Looking
out from her bedroom window Leandra could always see the forest,
looming in the distance, another world untouched by cement and brick.
For a younger, more childish Leandra it had been a source of endless
imaginative stories and characters; she used to envision faeries
dancing in the leaves, wearing dresses sewn from spider silk with dew
drop embellishments. Unicorns would hide shyly amongst the trunks,
their cover exposed when sunbeams broke through the foliage and
flashed against their clean white fur. Leandra even imagined an ogre
making his home there; ugly, smelly and 10ft tall, but a kind and
gentle soul who was actually a great cook.
Now that
she was older she knew it was nonsense to think of such fantasies as
reality. The faeries were actually spiders, her unicorns everyday
deer, the ogre quite possibly a bear. Still, the forest presented an
amusement. It was such a curiosity to her, she a city-bred girl whose
outside experience amounted to berry picking at the local farms with
a favourite aunt. Despite the ever consuming mass of the city, this
black forest outside her window had remained in place, never
changing, a constant view.
Home from
university, sick with an imaginary flu that conveniently excused her
from a midterm biology test, Leandra had found herself bored with the
usual digestion of television and video games. From the corner of her
eye she saw the forest. It simply sat on the horizon as always. There
was nothing special or inviting about it today. Yet Leandra grabbed
her sweater and sneakers anyway. The porch door slammed behind her,
as if bidding goodbye, good luck, be safe.
It was
roughly noon when she left. It was not a very thrilling or long walk.
Leandra simply crossed the large empty lots that separated her house
and the tree line. The area had been cleared away years ago for a
housing development project that never took off. Up close, the
forest was almost a disappointment. Rather than giant trees with
trunks so big you couldn’t wrap your arms around them, the bush was
made up of scraggly anorexic birch and thinned out shrubs. Leandra
had half a mind to walk away. The forest of her childhood was nothing
more than sticks. But she went in anyway, and looking back at the
situation now she couldn’t say why.
