She had decided to keep riding after sunset, as she had been thinking she was getting close. It was now three hours later and Sheele knew she was almost home. It felt calming, recognising the same atmosphere of the forest she had known so long ago, and getting rid of her homesickness at the same moment she realised she had it.
But she was anxious at the same time. What if they didn't welcome her? Oh, but they would. If anything, they would lock her in a cage to prevent her from being able to leave them ever again. She hadn't left on the best of term with the other villagers, but that was mostly because she had wanted to see the outside world. There were rules, especially for her, but she had decided to go against them. She still didn't regret leaving, though she knew the outside world hadn't exactly given her paradise. At least not permanently. Still, she was already missing it, feeling the world was now back to being the dream it had once been.
She had already decided that after returning to the village, she could never leave the forest again. Not because of the rules of the village which she still didn't respect. It was because her paradise had faded, and then plunged, until there had been nothing left but a hell hole. The slowly building pressure had reached it's peak and exploded. She should have seen it coming, she knew that, but she had been comforting herself with the illusion that everything would end up fine, the world would sort out itself. And now she was back in the forest, and the whole world was back to being an illusion. Even her own son.
Her son was what she would miss most, and be most sorry for leaving. And the worst thing was that in this forest, she could never mention him. It would remind the people of the man she had left with, the traveller who had stayed in the village for some months many years before. He had charmed the entire community, and when Sheele and him had started a relationship it was respected. He was despised, though, when people found out that he had made Sheele pregnant, and he announced that he wanted to take her to his home. Sheele had left with him, and never looked back. And now she was back here. Now she had to take the consequences.
She had recently realised, though, that the future would always contain a reminder of the reality of the outside world. She was pregnant again. With a child she would have to spend the next decades with, constantly reminding her of the child's father. And everything else, the whole mess which she would now never be able to escape totally.
Half an hour later, she sneaked into her old house, and woke her mother. She was greeted by a scream.