thisisnomyth

She comes out in the early mornings, the pretty young girl with the soul of a tree. She stands where one of her brothers once stood, closes her eyes and feels the remnants of him, grabs hold of what remains and holds on tight.

She misses him, she misses them all.

She feels the trees falling away, feels the ones that naturally fall and the ones that get struck down. She knows what it’s like to fall, she’s been doing it for longer than you’ve been alive.

But she sti8ll gets up, still grows, still moves on. She is a creature that never stops growing because her brothers and sisters never stop. They spring forth from the earth, slowly but steadily reclaiming it at their own.

And she is a part of the wood, just as everyone else is, just as the lost boys and girls, as the fae and foxes and fire birds too.

Just as I am, just as you are.

She welcomes you, by the way, there’s a sapling growing in your honor.

Sing, my dear, oh sing out loud. Sing for the city streets, for the roar of the traffic, for concrete and steel. Sing for the hum of people, the warm sidewalks, the glow of lamplight in the evening.

And sing, my dear, sing for the lost boys and girls in the alleys, sing for the strays, for the ones who have nowhere to go. Sing for them like you are a bird, like you are a sparrow guiding them home again.

And sing for yourself, so you do9n’t get lost. Sing to know where you belong, sing louder than the hum, than the roar, than anything around you. Just sing, sing, sing until you can’t, until your lungs hurt, until you’re dizzy with the noise.

And then keep singing because you must, because the world needs more songs, because the song is a part of you, it is held in your heart and simply waits to be released.

So sing.

There’s a ghost girl in the grass.

Everyone knows about her, has seen her in their passing. They sometimes try and talk to her but no one knows if she can actually speak. her words might have died with her body, no o9ne can be sure.

They wonder if she used to be a forest girl, if she’d been a tree or a dear of a fox or something else they never knew of. Her forest is gone, torn down in the name of progress and what’s left is this patch, this field where the trees used to be.

When some people speak to her, they apologize.

The forest girls are dwindling in number these days, everyone knows that. There are places to protect them, people are fighting for them but it’s hard. The world people yearn for progress and somehow, in that, the forest girls are lost. The sea girls, the field girls, the lake sky and tree girls.

The boys too, all those ghost boys on the highway and haunting houses that don’t belong to them. They’re lost, looking for a place to call home again.

These days ghosts are more and more common, becoming a part of the landscape like trees or grass. Everyone knows of a ghost, has seen or talked to one and so the girl in the field is nothing new, she’s barely remarked upon.

But sometimes, every now and then, someone wonders about them, apologizes maybe, or just says hello because the ghosts deserve at least that.

When she was in a cage, she dreamed of freedom. It consumed her, devoured her whole and she couldn’t think of anything else. She sang when they told her to sang but her songs were always about freedom, about flying and the air beneath her wings. She couldn’t think of anything else.

And then the door was left open.

She stared at her, her eyes wide and unsure. She kept waiting for someone to come and shu7t it, to lock her away again because surely they would. She was a fine prize and no one would be foolish enough to let her go.

But no one came and she inched closer and closer to the door.

Her head poked out first and she breathed in the first moments of freedom. THe air didn’t seem any different, no cleaner or fresher than when she was in her cage. It didn’t matter though. n She kept going. Carefully, she exited the cage, always being quiet, always being careful to be able to dart back in if someone came.

And then she was out. She was free. The world was open to her in a way it had never been before.

And then it hit her all at once, a rush of sheer panic. She had the world. The entire world and she could go anywhere, do anything. She was free, there were no borders, no rules, no bounders. For a creature that grew up in cages, who had never known anything else, this was utterly terrifying.

But she knew she had to keep going, had to push past the fear because, in the end, freedom should win out over fear, it should win out over panic and anxiety and everything else that tries to crash into her and force her back into her cage.

Freedom and the ability to spread her wings and fly.

The fox had run to the sea.

It doesn’t regret what it had done, not at all. It lived on a ship with a crew of mismatched sailors, a family that had been cobbled together in ports and piers. They had grown three times the size they had been when they started and there are no regrets. Some of them leave, get off when they reach land but none of them look back at their time with the crew badly.

And now it’s the fox’s turn. It’s his time to leave the sea and remember what it’s like to have land under his feet, to feel the turn of the earth and not the crashing of the sea. It’s his turn to wander forests and hear the crunching of leaves.

But a part of his heart will always belong to the sea, just as a part of his heart will always belong to the forest. He will close his eyes and dream of sunsets over the ocean, of the smell of salt in his fur, of steering the ship through good days and bad.

The good thing though, the best thing, is that no one is chaining him to the forest, just as no one is chaining him to the sea. He’ll be back on the deck of his ship one day, just not right now.

Characters: Unnamed angel
Word Count: 146

Once upon a time, an angel kept the legends alive.

She was a mermaid and a fairy, a princess and a knight. She was a queen and an adventuress and every creature you've ever heard of.

The legends lived under her skin, they ran through her veins and kept her heart beating. As long as they lived, she lived, and the opposite held true too.

But as the legends grew, so did she. The blood in her veins became thicker, she became ghost girls on the highway and men with hooks for hands. It was hard for her, but she managed, she grew because she knew it was what she was meant to do.

But the old legends still live inside her, she's still a princess under the city dust, still a fairy under the streetlight. As long as the old legends live, so does she.