Spirit of the Forest
Drip
Drip
Rumble
Drip
The rain splattered onto the ground in sheets. Grey sneakers splashed through the ever growing puddles as another bolt of lightning lit up the trees and the sky growled once more. They boy stopped for a second, panting as rain dripped down his short brown hair.
He had come into the forest to explore hours ago, but hadn't been able to leave. He didn't know why; he didn't know how, but for some mysterious reason, the forest went on forever, an endless green and brown maze that trapped him in. He had backtracked many times but… it was almost like the trees moved. He was sure it had to be the doing of a Pokémon, although for whatever reason, he simply couldn't imagine.
His thoughts were interrupted as the sky snarled again, heralding another flash of lightning which spurred him to continue moving on. His T-shirt and shorts were both soaked, and he felt chilled to the bone, but he couldn't stay underneath a tree. Not only could it be hit by lightning, but it just felt… wrong, as if the trees were judging him. He swore one of the shifted once when he had put his hand on its trunk to steady himself. But without any other notion of how to survive, he had to keep moving. And so he did. And just when he was about to stop to catch his breath, a silhouette caught his eye.
Creeping closer, he found a small shack; it looked about one room big, tucked into the trees. For a second he considered the possibilities of it being some sort of horrible trap, but he didn't have much of an option, as he'd freeze to death if he stayed out in the rain any longer. Approaching the doorless entrance hole, he noted that it wasn't the sturdiest, but the rain didn't seem to be leaking in and apart from the couple feet near the entrance, it seemed fairly dry. Immediately after that he noticed the source of the thin glow that kept the shack from being pitch black, allowing him to notice its features. There in the center of the floor was a small flickering candle.
His first thought was to how it got there. Was it really some sort of trap? But… then again, that would be kind of stupid. There was clearly no one else in the cabin, and who would wait outside for hours in that storm waiting for someone? Heck, they wouldn't be expecting someone anyways; after all, no one in their right mind would stay outside in this weather. Well, there was him, but he didn't exactly choose to be here. The other part of his mind wondered how the candle was still lit, but after pondering for a couple seconds, he passed it up to luck. After all, the cabin was fairly dry, so it wouldn't be that much of a stretch.
Eventually deciding to abandon his misgivings for the promise of warmth, no matter how small, he walked over and sat next to the small candle. At this action the candle wavered, and he held his breath, hoping his movements had not somehow endangered the flame, but the flame returned to its normal strong and flickering form after a few seconds. He exhaled away from the flame. Thank goodness. Rubbing his hands together for some extra warmth, he placed his palms a few inches away from the fire, relishing the warmth that pulsed off of the fire. After a few minutes his eyes began to droop.
"Wow." He laughed quietly. "I must have tired myself out a lot. I never start sleeping this quickly."
As he half struggled to keep his eyes open, he noticed the candle flame looked bigger than before. Or not. His eyes were so blurry that everything looked slightly smudged.
'Whatever,' he thought to himself, 'I'll get out of here in the morning-' but as his eyelids fell, the flame only got bigger and bigger.
And despite the fires usual intention of keeping warm, the boy's body just got colder and colder as the flames rose higher...