Cottage In The Woods

One day, fed up with the world, you decide to take a walk in the mysterious woods next to your house. Although you moved here over a year ago, you have been too busy with school to ever explore, or even really think about exploring. The forest doesn't look like much at first glance, but then again, the most special and magical things rarely do. You take nothing with you except for the clothes on your back. No watch, no phone, no pack. You have calmed down and try to turn around, but you only walk in a big circle and end up where you started. Perplexed, you stray from the path that you have been walking on. Your mother always warned you to never do this. Never go so far in a forest where you cannot see outside of it. You cannot see anything but the trees now. You have been here hours, but it is still bright outside, grand rays of light shining in through the dark canopy. All of the sudden, you notice how quiet it is.
No birds singing.
No wind blowing.
No stream flowing through the mighty trees, giving relief to the seemingly endless green, brown, and yellow.
And the trees seem strange, too.
They are too green.
Too brown at the trunks.
Too grand, too huge to live all together without even a stream to provide them with a livable amount of water.
The leaves that have fallen on the ground are too large; bigger than the size of your hand.
Suddenly, you begin to realize why there are no animals in the forest.
Oh, naive one, these woods are much larger than they seem.
You stop, exhausted. There is a red peony at your feet.
It has just bloomed.
Just now.
During the eternity that it took you to realize it.
You pick it up, and it seems to wither at your touch. It smells stronger, more potent, than any flower should. You inhale with your eyes closed.
They stay closed.
You do not know how long you have been like this, half asleep, holding a dead flower that smells like ten living ones.
Days.
Months.
Years.
Centuries.
Centuries since you last saw your mother. Centuries since you took a walk in the woods. Centuries since you got lost, picked up a flower,
centuries since you have died.
You have had centuries to open your eyes-
those unseeing pits of soul-
and now they are wide open
seeing.
You see a cottage in the woods- the one that you grew up in. There are exactly four windchimes hanging off of the porch's wooden shade, their music loud and chaotic. Too loud, in fact.
There are only four windchimes, yet you hear four hundred.
You must be imagining things.
Did you imagine this walk? This forest?
Did you imagine yourself?
Yes, you think, as you look down at your hands that never existed, at your bare feet that left no mark.
Yes, you have imagined
Everything.

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