, frozen in place by my expectations. The sweet siren song of the wind rustling through the branches a cacophony in my ears as I fought against the riptide.

When I finally retired to my room, I couldn’t help but gravitate towards the wall of windows. And that’s when I saw her. Slinking along the edge of the underbrush. Alabaster silk hair lying preternaturally still despite the howling wind. Tart cherry lips unraveling my sense of reason, accentuated by the crown of holly adorning her temple. A glimmer of diamond shining brilliantly from her forehead. Glowing quicksilver eyes ringed with intricate patterns of leaves and snow-tipped lashes which threatened to swallow me whole as they locked with my own. And then one tattooed arm raised, beckoning me out into the silent night. I obeyed, the lilting lyricism of the forest song crescendoing as it ratcheted through my skull.

Every measure of melody was an answer, an awakening, as I undid the latch on the window, so transfixed that I completely forgot that though my top was cradled by my robe, my nightgown abandoned my legs completely to the frozen tundra’s mercy.

You’re mine. You belong. Come see.

It sang to me, even as I had already surrendered, already tread on the path of no return.

With each step, I fell further and further into the vortex, the beauty’s eyes never once straying as I approached. By the time I’d reached her side, I couldn’t have even told you my own name, such was her thrall over me.

She took my hand, surprisingly supple and warm against the brisk chill of the night and turned, resubmerging herself into the depths of the grove.

Her tug was light. Taunting. Teasing. One final test for me. One final chance for me to turn around and return to my shambles of a life.

But I had long ago made my decision. And so I followed her into the unknown. 

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