The Bird

The landscape was rather barren, but the girl in the wagon didn't worry too much. She couldn't remember what might have been going on before she got in the wagon, but she didn't feel concerned about that.

She didn't know why, but she was confident that everything would be explained when He arrived. She had no idea who 'He' was, just that she had a sense that He would eventually arrive.

She didn't know who she was, but she couldn't say why, but that hardly felt concerning to her. Like who she was wasn't that important. Occasionally she wondered about that, but was always quickly distracted by something going on around her.

The wagon didn't move, but she never ran out of water to drink that came from a barrel in the corner of the wagon, right by where the driver would sit. Though, a faint part of her insisted that there should be a stream or lake of water around here, despite the fact that there was only rock anywhere she looked.

Still, she couldn't shake a nagging feeling that something wasn't right around her. She didn't know what was causing that feeling, but it kept her from really being comfortable there. Especially when the food that would sometimes appear out of nowhere in the wagon sometimes disappeared before she could eat it when she focused too much on that feeling.

Occasionally she had an urge to climb down from the wagon, but whenever she reached the side, she couldn't bring herself to move past the edge of the wagon. Even if it was to reach her arm past being directly above the wagon.

Sleeping helped her quell the conflicting feelings and desires going on around her. However, that would only last so long, as she couldn't sleep forever. She couldn't say what was causing those feelings, only that she couldn't help but wonder at times if she was losing her mind.

Which came to a head when she saw the bird on the edge of the wagon. It wasn't like the other birds in the area. This bird looked mostly like a falcon, but it's feathers made Elin think of a warm fire, despite her having no idea what a fire was.

She wasn't sure what the bird was doing, but it did feel like the bird was looking directly at her. Like it either wanted something from her, like it was waiting for her to do something, or like it wasn't sure if it wanted to eat her.

"Elin, you shouldn't spend so much time up there," the bird said a few minutes after the girl noticed it, startling her. The girl wasn't sure why, but the bird had a voice that was rather melodic, and somehow sounded rather familiar. She wasn't sure how, but she suddenly knew this bird was female.

In regards to what the bird had said, she had no idea who 'Elin' was, but it resonated with her anyway. Like it was something that she had forgotten long ago and yet recently as well.

"Who are you?" the girl asked, unsure if the bird was actually talking to her.

The bird looked around, like it wasn't sure if it was safe to talk there or like it was expecting to see someone else around. The girl couldn't say what that bothered her so much to the point where she felt the need to look around herself.

"You need to leave the wagon quickly," the bird urged again, pulling the girl's attention back to it. "If you waste time asking me pointless questions, then you're going to end up here until he gets back. Trust me, you don't want him to find you here. I'm not sure how I escaped when he had me, but I'm not going to let him get me again."

The girl opened her mouth to ask what the bird meant, but the bird's wings opened up and the bird flew off. Leaving her to stare after it, feeing more than a little confused.

Why did the bird seem so familiar? Why did call her such an unfamiliar name? Why did she feel even more panicked now that the bird is gone? And more importantly, who is 'him?'

The girl walks to the edge of the wagon and tries to will herself to step out, but she finds herself with the same block that wouldn't even let her try to move her arm out past the edge of the wagon.

The girl feels her heart start to beat faster. She doesn't understand why, but she is starting to feel a wave of panic start to overtake her. The more she struggles against whatever force is holding her back, the more she feels the panic start to overwhelm her.

She doesn't know how long she spends at the edge of the wagon, but without thinking, she starts pacing around the wagon at some point. Nor does she know how long it takes before she realized what was beneath the panic: fear. She was scared.

She doesn't know if the bird was a construct of her imagination, maybe a kind of avatar of her fear, but she can't bring herself to feel any anger or animosity towards the bird. Although, if that was true, than where did the name Elin come from?

The girl pushes the question out of her mind almost as soon as it showed up. She didn't have time to deal with that, instead of the problems that she had right in front of her.

The girl got so wrapped up in her thoughts as she paced around the wagon that she tripped over her own feet as she was turning around at one end of the wagon. She didn't fall out, but she did land with her head and shoulder past the edge of the wagon that she hadn't been able to even reach out over.

The moment the girl realized that she was in that kind of position, she felt an irresistible urge to get back completely over the wagon. To do so, she found herself throwing her body to the floor of the wagon, her elbow hitting the floor painfully. Especially as the wooden floor of the wagon broke, splinters digging into her arm and elbow.

As she carefully extracted her arm, she couldn't help but feel scared that she created another place that she wouldn't be able to move over, given how the hole in the board might be considered 'outside the wagon' now.

However, as she looked at it, she noticed that the hole didn't extend through the bottom of the wagon. Instead it had revealed a hidden layer in the wagon. A layer she wasn't sure how else to access.

Inside that layer, the girl couldn't help but notice a pendant with a crystal on it. She didn't know why, but she felt rather drawn to it. Before she knew it, she'd reached in and pulled it out, looking closely at it.

She turned the crystal around in her hands and felt surprised as it turned a different color each time. At first it was a clear crystal, then as she turned it to the right, it turned red, then yellow, then violet. When she turned it back the other way, it became the color it had previously.

In addition to the different colors, she couldn't help but notice something inside each color. In some cases it was like the bird who had told her to get out of the wagon. In others it had something else. When the crystal was an aqua green, she saw a girl. She couldn't say that she knew the girl, but she seemed very familiar to her.

Somehow she knew that the girl had amber eyes and azure hair. How she knew, she couldn't say. Just that a number of details were clear to her without being able to really make them out through the crystal.

Looking away from the crystal and the girl inside it, she looked at the other end of the wagon. With what had happened when she'd tripped, she now knew how to get out of the wagon. She doubted she'd manage it without getting hurt, but it would at least get her out of the wagon and whatever force was holding her in it.

She couldn't say that she would feel compelled to climb back in the wagon, but as long as she was out of it, she had hope that she'd be able to also escape whatever compulsion she was under that kept her from willingly moving herself out of the wagon.

She wasn't sure how high up the wagon was, but from what she'd seen before she had to pull herself back in the wagon, she thought maybe that the wagon's floor was about half her height off the ground. Maybe a little more.

Still, she knew she wouldn't be outside the wagon unless she forced herself to move past the edge of the wagon. Which meant that she was likely to fall, and certainly get hurt. While it wasn't a pleasant idea, she couldn't think of any other alternative.

Her only hope would be that she didn't get hurt that badly.

Standing up and gripping the crystal pendant tightly in her fist, she took a deep breath and started running to the other end of the wagon. She didn't have much space before she reached the other end, but that wasn't the point. The point was to make herself off balance and have momentum that could make her essentially 'trip' over the edge of the wagon and let her leave it.

As she expected, as she reached the end of the wagon, her feet suddenly froze, unable to move, yet her body continued to move from the inertia. Making her fall face first towards the ground, which now was rising fast to meet her face in a rather painful manner.