• Everyone has those moments where all you can think is: What in the hell was I thinking? This is definitely one of those moments. I never thought things could get this difficult, but they never seem to go the way I planned. You see it all started when my best friend of eighteen years decided as a last whoo-rah, so to speak, that we should go on an adventure. This turned out to be a walk through the woods that surrounded out development. As an eighteen year old skeptic I had no hesitation in participating in said adventure. The legends and rumors of the surround area are heard on deaf ears. Growing up kids are warned not to go in the woods because of bears and snakes that lurk deep within them. The stories just grew from there. How nine-year-old little Billy Watson disappeared when bullied into going into the woods. They say he was taken by a bear hybrid monster, with sharp claws and teeth, never to be seen again. In reality, his parents got divorced and he moved away with his mother. But that didn’t stop those ridiculous claims from coming back and continuing.
    Now why I agreed to go into the woods deep enough that you couldn’t even hear the cars from the stretch of highway lining part of the woods, I don’t know. What I did know was that after spending at least two hours outside covered in sweat and only god knows what else, I was ready to go home. These newly acquired and unwanted bug bites were really starting to drive me crazy. Even trying to use my long maple hair as a shield wasn’t helping. It just got gross and sticky due to the amount of bug spray and sweat on my skin.
    “Come on! Keep up Sawyer,” my evil best friend Grace shouted from the front of the pack. She had nominated herself as leader after the first hour. We have been traveling deeper and deeper into the forest ever since. Grace and I have known each other since diapers. Our mothers were in the same sorority in college and have been friends ever since. When we were able to talk Grace and I officially declared our friendship. Although we knew it earlier, no one else could understand our baby garble. We’ve always done things the difficult and sometimes wrong way of doing things, but we’ve been there for the other’s mistakes. When we arrived in high school she had declared it was a clean slate for us to dirty. Needless to say we did. She was always more social and open to new people than I was. She has always been a romantic and more gullible than I ever was. This sometimes created tension in our relationship but we muddled through. She was always looking for her One. The one who would sweep her off her feet and turn her world upside down. She had a similar theory on life as well. Grace wanted life to be exciting and believed that anything is possible. I believed in a more practical approach: That the universe doesn’t care if you are actively searching for excitement or not. It does whatever the hell it wants! This is where I was wrong. I underestimated how much the universe likes to work against me.
    As we went further into the woods even the trees began to look darker. The sky was slowly disappearing behind a curtain of leaves and branches. The floor of the woods was getting damper and there was an eerie chill to the air. It was a welcomed relief from the lava sun; however, the weird feelings slowly creeping into my mind were puzzling. It felt as if I’ve been here before and not in a good way.
    “Hey! I think we should start heading back. I’m getting hungry,” I yelled to the group.
    “Well then eat a snickers. We aren’t going back yet,” replied Charlene. Her blonde curls, which were looking more and more like a ball of fluffy fur by the second, bounced with her as she pressed on and hopped over a fallen branch.
    “You getting scared Sawyer?” Burk taunted, “I’ll keep you safe babe don’t worry!” He attempted to show off what little muscles he had.
    “Oh really? With what that stick?” I replied, pointing at a scrawny twig on the ground. “And for the record I’m not scared. I merely want to get out of this shirt and feel clean again.” They can never know how terrified I truly am of getting lost and never finding a way back.
    “Not cool babe. You know you love this body!” He began to pretend to remove his shirt which resulted in me throwing sticks at him.
    “Knock it off! We need to get going,” ordered Grace as she smacked Burk on the back of the head. Harvey who had quiet during most of the trip had walked up to Burk and dragged him onward. After taking a deep breath I followed behind begrudgingly. I began to take in my surroundings. In other words, trying to locate any landmarks in case Grace got us lost, when I saw a gleaming ball of purple light about ten feet away. I stopped my walking to stare and before long Harvey had noticed I wasn’t following him.
    “What is it Eve?” I ignored him and started walking towards it, mesmerized. As I got closer and closer to the ball of light, which got brighter as I got closer, I started to feel calm and strangely serene. When I got in front of the light I noticed strange markings rotating around it. As soon as I started to reach out to it, the ball erupted in light. So much so that I had to close my eyes. Then I felt a force pushing me down and with my eyes still closed I fell backwards.

    “Mistress Eve! Mistress Eve! Please help us! Hurry!” A high pitched female voice echoed in my head and before I could respond I felt that light. It had once consumed my body making me feel weightless and as if I was in a meditative state. However now that feeling was quickly disappearing. It felt like something was forcibly pulling it out.

    “Eve! Eve get up! Are you okay? You ran off,” Harvey asked while pulling me into a sitting position. My body began to feel heavy and out of breath.
    “Yea I’m fine,” I replied while trying to pull some twigs and leaves out of my hair. I took a look around while the others started joking around or arguing.
    Large green bushes surrounded a flat meadow. It had lilies growing, which was strange for this area. The petals were the purest white I’ve ever seen, with a light shade of red in the middle. I’ve never seen them before. There were four large stones covered by twigs and weeds. The edges were carved smoothly that must have taken days to do, and they were an ashy gray with tints of a sapphire blue engrained. They lay flat on the ground and as I got closer to them I noticed there were strange carvings on them. One had a picture of a girl and she had long flowing hair that curled at the end. She only had a band of fabric covering her bust and her skirt was similar except that it was longer and went down to her ankles. There was a strip of fabric wrapped around her upper arm and the ends were loosely hanging. Her face looked delicate but her expression was fierce. The next stone carving was of a horse. It looked bulkier than a normal horse; it took up most of the stone. The saddle had strange markings which seemed to rotate around. The horse’s hair also seemed as if a breeze was blowing trough. I’m sure it was just having the wind knocked out of me causing me to have delusions. The third stone had a lily, which was similar and just as beautiful as the ones surrounding the meadow. The last stone had an intricate carving of a castle. Every brick was etched out and there were multiple towers. Trees were surrounding the castle and they looked to be moving from the same breeze as the horse carving.
    “Hey can you guys see this? Look at these carvings,” I yelled out to my friends. They all ran over and hovered over the castle carving. “Look at the castle trees. They look so lifelike, they’re even moving.”
    Burk looked at me like I was crazy, “Um I think you hit your head rally hard when you fell. They aren’t moving. Maybe we should go back” That coming from Burk definitely should have warned me of my impending future.
    “Come on guys. Let’s head back. It’s getting late anyways,” Grace ordered. We all began to walk back but I couldn’t get that voice and the carvings out of my head. The girl seemed really familiar and it kept bugging me. I decided that I wanted to go back there, and the first chance I got, I was going to return. I felt serene there, as if I was in my own world and nothing could touch me. I will go back there.