The Magic Portal: Chapter One
Instead of biting back the tears and being strong, she decided to let go fully; to experience the emotions in their overwhelming completeness. The world around her grew faded and fuzzy. The sun went down, the stars came out, and still she remained there on the floor of her bedroom. Nothing felt real anymore. The life she was living wasn’t the one she’d hoped for growing up. She was like everyone else, living life in obligation. Running around in a hurry to get better paychecks, only relaxing on weekends, and spending precious moments in a car on the interstate. What is the end goal we are all rushing towards? Death?
The sun came out, and she got dressed in a daze. Walking through the woods seemed like a good way to ground herself, so she made her hazy way to the trailhead. Cold breezes sharpened her senses a bit. Breathing in the petrichor and dewy leaves, she could see her breath in little puffs.
One step in front of the next, staring intently at the uneven ground decorated in little rocks and gnarled roots of the cedars on either side of the trail. She stopped and looked up. “Oh man, trail vision,” she mumbled to herself, taking a moment to watch the forest zoom in and out like a cinematic. Something rustled a bit in the leaves to her left, probably a little bird or chipmunk. But what’s that? An unusually pale leaf sat on the dirt, then another, and another. It was a path leading off the trail into the woods. Her trail vision zoomed in, beckoning her to lean into being led as if she were a character in a story. She looked around. No one was here, so she could bop off the trail without concerning anyone.
“Good”, she thought to herself, “It’s not like I’m in any rush to be anywhere. Besides, I can follow the leaves back, they’re so … vibrant.” It was then she realized she didn’t recognize what plant the leaves could be from; they were familiar but had no obvious defining features. In the distance, she heard a raven’s call.
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After a while of following the leaves, she stopped amidst a sea of ferns. The trail continued, but she could see it leading right under a massive tree. The tree cast a shadow all around itself despite it being a fairly bright morning. Fully embracing this experience as something magical and mysterious, her inner child squealed in delight. “What’s that?” she thought as she felt something under her foot. She immediately investigated. It was a small piece of wood. A little tree knot, actually, with the middle bit missing, making a tiny circular frame. Instinctually, she held it up to her eye and looked down at the trail of white leaves. They started to … glow?!
The deep sadness she had felt earlier completely melted away. “This might be silly,” she thought to herself, “but it’s an adventure all the same.” She continued to follow the faintly glowing trail to the tree while peering through the knothole.
The leaf trail ended at the base of an enormous oak with widespread branches and a bit of mistletoe crawling up the trunk. She held the knothole to one eye and tightly shut the other, scanning the tree from the base of the trunk up into the branches. Every so faintly, she could see something glowing on the side. Stepping through the ferns, she reoriented to view the bark of the trunk slowly pulling apart. Frozen in disbelief, she stood watching as the trunk revealed a portal. Another trail of pale leaves led into a different environment beyond the opening.
“Is this what it’s like to lose your mind?” She thought, accidentally dropping the knothole. Without it, she noticed the tree looked completely normal, still completely doused in shadow. She was up all night, in a fit of grief. Surely this was some delusion. Staring at the tree, she slowly brought the knothole back up to her eye. There it was again! She looked around herself in all directions.
“Is this really happening?” She asked herself. A voice within answered her question. “No, of course not. You are a mess and should go back to the trail. I’m your better instinct, keeping you alive. Let’s not become a cold case …” But something else tugged at her chest, prompting her forward anyway. Almost as if her physical body was overriding her mental judgment. She wanted to follow this adventure, no matter what her “better instinct” was telling her. There was a quieter, more subdued instinct within that didn’t seem to speak in intellectual terms, that made her feel as if she didn’t even have a choice.
A raven cawed from the branches above as she walked through the portal …
