The Promised Land

Flames lick at the night sky, spraying their molten saliva in my face. The heat clings to my cheeks, my forehead, and my chest. I hardly feel anything apart from it. People – the ones that stayed around – surround me, yet I do not look at their faces. I’m afraid of what I’ll find. Will they be happy or disappointed? I hope for both and neither at the same time.

As I look up at the stars, I wonder how they usually look, when they’re not obscured by the crimson glow. No use crying over it now. I pick up my bag and strap it onto my shoulder. The things I hurriedly stuffed in there jangle against each other. I don’t know where one goes without name, money, or any form of resource, but I’ll have to find out. The good thing, despite the bleak prospects, is that right now it doesn’t matter to me that much if I live or die. At this point the decision is in the gnarled hands of the forest roots I stumble over. My feet catch onto bushes and I hear birds flying away above my head, having registered the stranger in their midst. The singular sound of my footsteps could be mistaken for an army, the amount of noise I’m making is almost deafening. Once I moved as one with the forest. Perhaps everyone gets chewed up and spit out by it, at one point. Left for dead or even worse, life in the city.

Tor was right to leave before it all went to hell. Even though it technically is his fault that it went there in the first place. The statements he and the outsider gave to some faraway police aroused their interest, having physical evidence on their very bodies, it made the ridiculous claims believable enough to come looking, or that’s at least what the people were whispering to each other. And while no police car came ramming in our humble gate yet, the fear of just that happening was enough to stir up the entire community. Now they’ll definitely come due to the fire leaping from tree to tree, slithering to the forest and digging deep to reach all that lives here. All that hides. Despite the significant distance to the next town, I’m sure they would’ve already seen it by now. Called the firefighters, who are further away than the police even, given that our forest usually isn’t in danger of spontaneously lighting on fire and no one cares about this place anyways. The only people who care already left out of fear or stayed out of fear and were caught by the flames, some let go but frozen in place right at the gates staring back in horror. What to do if your world lights on fire? Run.

I curse under my breath as I fall down onto the frozen earth. Slowly it dawns on me that my limbs are shaking from both the exhaustion and the lack of nourishment in combination with the insomnia I‘ve experienced recently, ever since Tor left. Apart from the hurt and desperation there’s also a sense of disgust towards these very things rising within me. An inner fight between my ego and my feelings for the man that left the community, that left me here. Scoffing, I get back up again, forcing ignorance towards the cabin to my left barely hidden away by bushes, separating me from the clearing. While it’d be enjoyable to throw more rocks at it, it would be a waste of the most valuable resource to my name right now: time. So I go on. Past the trees, the earth and the sky that birthed me, made up most of my very being until just now, when I ripped it off my skin. This sense of belonging will do me no good. My legs almost give out, but I start to run.