Stray you not in to The Wood
The trees breed death; consume all good
The ground steals names, the wind thieves souls
All that enter, It controls
Do not wander, do not roam
Lest you lose your hearth and home
So stay away, be tempted not
Or from this world you'll be forgot
She did not know just how she knew where she was.
But she did.
No...
She could not be here. It was all but impossible. How had she even ended up here?!
Her memory spurned her, turned to liquid in her mental grasp. Try as she might, she could not remember.
But the warnings... those she could recall, for how could she not? Her mother's countless cautions, whispered at the door, as solemn and true as the worry in her eyes. An empty house, its former owner known by none, a sheer impossibility in a town as small as hers. A darkly evocative, but harmless little rhyme, so common and widespread every schoolchild knew it.
If but a single one spoke true, her very existence now hung from a spider's thread. She had to escape, had to find a way out, before-!
But no- she did not even know how it was she had arrived here. How could she know how to leave? All around her, naught but trees, which way was home...?
...could... could she still truly call it home? Or had she perhaps, already...?
Somewhere, the girl named Lorna fell to her knees and sobbed.
She was lost.
All was quiet and still, but for a single, despondent looking girl, trudging downheartedly through the fallen leaves. The trees remained motionless, the wind nonexistent. Footfalls fell hard on the blanket of autumn, far louder than she'd ever thought possible. Each step carried with it the swing of a pendulum, a constant reminder that for every moment she remained here, a little more of her was lost from there.
She did not run. Running had only caused her to fall and scrape herself, to stain her skin red with the scores of jagged branch and stone. And so she simply walked, unceasingly forward, her spirit slowly dying.
A tall, shadowed form stared from afar at the newest soul to enter its domain, and hummed merrily to itself.
How nice it was, when it needed expend no effort, and they broke all on their own.