Cave of My People

𝒢𝓁𝒾𝓉𝒸𝒽

  I can only teleport so much before I'm glitched back to the forest. Damn this place and the curse. It's creepy and reminds me of home, which, for context, is not a really good way to start my night.

I've been here for most of my life after Shadow saved me, yet I'm still on high alert. He always says that I don't have to worry and that if an intruder comes by, I'll know. Sadly, his words of comfort do not actually comfort me, so I'm stuck tiptoeing back to my cave.

The trees look like they're looking somewhere, somewhere around me. They look like they're judging me, mocking me. Like they want to hold me in their arms like I'm a kid that knows nothing. It pisses me off, so I walk faster. The dark green leaves crunch as I walk on them, making me cringe because I know they're rotten. I just need to get out of this place of the forest and everything will be over.

But no. It's like I'm going in circles. I walk for ten minutes and I'm back to where I started. It's freaking me out, and it shouldn't. I walk again. Ten, twenty, thirty minutes pass and I'm back at the entrance. Just a few more times, I remind myself, but it still freaks me out. I look back, and I'm right. This isn't a spell. If it was a spell, I wouldn't be able to see the moon, shining so brightly orange as if it's the night of greed again. But it's not. It's the night of wrath. The color flashes my eyes and I feel the red bubbling inside me.

" I want out, I want out, I want out."

I cover my ears and look back into the forest. This time I ran. Ten, twenty, thirty minutes, I'm finally in the maze. I look up at the clock, and it's eight ten. The forest was playing tricks on me. Make me play with it for an hour, but only ten minutes passed. Still, it feels like an hour.

I straddle into the maze. I created this maze, so I know the way to the cave, but I also don't know. I go left, I go right, and I go right again. There's no more maze paths to run in, but when I take a deep sigh and open my eyes again, I'm back at the entrance. It seems like the maze is bored on the night of wrath. It's eight, of course it is. That's something I understand But that doesn't mean that it's allowed to make my head spin like this. Maybe the maze smells the Avaritia empire on me. It's not like I can do something about that. The maze hates the Avaritia empire for some reason.

I let the maze play with me a few more times, and finally, it stops and lets me see the entrance of my cave. I look at the clock on the door of the entrance. What felt like another hour was only another ten minutes. It's eight twenty when I walk back into my place.

I don't need to look around my cave to know that it invites me as much as it normally talks in my head. It says sweet stuff, but on days like this, days I'm tired out of my will, it leaves me alone and doesn't talk at all.

I start to throw all of my stuff on the ground as I walk. Clank. Clank. Clank. The metal falls on the floor with a beautiful sound, and I feel like now, I'm finally back home. The little cave of my possessions. My people peek out from their houses as they come out to greet me, all the coloured bells on their doors ringing a little too loud for my liking, even if I'm the one that instantled them.

"She's back!"

They all yell the same thing all the time and I'm used to it. The 'She's here,' and 'Welcome back,' all seemed forced to hear about it now. It's like they think they have to greet me every time I come back here because I'm their leader. The person who saved them. They take the things I dropped to their homes as if they have to keep it as a souvenir. I really hate it. It was a stressful day, trying to keep my posture while talking to Dallin, and I'm much more sensitive than I usually am. I'm unnecessarily over thinking about what my people, the people that choose to work for me, think about me. A little girl's eyes glow as she looks at me, the same shade of polluted air, one of my favorites too. It calms me.