Chapter IV

In the Eyes of a Forest

[Part I]

[R E A L I T Y]

  She sighed. The glass paled and grew opaque—frosted with a layer of moisture. She began wistfully carving shapes into the glaze with her finger. A circle. A little square to keep that circle company. A little triangle to join in their games. A lopsided shape off by its lonely self, watching the other three play.

   “Anna!” came her Mother’s scold from behind her, “I told you to stop doing that!” 

  “Sorry,” she muttered as she tugged a sleeve cuff up and wiped the shapes away. She folded her arms on the windowsill and buried her face up to her nose in them. Cold wafted off the glass, pouring over her and sending chills through her bones. She breathed in. Her soft sweatshirt gave off the flowery pungency of laundry detergent; the stale scent of dust from the windowsill subtly accompanied it. Outside, the air was glittering with strings of falling raindrops, creating a layer of haze like thick TV static over everything. The world was distorted by the downpour: trees became black, abstract creatures that bent and reshaped their bodies in the hands of the wind. Buildings were reduced to faded geometry and adorned with warm, glowing panels of various sizes. Once in a while, cars would pass—fuzzy at the edges and colors washed out by the gray light from the grayer sky. Yellow-ish beams would shoot from their front ends, carving conical shapes of light that disappeared into the shimmering precipitation. Then, they would be gone, migrating past with a distant roar.

  She reached out a finger and pressed it against the icy window. The glass vibrated slightly with the percussive taps of striking raindrops. The warmth of her skin cast a ghostly outline of moisture onto the window around her fingertip: it wavered like a flame caught in a waning breeze. Her eyes were glued to it—a warmth as out of place as a candle in a snowstorm. Though it would weaken and grow thin as the cold glass tried to snuff it out, it remained. Of course, she thought to herself, her finger would eventually grow cold too, and the ring of moisture would fade without its supply of warmth. But, if she just…

   She exhaled against the glass. The ring of fog expanded, coating the glass for the briefest of moments before beginning to shrink again. She breathed on it again, strengthening it. This way, the patch of fog would never run out of warmth. It would grow and grow until it coated the whole window.

   “Anna!” 

  Right. She buried her face back into her arms and withdrew her finger. The foggy patch withered. It started at the edges: the cold chewed away at them first, shriveling the shape on the glass. Then it began to rot away in the chill. Holes of clarity formed in the fog and grew as it festered. Before long, all that remained were a few tiny specks that, one-by-one, shrank into nothingness. The only evidence left behind was a weak smudge of a fingerprint—a testament to her vain efforts and a monument to her boredom. 

  Something moved behind the veil of rainfall. The girl blinked. It was still there. Two streaks of color: one black, the other, bright red. She knew what they were, but for that moment, she clamped a hand over the mouth of her thoughts and let them remain as they were without definition: a pair of colored smears on the fuzzy, TV-static canvas—warping as they moved through rolling water beads and tiny rivers on the window. 

  The red one was a lively splash of color in the gray world. It skipped along, bouncing and stomping through puddles. She might’ve imagined it, but the melody of a hummed, cheery tune reached a hand from the depths of the downpour’s drowning clamor. She wanted to pull it from that ocean of white-noise; to invite it into the room where it could dry off, warm up, and serenade the space with the red smear’s life and glee. A smile crept onto her mouth as she pictured the glowing stranger in red sitting on the couch and telling stories from a faraway fairyland. 

  She shifted her gaze. The black smudge was from an entirely different world than the red smudge. It was cold—colder than the windows. The space around it seemed a bit darker than usual: it was a puddle of wet paint, slowly bleeding and diffusing into the surrounding parchment. As it walked past, the trees arched their wooden spines more violently and the rain pounded the window just a bit harder: the black smudge leaked more than just its color into the surrounding atmosphere, it seemed. It was sad, almost. It looked hunched over, as if the weight of the falling rain were pushing its head into the pavement. This stranger would not enter her home: it would wait at the unlocked door, denying spoken invitations with a polite, dejected shake of its head—all the while, watching through the peephole or peering under the door. 

  Some sense of urgency seized her, and she pressed her pinky to the window—tracing the black smear’s crawl across the frame. The breath in her lungs began to burn as it yearned for freedom, but she didn’t dare to let it out. Her eyes remained locked on her finger—following its journey across the glass. The smudge stopped. Her heart skipped a beat, and she found herself leaning in closer to the window. Her eyes were burning now too. Tears pooled at the corners of her vision and threatened her search within the glass. It appeared: a thin, wispy, barely-visible outline of wavering moisture that clung to the black smudge. Her smile grew a little as she hastily pulled herself away from the window. 

