What Lies Beyond

Chapter 1.

I was running, running so fast that I didn't register the root before it was too late. I tripped and fell. I scrambled to my feet and kept running, but it was too late, it already had me, a scream echoed through the forest and I realized it was mine. There was no point in struggling, I couldn't get away, but I had to try. I bucked and kicked and screamed, but it did no good. Then out of nowhere the pain stopped. I saw a pair of boots appear out of the corner of my eye. The boots belonged to a boy... Not a boy, a fae. A fae with silver hair and pointed ears.

I jolted awake. Another nightmare about the silver haired boy... or man. Sometimes he was a little boy and I was a little girl. And sometimes he was close to my age, seventeen.

"Pancakes!" I heard the house mistress yell. I was downstairs in two seconds. I had lived with the house mistress and other teens in the local orphanage since I woke up one day, at the young age of seven. Just outside the border of town, with various wounds and scars, and couldn't remember anything besides my name: Ashlyn. But that had been many, many years ago. I had been know more than a child then. How a child so young ended up with so many scars and wounds? I had no idea.

But there were other things. Other things that I was able to do that I had no recollection of learning how do. I was an expert at hunting, fighting, and I knew how to survive in the wilderness by myself. How I knew, how to do all of those thing? I didn't know either.

After eating breakfast, I decided to walk the border of town. As I did, I threw rocks at the surrounding forest. All of the villagers were scared of the forest and no one dared venture through it. Those who did didn't come back out, and those who, by some miracle, managed to make it back to our quaint village, did not come back sane. There were legends, legends of evil creatures that lurked in the mighty forest. Legends of the merciless fae and creatures that were far, far worse. One that was rumored to be able to steal your soul. So it wasn't hard to think of why no one would want to enter the unforgiving forest. But I wasn't scared of it, I never had been.

I threw a rock into the forest, and plopped down on the hard grassy terrain, not wanting to think of all of the creatures that lurked beyond the border. I threw another rock and it didn't make a sound. No sound of it hitting the ground or a tree or anything. Almost as if... Almost as if someone, or something had prevented it from hitting the ground. Like something had snatched it out of thin air. I snapped my head up. And there waiting in the shadows of the forest, a few meters outside of the town border, were two pairs of eyes staring straight at me.