"His fingers scraped like frostbite against your skin, frigid and chilling. You were almost tempted to look and see if the places he touched had gone black and blue."
༶☆
The unshakable feel of adventure always wracked through your bones as though yo...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
As an adventure-loving child, you were rambunctious, eager, and far too much for a single father to care for. However, Charlie Swan, Chief of Police and most importantly, your father, wasn't a man who gave up easily. Not on cases, not his friends, and certainly not on you.
Not when you would come home with bleeding arms and knees, and not when you would pull him along after work with a big smile, spotting a place in the woods you'd thought he'd love.
Not when he spent his days patching you up and scolding you for not being safe, arguing with you warmly about going out when he wasn't home. It was a routine you wished lasted a lifetime, one that ached to never be tainted with anything but fondness.
Somehow, it was all ruined in less than an hour.
At age 14, you finished sketching the tree before you in your journal. From what you could gather, it was a western red cedar tree, its needles turning into a burnt orange as the fall season arrived.
You circled the tree a few times, stealing a small branch to press between your pages later. Despite your backpack already being completely full, you squeezed your plant journal in with a few hard shoves and turned back to the monstrously huge tree in front of you.
With keen familiarity, you begin climbing the tree, holding onto stronger branches, and pulling yourself up with gloved hands. Charlie had gotten tired of you complaining about your callouses, forcing you to wear the climbing gloves when you left to adventure, especially after you started using them as excuses not to do Mrs. Connor's assignments.
You sulked at him for a while after they worked well.
The view from the higher branches was broad, with only a few thin trees between you and a beautiful meadow. Flowers layered themselves in your eyes, grass swaying peacefully in the fall breeze. Wishing for a better look, you climb one branch higher, fingers curling around the bark of the branch.
Suddenly, a chirping sound came from right next to you. You turned your head and blinked stupidly at a bunch of baby birds. Cooing quietly at them, their big eyes blinked back at you, opening their beaks, and abruptly started screaming.
If that wasn't terrifying enough, their mother, a damn hawk, started flying straight at your head.
You couldn't duck fast enough.
The hawk's talons slash nastily at your face, blood instantly pouring down your forehead where she managed to sink her claws in. Grabbing her legs, you pull and push, finally freeing yourself from the hawk's grip. You fall a few feet and your heart jumps to your throat as you manage to hold onto an old, creaky branch with only one hand to support you.
The bird swoops away towards her nest and for a moment, you feel relief.
That's when it snaps. The branch echoes as it breaks into two pieces, leaving only the air holding you. And hold you, it does not.
