Day 25

Write on your WIP

Her sadness is a weight around her shoulders and it pushes down her head. In the sag of her shoulders and the shuffle of her step she seems too weary to walk the path in front of her. She clutches her small canvas bag to her chest, fingers palpating it and twisting the fabric into deep folds. She holds it tight, as if her life depends on it. The butterflies feel she would be better clutching a weapon or at the very least a large stick. In her sadness she does not seem to have the skills to survive this place. If she strays from the path it seems unlikely that she will leave the wood again. Some people are made to be eaten. 

The girl seems drenched in sadness, from her long glances behind her to the light at the edge of the wood to the staccato breaths, snatching the air into her nose, as she struggles to control her tears. Eventually she gives up trying to control her emotions and lets out a strange, animal keening as she walks. She staggers under the weight of such tremendous sorrow and her terror rises that this feeling will never never pass. She stalls in her walking and crumples to the floor, exhausted and unable to staunch this flood she dashes her head against the path, grinding her teeth and rending her bag. Her sorrow has become a flood of fury and she lets it wash over her. She turns her anger on her clothes and rips her bodice from her, noticing a sense of satisfaction as each ribbon pops from its moorings. She flings it from her and doesn’t notice the creatures in the undergrowth shrink back as it flies towards them. They dare not approach one so unpredictable. 

Without this to distract her she feels her awful sorrow rise once more. She pulls her hair out from the roots and feels satisfaction in the noise and ripping. She feels no regret, just a horrible interest, as she looks at the clumps in her hands and feels the lumps on her head. She curls into a ball with the bag cradled against her belly and claws at herself with abandon, raising welts on her arms and legs that will bleed and scar over time. By the time she has finished with herself she looks like she belongs in this wild wild place. A butterfly lands on a stone near her heart. 

Improbably she has survived a week in the woods, with some help from the creatures around her. There are no mice to mend her clothes or bluebirds to do the cleaning here but the creatures of the wood are wise and can be kind when the mood takes them. The butterflies have kept her on the path and the birds  have brought her berries from time to time. The wolves have watched her but kept their distance. There is little to eat on such a slip of a girl and they know the risks of riling the humans who can sometimes have .