The Unforgotten

Prologue

The blood-soaked and tattered woman tore through the bushes, ignoring the stinging branches that whipped against her body. She knew that the consequence of stopping would be much more painful than the temporary lashes of the sinister wood.  Her grimey body was exhausted from the dogged hunt of her pursuers, but her brilliant determination shined on.

She had far exceeded what she thought capable, but even she could not deny that her body was flagging, and it was only a matter of time before she was caught. Her foot snagged on a root sticking out of the ground, and she plunged downward. She rolled forward and back onto her feet, hardly losing momentum with an impunity that seemed to mock the forest. With renewed enthusiasm she let loose a primal screech in defiance to all. As if to rise to the challenge, a low hanging branch appeared in front of her. Only her elf-like reflexes saved her from being knocked fully unconscious as she clipped the branch. With a bright flash of light she landed hard this time, and groggily pulled herself to her feet. Her vision was swimming, and tears started to streak down her dirt caked face. In a wash of anger, she smeared them away with a sullied hand, making her face that much more dirty and then resumed her fevered pace. Every footfall only succeed in aggravate her newly acquired headache, and she could feel herself succumbing to the overwhelming feeling of defeat. Her newly acquired strength had disappeared as fast as it had come, but her rebellious nature was as much a part of her as her arm or leg was.

She knew she was running alongside Felvin’s Gorge, she had chosen this path in the possibility that she would be caught. With a shake of her head she veered sharply towards it, her face for one moment, revealing her hidden anguish. She cried for real this time, for the pain of all the things she had lost. She cried for her home, her friends, Mathew, and most of all her father. She cried for those who had never chosen this path, the innocent ones who were slaughtered because of her selfish decisions.  

She continued to cry even when her body could no longer produce the tears, and as her eyes emptied, she seemed to be filled. An inner peace had begun to replace all of the anguish she had kept pent up for years, and she knew what she was doing was the only way she could make up for what she had done. She had slowed to a stumble now, and she could hear the approching  footfalls of her pursuers.

The Gorge came into sight, and only a few more steps were needed until freedom could be reached. As she neared the Gorge, she became acutely aware of everything around her as if her body wanted to treasure these last moments of mortality. She felt the rigid, slate-like stone under her bloodied feet, for her shoes had worn away long ago. She felt the hot fetid air that seemed to come from both the Gorge and the forest, caress her bare legs and push against her fevered skin. The cry of a raven, scrape of metal on stone and skin on fabric, and the taste of her own palpable fear were etched into her memory, but the most gripping sense of all was the view of the Gorge. The crevice stretched on and on, a cleft in the earth, broken like a smile and endless as the tide. The colors blazed, the white of the burning setting sun, the grey of the broken stone, and the blackness of the unseen bottom.

She reached the edge and leapt, smiling with the satisfaction of having fully escaped her pursuers. She rotated slowly as she fell until she at last had a view of the disappearing sunset. The bloody sky blazed with angry streaks of red, yellow and orange and swaths of deep purple as if innocent blood was spilt in heaven as it was on earth.