16 March 2021
"Grandmother? How did we die, again?" Inquired the small girl as she skipped next to her grandmother. The pigtails in her hair bound with every jump and her polka-dot dress rising and falling with the motions. The elderly woman sighed as she gazed at her lively granddaughter.
"When your mother left town, you came to live with me. Oh, I remember it like it was yesterday. Your mother was always very eccentric, she often explored the woods around our house for hours. There were times I wouldn't see her from breakfast, until long after sunset. She would come home and tell me of adventures, no doubt made up, about fairies and witches, who lived within the trees.
So, when she left you at my house in the most ungodly hours of the morning, I wasn't much surprised at all. It's when she hadn't returned that I began to worry. Two days bled into a month, which turned into three, and, before you knew it, she had been gone for a whole year. I called the sheriff's office to file a missing person report, but days after that there still were no signs of her.
I decided that she wasn't going to be found by anybody except myself, and let me tell you, darling, she was going to get the biggest lecture of the century when I found her. It wasn't until a couple of months later that we got a report, someone had seen her wandering in the forest, covered in dirt. I took you and drove to the location of the sighting, and there she was. Covered in dirt, just like the man said. Turns out, she'd been sleeping in the forest the whole time, fending for herself and writing about what she found.
When we looked through the books together, you were ecstatic about everything, laughing and shouting about fairies and whatnot. I, on the other hand, was used to her spouting nonsense. Although, a part of me did believe that she was right, wanted an explanation as to how she had survived in the woods for over a year. So, that night I went out and searched, and you followed me without me knowing. I looked through nearly every nook and cranny I could find, but nothing to support the ideas of otherworldly creatures.
Then, we were surrounded by glowing figures. I couldn't, for the life of me, tell you what or who they were. The next thing we knew a blinding flash filled the forest, I heard your mother screaming and we passed out. When we woke up it was night, I saw our bodies laying on the ground, below us." "Wowie!" The young girl says excitedly. She wonders who was responsible for their deaths, who was responsible for leaving her mother and grandfather alone. She silently swore that she would find them, and make sure they paid.
