Used to Be

Around them the forest had descended into an eerie darkness as the rain persisted, and they were lost in its midst, with no knowledge of a new establishment built up beyond the wooded walls. There was no light to guide them forwards, stranded as they were in the depths of night, and there was no bread-crumb trail to follow back to sun and safety. Lena could offer no other information as to where they might find shelter, or a gathering of fellow misplaced beings, and so the void tightened around them, simmering with a little more doubt and a little less potential. Roland looked at her, hair dark and wet against her skin, thick rivulets of water tracking their way down her neck, and his smile grew at her presence. He felt emboldened just by her proximity, like there was still something of value worth holding onto in oblivion. There was a gentle change in her expression, a sort of determination, an appreciation, he thought he saw flickering in her eyes, and he knew then that he would fight to keep that spark within her alive, to give it fuel to burn. Her suggestion was met with an encouraging nod, and he cast his gaze once more into the hazy air around them. "Happily," he declared, because he would rather delve into treacherous provinces and struggle through the rain and shadow with no other. As much as he wished it to be true, there was no chance to retrace their steps, no trick to following the unravelling threads of their path back to the serene harbors of home, into high reaches and illuminated valleys that Roland had come to know down to the last frost-tipped petal. He could take her with him, and they could escape the darkness to a place where the sun would once again fall warm and golden across the grass, where the rain wouldn’t bite and draw shivers across his shoulders, so that his muscles began to ache from their trembling. “We’ll be ok,” Roland said, with a kind of resolute certainty that felt forced even to his own ears. His voice betrayed him, quivering in his throat, not quite possessing the courage to resonate in the rainy night air for fear that it might echo on the trees, come back to him sounding all the more unsettled. The words might have been spoken more for himself than for his companions, some reassurance to cling tight to in absence of the sun, that they might carve something beautiful or bearable out of this strange land; yet it was a platitude now ringing hollow in his own ears, a mantra that had exhausted itself in the moments he had spent alone preceding her arrival. Regardless, he wanted Lena to know it, that they would be alright together- the three of them, with feisty Imogen at their sides, sharp senses and even sharper claws. He wanted to hold onto that glimmer of false, forced hope for as long as it might endure in the dripping shadows. There was no sliver of light piercing through the trees, no path carved through the leaves and roots that lay in tangled knots underfoot, no sign to guide their first steps beyond the darkened glade. Without a moment’s hesitation he blindly took his first steps forwards, hoping to find a break in the trees, a gust of air guiding them through the coiled labyrinth, something that might hint at a hidden haven resting beyond the reaches of those wet and gloomy woods.  Push your luck if it makes you a promise that turns con men honest.