Special Place

Secret Place

There were many names for the place he visited. Some called it a forest, and they weren't wrong. It was a forest, full of dazzling greenery that seemed to glow with its own light. Dappled shadows playing tricks on the eyes and trees whispering to each other in their own secret language and seeming to laugh at inside jokes.

Others called it a paradise, and they were also right. The scent of the pines, the whispers of the trees and the seeming endless expanse of greens, pastels and browns, seemed to exclude the outside world. If you stood there, right in the middle, you could completely forget about the outside world as if it never existed. As if all the wars, fighting, diseases and evil of the 'real world' were just a bad dream. A nightmare. An unpleasant memory best left forgotten.

He called it his, and, like all others before him, he was not wrong. It was a single patch of pure perfection that only he knew about. He was convinced that everything, (the bending stream that seemed to be made of jewels, the trees that laughed in their own secret language, the animals that seemed so pure) were made for him and him alone.

He would go there when things got rough. When the kids at school bullied and teased him for no apparent reason. When his 'home' was more of building, then a place to live. The forest welcomed him with open arms, as if it were mother welcoming home a child. The trees didn't hurt him like humans, they guarded him instead. The stream didn't beat him like the children at school, it washed his wounds and made him clean. The animals didn't scare him like the war did, they comforted him and made him feel like he was wanted. Needed. He wished people were like the forest.

The boy grew up, still wishing that people would behave like 'his place'. He never understood why you would hurt someone just because they looked, acted, or talked differently. As he got older, he visited his secret place more often. He would whisper his secrets to the trees, knowing they'd never betray him. He'd laugh and play with the innocent animals, knowing they'd never scare him. He'd splash and swim in the stream, knowing that it'd never hurt him.

Slowly, but surely, the boy was accepted by the forest, for it knew that it was just another lost soul that needed a home.

No one knows how old the forest is. Not the trees, as wise as they are. Not the stream, even with how much it knows. Not the boy, who was as much as part of the forest as anything in it. So in turn, the forest didn't know how old the boy was. He seemed to grow rapidly. He once was so small that he couldn't reach even the lowest of branches. He once was so tall that he could climb any tree with ease, and whisper his secrets to the wind at their very tops with the sun on his face. Now he seemed to shrink. His energy seemed to be less and less abundant every time he visited, and his visits were few and far between.

Then he stopped coming.

The forest waited, for how long it didn't know. The trees wouldn't tell jokes back forth any more, they'd only whisper their worries to each other. The stream seemed to loose its shine and the greenery stopped glowing. The boy was a part of the forest, as far as any of the trees knew. The forest was the boy's home, is what the stream knew. The boy was a protecter of the forest, as far as any of the animals knew. The forest waited, for how long it didn't know, but the boy never returned.