Skinned

* * * Trigger for dark imagery. I promise. I won't leave her there.* * *

She had long, long blond hair that tangled in the branches as she climbed from the darkness of the forest floor to the sunny canopy.

She held fast to the swaying thin branches. Sighing deeply she closed her eyes and let the winds lullaby comfort her.

I'm ready to fly she thought and turned her face to the sky. I can't take this one second longer. I need to find my home.

She raised her hands and leapt out into the sun's warm embrace.

For a moment she hung in the air and she at last felt free...at peace.

then she fell.

twisting and turning as the branches tore and ripped the hide from her until she was raw and skinned and dumped with a hard thud onto the forest floor.

She woke to find herself in a dark menacing forest. Gingerly and carefully she sat up. The dried blood on her scratched up legs a tell tale sign that she had been out for sometime. The cold wind nipped at her skin and the ferns poked accusingly at her. Her eyes scanned the darkness and slide shut with a resigned sobbing.

Slowly she laid back down, wishing to die. Waiting for the damp earth to swallow her up. She doesn't fit in, and she doesn't fit out.  She began to dig, and frantically clawed in the damp earth searching for a weapon to inflict violence upon herself.

Her hate and self loathing bubbling to the surface in a snotty tearful angry guttural cry. So blinded by the tears she couldn't see anything.

Her hand at last found a hard object. She tugged and pulled until it broke free of the dirt and came up a few inches from the earth.  She wiped her tears on her arm and looked at it. It was a old rusty dagger still held firmly in the clutches of gnarled roots.

On the tip of the blade was a large seed.

"Don't pull it anymore." Whispered the tree closest to her. "You don't want to go there."

She fought with the roots trying to pull it free. The tree leaned back and held onto the dagger.

"You don't want to go there." It repeated.

"Maybe I do. Maybe I am so tired of fighting to fit into this life I want to leave it behind." She at last replied leaning down and touching the seeded tip to her chest.

"Very well." Whispered the tree. as it pulled back on the dagger and plunged it into her heart.

She gasped and pulled back and the dagger came out, her beating heart now in place of the seed. She felt her body cave in as the seed in her chest took root and pulled her down into the dirt. As she was so carefully folded beneath the earth, her eyes reflected the first flash of the light of the sun, as it rose and dawn descended upon the forest.

(remember, I told you I wouldn't leave her there. But I didn't promise anything about not leaving you here. Trilogy time again.)

end of part one....