Sideways Trees

         Hello, dear readers. I wish you the most amazing year. I've been spending a lot of time thinking about this past year, usually, though, all of the years blend together and I can't separate the holidays or vacations from previous ones. But I hope your year was filled with good memories. I hope you're all doing good and feeling good. I hope 2014 is wonderful for you all, and I wish you the happiest of times.
         So I'll give you one more oddly nonsensical story before I go intensely weird on you. I'm thinking about writing poems or shorter short stories about things like Mother Nature, Father Time and Death.
          This story was recently published in my school newspaper (I'm on the Publication Design team) and its dreamy and odd but I hope you enjoy it. I'll post again soon, thanks for reading…

Sideways Trees

I made my way back out to the edge of the woods in hopes I’d get to see my friend, Mara, again. The last times we had met, she had led me to parts of the woods I didn’t even know existed. Caves filled with glowing rocks that lit the way.

I don’t know how she finds me. We never set a time or place for meeting but if I walk long enough, she almost always turns up.

“Scarlet!” I heard my name as I went deeper in. “There you are. Are you ready to go?”

I nodded and smiled as she led me down the little stream I had stopped by.

“Where are we going this time?” I asked.

“You’ll see.”

She wore shoes sort of like mine and an old t-shirt and worn jeans. We walked a while more then she stopped and pointed to the left.

“There,” she said with wonder in her voice. Her big doe-eyes shining.

I looked in the direction she was pointing in and saw a great cliff. We were at the bottom of it. The side of the cliff was covered in trees. Sideways trees peppered all over it up to the very edge.

“You up for it?” Mara asked. I nodded.

She raced for the first tree and I followed. She ran as fast as a deer and leaped for the tree closest to the ground. She caught it, hoisted herself up, reached for another tree and climbed onto that one. She motioned for me to join her. I attempted to copy her movements, and failed at first, but soon got a hang of it. We climbed together, Mara falling ahead a lot, too fast for me, and would have to wait for me to catch up. I was panting by the time we had made it to the top. It was only about fifteen feet up and Mara didn’t seem out of breath at all. We looked back down at the sideways trees. It was king if disorienting, looking at it that way. I nearly forgot which way was up or down if I stared too long.

Mara got to her feet. “Come on,” she said.

I got up and followed her. The top of the cliff was just dirt and grass and only about twenty feet in all directions before there was another edge. It felt like I was standing on an island in the sky. Mara walked to one edge except when I got  there I saw that it wasn’t a cliff’s edge, but a long, grassy hill. The kind every little kid dreams of rolling down. The woods continued a little farther down, farther than I thought it would go. It looked endless from here, like the woods had swallowed up every man-made part of the world. Of course, Mara and I had to roll down it.

“You first, Scarlet. So we don’t crash into each other.”

So I crossed my arms and legs and Mara gave me a push. Soon enough I was spinning at what felt like impossible speeds. My sight went quickly from sky to woods to ground and back again until I reached the bottom. I reached out to stop myself from rolling. The sky was still spinning for a while and when it stopped I sat up to watch Mara. She seemed to be a world away. Her figure waved to me before lying down to roll. Her laugh reached down the hill, sounding like the wind. She sped about a quarter of the way down before I spotted a single bird fly away from her as if she had been holding it. She spun a bit longer and another bird then another blue in color flew away from her. Then there was an entire flock so many I could hardly see Mara through the blue feathers. Then there were butterflies, dragonflies, animals and insects blended together, seeming to have come off of the girl. I ran closer but the distance seemed so vast. I was far off when what I thought was Mara had reached the bottom of the hill. Except Mara had been replaced by a young doe. Watching me from a distance. I stopped where I was and watched it, too. We stood there for a moment before the doe sped off into the thick trees so fast I had hardly seen it go. I reached the spot where it had been and there lay a chain with a pendant the size of a marble. It was a globe, sparkling and detailed spinning slowly on the chain when I picked it up. I realised the wave Mara had given me was not a hello, but a goodbye.

When I had gotten home that day, to the cabin a few miles off, I saw blue birds and dragonflies and butterflies all flying and fluttering around the trees and roof of the house. They chirped and buzzed louder as I approached, wearing the globe necklace. They sang and flew in circles, filling my vision with them. I laughed and they mimicked the sound.

That night I dreamed of grassy hills and sideways trees.

Thanks so much for reading! What are some of the greatest memories you have of this year? Post a comment below, tell me about it and tell me what you think. Thanks for reading!

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