don´t trust the forest

always check where you´re running away to.

 

 “It´s calmer out here, isn´t it?” My mouth opened to answer the voice though I bit my tongue. The sting stopped me from speaking, made me go against the instincts that I was taught.

  If the water you´re given tastes sweet, it´s better to be thirsty. Trees that creak like old bones are prone to falling. Stay away from the forest, no running (away, it was implied), make no sound unless we tell you to, and if so, do not dare stay silent. Respect, never go against. Be pretty and obedient.

  Stay.

  I had disobeyed most of them over the winters they had me, but not the last one. Never the last one. Sometimes I wondered if it was for fear of the pain that would surely come if I had tried to or if they had finally managed to fold me to their wishes, and well, I had the answer now, didn’t I? It was written in the tall trees around me, in the roots sticking out of the ground and in the thorns painting me red as I ran deeper into the woods. I could smell it in the earth and flowers around me, feel it in the thrill coursing through my body, and I could hear it in the voice now surrounding me.

  “Yes. Yes, it is.” I smiled and reveled in the joy that just saying those simple words gave me. “Tell me, what should I do with my freedom?”

  A breeze passed by me, carrying with it the faintest remainders of a soft laugh. “Oh? Are you asking me for advice, little one? It´s not very bright of you to ask that of a stranger.”

  I could only stare at my dark surroundings. “Yes, perhaps it isn´t. May I have your name, then?” The breeze mocking me again was my only answer.

  “Well, what´s your problem now? You start a conversation with me and don´t give me the slightest courtesy of showing me your face as I am showing mine. You tease me by saying we´re strangers and yet won´t even introduce yourself so we can remedy that. If you´re just going to be rude then I will be taking my leave. I have the whole world to explore now, after all.” I gathered the small amounts of belongings in my possession and stood up, managing only a single step before a strong gust of wind pushed me back.

  “I apologize. It´s been many years since my last interaction with your kind, little one. Not a lot of you wander this deep into the woods anymore, I fear I may have forgotten your usual... etiquette.”

  “My kind? You speak as if not human.” My heart skipped a beat. The one rule I was given that seemed to apply to everyone else came into my mind: Stay out of the forest, there are things out there we don´t understand.

  “I don’t recall saying I was.” The wind swirled violently around me, moving the clouds up in the sky and letting the moon illuminate my vision. There was still no visible source for the voice, but I could see now that I was in a tiny clearing, marked by a circle of flowers that appeared to glow in the dark. “Humor me, little one. You asked me what you should do with your freedom. Were you not free before?”

  I took a step back and considered running without replying, an ungentle wind passing behind me as if reading my thoughts and warning me that that was a bad idea.

  “My village, the village they took me to... I was taken and kept there ever since my tenth winter.” My eyes darted across the clearing, seeking any silhouette that would give me a hint as to who I was talking to.

  “Ah, I see. Poor thing, being kept prisoner. And you just managed to escape?”

  “Yes. Mist- person, I really think I must go, I need to cross the forest still and-“ My arms tightened around the belongings I was holding and my legs readied themselves to run, rational thoughts no longer commanding my brain.

  “Of course, of course.” Barely had the wind brought those words and I was already walking to leave the clearing, relief coursing through me as I thought I´d just escaped a fate worse than my previous one.

   I was mistaken. “Just answer this last question for me.”

  That sentence came colder than the other ones, sending a freezing sensation down to my bones that gave me the feeling that I wouldn’t like whatever the last question was, and I had only half a mind to process what the voice had said before starting a run. My legs burned and more thorns pierced my skin as I shoved branches from out of the way, not daring to stop until I was confident that the clearing was ways behind me and that my path was secluded by the closeness of the trees. A shuddery breath escaped my lips, blood rushing in my head and my entire body throbbing as I finally allowed myself to drop against the bark of a huge tree.

  A hand grabbed my wrist and chills went up my arm, the same breeze from before bringing to my ears a deep chuckle that sounded not unlike a blade being sharpened. “Who said you´re free now?”

 

Author's Note

this is my first work, any feedback is appreciated!! also, my first language is not english

Reviews

[JayG]

Apologies. That was supposed to go on a spammer's post but they got swapped. My bad.... Here's yours:

• “It´s calmer out here, isn´t it?”

While you know the story, the characters, and the situation before reading the first word, the reader has only what the words HAVE said, and what the ones being read suggest, based on THEIR background, which won’t match yours.

So as the reader sees this, someone unknown, in an unknown location is speaking to someone not introduced, about an unknown situation, for unknown reasons. Meaningful to you, but meaningless to the reader because they lack context. And even if you clarify, there is no second first-impression.

•My mouth opened to answer the voice though I bit my tongue.

This literally makes no sense. Did you edit this?

How can you open your mouth AND bite your tongue. And… “The voice?” No one responds to hearing “the voice.” They respond to a person. If someone speaks to you and you already know them, you respond to Harry, or Racheem, or Boris, not “the voice.” If you don’t recognize the speaker you turn to see who it is. So this cannot seem real to the reader.

• The sting stopped me from speaking, made me go against the instincts that I was taught.

1. Instincts aren’t taught, they’re inherent. You mean, "against what I was taught."
2. “The sting” of something unknown in response to an unknown event, may be meaningful to someone who knows what stings and why. But to the reader?

To you this makes perfect sense. But you cheat. You have context. And you hear emotion in the narrator’s voice because it’s your voice. But the reader has no idea of how you want them to read it. And while you can tell the reader that a character speaks a line of dialog angrily, or with a smile, you can’t tell the reader how the narrator reads. All they have is the emotion punctuation suggests. Have your computer read this aloud.

But…the problems I mention aren’t a matter of how well or poorly you write, or your talent. The problem is that because we pretty universally forget that professions are learned IN ADDITION to the skills our teachers give us, and that Fiction-Writing is a profession, we try to use the report-writing skills we were given in school, and several unwanted things happen.

First, like any report, the author reports and explains the events in a dispassionate voice. No way around that.

Next, because the scene is real in your mind, and things seem obvious to you, you’ll leave out detail necessary if the reader is to have context—which is obvious in those first three lines.

The fix is simple enough. Add the tricks the pros take for granted. The goal of a report is an informational experience. But fiction’s goal is emotional. The reader wants you to make them feel and care. And that takes more.

Unfortunately, the word simple and easy aren’t interchangeable. So there’s some significant work and study involved. But that’s true of any field.

The library’s fiction-writing section section is filled with the views of pros in publishing, writing, and teaching. So time spent there is time wisely invested.

My personal suggestion, though is to first check a few of the articles in my writing blog to see how different the approach of fiction is from the writing you know, and if you want to commit to the amount of work needed to acquire and perfect those skills. And if you do, my suggestion is to download Debra Dixon’s, GMC: Goal Motivation & Conflict:
https://b-ok.org/book/2476039/ac87b9

It’s one of the best books I’ve found on the nuts-and-bolt level techniques of writing scenes that sing to the reader, and linking them into an exciting story.

So jump in. If you’re meant to write you’ll find the learning fun. And if not? Well, you’ve learned something important. So it’s win/win. Right.

But whatever you do, don’t be discouraged. Hang in there, and keep on writing.

Jay Greenstein
https://jaygreenstein.wordpress.com/category/the-craft-of-writing/the-grumpy-old-writing-coach/