  Perhaps the black smudge wasn’t so cold after all…

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   “How much further?” Oddball asked.

   Plack! Water cascaded into the air and hung there for a moment like an abstract, crystalline construct, before plummeting back down with a crash and shattering against the pavement. Ashley giggled. She skipped ahead a few more steps, then put her feet together and jumped. She spun around to face him before landing and scattering another puddle under her boots. All the while, she was smiling like a child at a carnival. 

   “Almost there!” she said. Oddball looked her over. Water was pouring off her coat and seeping up from the hard fabric mesh of her boots. Her jeans were almost black with water now. How could anyone with an umbrella possibly be this soaked? 

   Idiot, he thought, you’re gonna catch a cold or something. He winced. What are you, her mom? Why does that matter to you? Ashley extended the umbrella out to him, interrupting his internal dialogue. 

   “Sure you don’t want it?” Oddball hurriedly shook his head. He’d dropped her umbrella in the coffee shop earlier without realizing it. He grimaced. She’d given it to him and he’d almost lost it in a matter of minutes! 

   “I’m fine,” he said as he tugged his waterlogged hoodie tighter around himself. The frigid fabric pasted itself to his skin. He might as well have been wearing a big, wet beach towel. Granted, he thought to himself as he shivered, I don’t normally go out when it rains this hard. His mind fled his skull out the back door, flying back to his dorm room: the darkness, the warmth; sitting at the desk, filling the trash bin and floor with failed drawings; listening to the rain rattle the windows; maybe finding a good comic to read online. A particularly dramatic shudder shook the daydream from his brain. If anything, now he just felt even more cold, wet, and miserable. He wouldn’t take the umbrella, but he wouldn’t take his eyes off it either. 

   Ashley cocked her head, frowned, and then shrugged. “Suit yourself,” she said, as she twirled around on one foot and launched into her next dramatic-yet-graceful puddle-stomp. Oddball watched her carry on, a college-age girl splashing through puddles like an elementary-schooler. 

  This is the same girl, he thought, who got flustered about “having to cover for you” earlier. 

  Something began to dig at him—drilling into his flesh with invisible rods and pulling him away from his train of thought. He stopped—nearly tripping—and began turning slow circles to survey his surroundings. Was someone watching them? It wasn’t impossible: they were passing through a residential area right now, so the roads were lined with apartment buildings. He craned his neck and strained his eyes to examine each window as he squirmed uncomfortably. The sky glared off the windows and those that weren’t made completely opaque by it were empty. A gripping feeling grew tighter around his midsection. He reached the last empty window and shook his head a little, as if to fling the feeling off. Nothing. There’s no one there. You’ve been outside for too long, your mind’s playing tricks on you. 

  “Oi! You better not be thinking about running off on me again!” He looked back ahead of him. Ashley had a hand on her hip and her legs locked together post-puddle-jump. Her face was curled with a scowl. 

  “No, just…thought I saw something.” 

  This answer seemed to satisfy her. She relaxed her posture a bit. “Sure you did,” she jabbed playfully, “C’mon, you’re making it weird for the people who live around here.” 

  Says you. He looked back up towards the apartment windows again, then back to Ashley. 

  Splack!! She battered another puddle with both feet and laughed wildly as water sprayed everywhere. 

  Unbelievable. Oddball sighed and started after her, doing his best to avoid the deeper puddles.

Hey there! CloudedDaydreamer here! I just wanted to apologize for how long I've been away. I've had a lot going on irl lately, I wasn't able to get much done while I was on break, and I was late getting this part out because I really wanted to deliver something high quality and satisfying upon return! Something I could be proud of! I do want to say thank you to anyone out there who still reads this. I know it's not the best, I'm already well aware of it's flaws (pacing's kind of an issue, huh?), but I'm learning and improving, I promise! 

On a quick side note, I'm probably gonna be going back and restructuring my chapter titles soon, so it's a little easier to navigate which part is which! Don't be alarmed by the change in format. :P 

And hey, if you're still here reading, please, by all means, feel free to leave a comment or review! Your feedback is really, really helpful to me, whether it's positive or negative! Seeing your responses helps me improve as a writer, and I greatly appreciate it! :) 

That's all for now. I'm gonna be trying to get back onto the regular upload schedule, but I'm not quite in the clear yet irl, so if I miss an upload, I'll be sure to let you know both in the story description and on social media! Thanks for sticking with me! Your support means the world to me! <3 

- CloudedDaydreamer