The Keys: A Tale of a Beginning and End

Chapter nineteen

I twisted and turned on the bed, its not that it was uncomfortable its just been a long time since I had a comfortable nights sleep. Tried to sleep at the other end of the bed, didn't work, tried laying horizontally, still up, wrapped myself up in a blanket and then threw all the blankets off and had none on, it didn't work either big surprise.

I grabbed 2 pillows and jumped from the bed onto the floor, then I took the cushions from the couch in my room and put them on the floor. Arranging them so that I had a small mattress to lay on that was more comfortable than the cold floor but not as soft as the bed, then I took the pillows and put them on one end. There were several blankets on the floor, from when I threw them off the bed, I took the one that was the warmest due to how cold dark and under ground places could get. I leapt onto my creation, breathing a sigh of relief I turned over once and soon afterwards fell asleep.

The next morning when I woke up all I saw was green, green trees, green bushes, pretty much a forest. I got up and looked around, first thing I thought was that I had some weird dream about being kidnapped by the village we were looking for, but soon noticed that it was all true, I was all alone.

Once again my clothes were not mine, my outfit consisted of the usual black long sleeve crop top and old ripped up gray jeans, but these clothes were better suited for blending in the forest. A dull green sweat shirt, (obviously it worked cause I was sweating) a pair of camouflage pants, with many pockets, and hiking boots. The clothes were surprisingly comfortable and it was easy for me to manuver in. I checked my pockets to see if I had anything that would tell me where or, even better, what I had to do. The only thing I found was a map, but it wasn't a normal map, this one was extremely detailed and appeared to shift depending where I faced. I turned in 4 different directions, north, south, east and west, each of which had a different image.

North had a painted image of a pond, with beautiful flowers blossoming on lily pads, south had a dry waste land, to the east were snowy mountains, none of those seemed to be the right place to go until I viewed the west. Towards the west was a marsh, it was balanced and by that I mean life and death. The bottom of the marsh contained small corpses of animals decaying at its floor, on top there were different types of insects each wear unique and interesting. It seemed like the right place to go so after I thought it through I turned and walked to the west.

I didn't even take 2 steps when I became waste deep in the marsh bog, which didn't make any sense I was just in the forest. It seems that wherever I was had magic, but it was on such a huge scale for something so rare. Some how out here I would have to prove my worth in order to get my flail back, how am I going to find it in such a vast expanse of boggy marsh.