[mantunus]: 595.untitled short story

The wind sang as it rustled the needles of the pines in the glade. It made the wildflowers bounce like carefree children in the wind. Sweet smells of flora, so strong you could almost taste them, hung like mist in the air. Little puffs of pollen floated about like tiny dirigibles with no desire to guide themselves, but the will of breeze. Everything was so peaceful and nothing could bother me, but the occasional bug that crawled across my toes. I still had a few hours before the city curfew took effect. My eyes grew heavy with the lulling warmth from the sun. "I wish there were birds", I whispered to myself as I drifted off to sleep. I awoke with a jolt with a sick feeling in my stomach knowing I was late, very late. Looking up I saw the sky growing dark and stars beginning to appear against the fading dusk. I wondered exactly how long I had been asleep. A faint chill in the air made me shiver. I flipped open my mobile phone and it showed 8:00 P.M, along with a flashing alert of thirteen missed calls. I groaned, because I knew the shuttle back to town would have just made its last run only moments ago. This meant I would have to find my way through the woods and walk back to town alone in the dark. People would be worried. Diana would be stalking the streets uptown looking for me in all the shops and demanding my whereabouts from anyone who she deemed knowledgeable. Lachlan would go down to the Regulator's post to ask if they had stamped my papers allowing me to leave the city limits. He would be waving my picture in front of the supervisors until one of them would remember the quiet youth with the camera. None of that would do me any good because I was alone on the trail with night quickly setting in. Walking back through the trees they towered above like silent citadels that swallowed the sky with their immensity. I thrashed through the undergrowth blindly in the darkness, feeling for a familiar path. The woods at night were never a place to be lost. One could fall into a sink hole or wander farther and farther into the woods. Without a map or supplies the outcome could prove fatal. As I stumbled onto the path, I fell to my knees with a sigh of relief. The moon’s light poked through the trees lighting my path and welcoming me to safety.