Let's All Go Into the Forest

“The forest is right this way! Keep up, or I’ll leave you behind!” Clarion giggled to herself as she zipped away, leaving trails of glowing glitter in her wake. The other two were on the ground beneath her, running to keep up, but she just couldn’t slow down! Not when this was so close to being over! Soon, it would be like it was nothing more than a bad dream, and she would be back with her princess.

Being in the city felt like it was eroding her. She had never seen anything like this, and she never wanted to again. She didn’t belong here. That voice talked about “magical girls” but just because she was a magic user who happened to be a girl, that didn’t mean that voice should have lumped her in with the rest of those girls! She didn’t think she had anything in common with them at all, even if a few of them were nice enough. And she had nothing to prove when it came to popularity, or whatever that voice meant.

She flew through the streets, all the way back to where she had found her forest again. She paused, hovering, and staring at it. The colors almost seemed richer than she remembered, vivid in a way that drew her in without her permission. But that was probably just because she missed it so much! She almost couldn’t wait for the other girls. But she somehow managed, just waiting a few feet away, when they arrived below her, panting and gasping for breath.

“Here it is!” Clarion called down to them. “Thank you for all of your help, but I’ll be going now! You’re welcome to come along, if you’d like. I’m sure the princess would be happy to have you!”

“What do you mean?” Starlight Heart shouted back at her. “You should get away! It’s-”

But Clarion wasn’t listening anymore.

Instead, she flew forward, entranced. The forest was just like she remembered, but somehow even brighter. If she looked too hard at the edges of it, where it connected to the gray buildings around it, it made her eyes hurt. So she didn’t look. It didn’t matter if it didn’t make sense. This was her home. No one knew it better than her.

She could hear the animals, speaking to each other in soft, chiming tones. And then- she heard her before she saw her. “Clarion! I was wondering where you were! Come here, silly!”

Her princess was there, sitting high in the branches of a tree. She giggled and tilted her head, her blonde hair falling over her dress as she stared at Clarion. For a long time.

“Princess, are you okay?” Clarion called out. She wanted to make sure she hadn’t been affected by all that had happened to Clarion. That none of it had invaded her princess’s life.

“Of course I’m okay now that you’re home!” Had the princess blinked yet? She tilted her head further. “Come home, Clarion! Don’t waste away out there, playing some game you don’t even know the rules to. The rewards can’t be that good!”

Had Clarion told her anything about the game? She hadn’t, right? The further in she flew, the fuzzier her head started to feel. The leaves seemed like they were moving on loop, repeating the same gusts of wind. She had to make sure this was real, and not some kind of trick.

“Do you want to stay here and try to be the best magical girl, or do you want to give up and come be with me?”

Clarion didn’t know why her princess phrased it like that, but the answer was obvious. “I want to give up.”

She wanted to go home and leave this “competition”, or whatever it was. That was the thought she focused on. She reached out, brushed the first dewy green leaf, and began to unravel.

Clarion had lived a sweet life before. A happy life. She had never felt pain like this. Her fingertips started to pull apart at the seam of each print, pulling away and stretching out into the distance. She gasped. The pain seared across her, sharp and hot and blinding. She tried to fly backwards, to get away from it. Instead her hand stayed where it was, her arm stretching apart like taffy.

The skin of her fingers was gone, leaving muscle exposed, and the effect was climbing up her hands. She should have been bleeding, but she wasn’t. Instead, she went almost like yarn, or cotton candy, each piece of her spun away and floating into the forest. It didn’t look like home to her anymore. Instead, it was a gaping maw. Drawing her in. Ready to consume.

The princess was gone, replaced with a crow that cocked its head, looking at her with detached curiosity.

Clarion beat her wings desperately, trying to escape, but the pull at her arm kept her in place no matter how hard she flew. She saw things she didn’t understand, other versions of herself, but just lines. The moment before and after, drawn in the air in front of her. The crow looked bored with her, and turned to fly away. When it did, her vision flickered, and for a moment, it looked like another person, getting up to leave. She didn’t want them to walk away bored! She wanted them to stay and help her!

She turned back to look at the other two girls on the ground. Somehow she could still see them, even though she was in the forest and they were out there. It was like her pocket of the world was flattening into itself, and she was being squeezed apart by the panes she was stuck between.

Her vision was blurry with tears.. She didn’t even know when she had started crying. “Please… Help me…”

It was like they were frozen in time. They didn’t respond. Didn’t even move. She was on her own. The split in her skin was traveling up her arms. She watched as her finger bones stretched too. She had seen bones cracked open before, in stews that wild game hunters prepared for the meat-eating humans she was friends with. She had never imagined that she would see her own, pulled thin from the dissolving bones of her fingers, stretching in winding paths, carried by the wind. It would almost be pretty, the way the colors blended together and carried on the breeze. If she couldn’t still feel it.

It felt like the moment stretched on into infinity for Clarion. When it got to her eyes, she was almost relieved. She wouldn’t have to watch this happening anymore. But even after she was nothing but streaks of color, painting the path of the wind through the forest, she was still aware. And it still hurt.