………….

I remember it as the most beautiful place imaginable. The air was always a thick translucent mist. From the inside it was hard to make out the shapes, the cathedral like windows damp with condensation. I left messages for Addy scrawled like finger paintings on the panes.

Addy was my sister. She didn’t like coming here. She was a timid little thing, flitting here and there like a sparrow, startling at the slightest noise. She would whisper stories in my ear, about what she saw in the dense forrest surrounding the estate, like they were secrets. Given she rarely left the confines of the manor, I knew her words were heavily imaginative. Yet I was concerned by the darkness of their content.

I myself, had entered the forest often, I found it exhilarating. I always came back feeling refreshed, grounded, as though any negativity had seeped from the soles of my feet into the earth.

How was it that I felt so alive here and Addy so full of fear…