There was a pattern to the trees their disheveled growth masked.

The unpopular spot, fifteen minutes from where she lived, was recommended in one of those for pleasure tourist blogs with little to no views.

The timing was perfect. She had finished days worth of work, and the week of rain let up. It was a good enough reason for a break.

At the front desk sat a woman who took a dislike to her as soon as she came in. Quick and respectful as she could, she paid the entrance fee, then all but ran away from the crone’s disapproving glare.

Having now walked around for a few minutes, she recalled the blogger mentioning interesting details about the place, things she couldn’t find anywhere else online. He said that for the most part the small forest wasn’t for visitors who wanted a quick picture. Rather, it's a place of residence for the nuns who entertain the odd pilgrim who knew it was originally intended for rest and reconnection with a higher power.

She could see why this particular forest in a city full of them was thought to be ideal for such things.

Placing her camera on top of her bag on one of the visibly new stone benches, her eye caught on the older structure in the middle of the semi-circle.

She smiled.

Taking photos while walking wasn’t doing a very good job of clearing her head, and there was no one around to listen in. She took a deep breath, exhaled slowly, then began to talk.

"At some point I realised that life wavers. Since then I have loved lines that go straight."

She paused, right hand curling and unfurling on her side.

"I’ve trained myself to become blunt but sometimes still slip into an easy lie. I like the efficiency of repetitive things. I’m not picky about food. I visit restaurants repeatedly, generally ordering the same things as before. Whenever I feel adventurous, I explore another item on the menu, and more often than not decide to revert back to what I originally have after the meal is done. I also like checklists and find no small amount of pleasure in ticking items off. I’m more the targeted shopping type than one spending hours on end looking at things that I know immediately I don’t want.

"Put this way, I suppose my love for lines is considerably telling. I’m impulsive and often know at first glance what I like."

Her lips showed the beginning of a smile.

"At another point in time, I decided that I would prefer to fall in love with a kind man. My first love was bad, so was my second, and when the good man came, I didn’t recognise him. I was stuck in careful, distrusting, that I wasn’t willing to risk anything."

There were other means she could've use to express how she felt, but in those places she would risk being responded to. Here was where leaves give in to age and wind. Here her words would fall and fade. Here was perfect.

"Nowadays, I don’t gamble with my heart.

"I love what I’ve always loved — words, pictures, a beautifully told story. They’ve never betrayed me. They’re always there, dependable as a thing that only moves when you will it. I now realise I’ve become like them. It’s a small comfort, and a small worry."

She took a deep breath, eyes glassy, and didn't speak for a time.

"I remember the chronology of events that led me to meeting them.

"I reluctantly faced the big bad world out of a necessity I couldn’t reason my way out of. We were introduced, I put to work the personable part of me that I’m always surprised hasn’t gone away despite disuse, they smiled with lips on handsome faces. At no point was the mere idea of choosing the topic of conversation, but at some point I was confronted with it anyway. I would have liked a blatantly obvious warning, not lingering stares or always being there when I needed them."

She asked it then, the question that went round and round in her head.

"How do you choose from two good men?"

Even the wind could not carry her soft voice. It told too much of fears she never intended to say or hear.

The forest roused, filling her silence with sound, stillness with movement.

Her head rose a fraction, eyes landing on the shallow cement bowl.

"I like knowing answers to things," she started, taking something from her righthand pocket. "I’ve encountered enough stories to know the three conventional answers to my question. I know that this situation calls on me to pick one, the other, or neither, but storylines are only straight because people have already thought through what happens at least once."

The  strange coin glinted on her hand. It was strangely blank on both sides but she could tell it was old and unfamiliar. Closing her eyes, she felt faint protrusions on one face.

"The problem with me is I’m alive," she began tentatively. "Now more than ever my story wavers."

"So I wish for a fourth option. I would like a do-over with my memories still intact so I know from the get go that I have to make a choice. It’s selfish, and our history will change, but maybe then the lines would go straight.

"Maybe then I wouldn’t waver."

Underneath a tree that smothers another, roots impossibly hanging from branches, the wind swept through the girl and her clothes. She opened her eyes, threw the coin in the bowl, lingered a respectful moment, and left the niche of power for the first time.