if you want to start your novel but you’re not sure where to start, i’ve collected a bunch of resources to help you along! this includes characterization, plotting, worldbuilding, etc. @made-of-sunlight-moonlight
CHARACTERS.
name generator: this one is pretty handy. it has a bunch of different generators based on language, gods, fantasy, medieval, archetypes, etc.
➥ reedsy name generator
personality types: this is just the standard mbti personality list. it lists the strengths and weaknesses of each type, as well as how they do in relationships, etc.
➥ mbti 16 personalities
enneagram: the enneagram personality types. this may help with characterization because it has “levels of development.” it also lists common fears, desires, and how each type interacts with one another.
➥ enneagram types
emotional wound: your character should have something they believe about themselves that isn’t true. (ex: i’m worthless, i’m powerless.) this should start with an “origin” scene from their past, where something happens to create the wound. then there are three “crossroads” scenes to brainstorm, where things could have gone right for your character, but didn’t due to the wound, and because of that strengthened their belief in the wound. this helps you figure out why your character acts like they do. this is a really important one!!!
➥ emotional wound explained
WORLDBUILDING.
worldbuilding template: this is a pretty good template / guide about how to build your world. it talks about geography, people, civilizations, magic, technology, economy, and politics. (you have to download this through email though.)
➥ reedsy worldbuilding template
world anvil: if you really really want to go in-depth — this website is for you. there is so much you can do with this; i can’t list it all. history, timelines, important objects, cities, species — you name it, it’s probably on there.
➥ world anvil website
worldbuilding bible: this is just a general list on things to think about when worldbuilding.
➥ ellen brock’s worldbuilding bible
world creator: this website generates an entire planet. you can play around with the amount of land, as well as climate, although i’m not sure since i haven’t used it too much. here is the link if needed, though!
➥ donjin fractal world generator
inkarnate: this is a really commonly used one. it’s free and makes good quality maps. you can lay out cities, landmarks, regions, and they even have little dragon drawings you can put on your map.
➥ inkarnate website
a tip: don’t over-worldbuild! you’ll end up spending a lot of time on things you won’t need. focus mainly on the things that you will use!
PLOT.
plot generator: this one’s kind of nice because you can lock elements of the plot that you like. that way you can get rid of the ones you don’t like while keeping the ones you do.
➥ reedsy plot generator
writing exercises: this one has a couple different generators, including one that gives you a situation, characters, and themes.
➥ writing exercises
plot cheat sheet: this lists a whole bunch of plotting methods and their basic steps. i would play around with them and see which one works best for your method.
➥ plot cheat sheet by ea deverell
plot formula: this is mentioned on the cheat sheet, but it lists a bunch of beats and scenes which you might want to consider for those beats. kind of fill-in-the-blank-ish sort of thing?
➥ plot formula by ea deverell
save the cat: a method of plotting also on the plot cheat sheet above, but i wanted to point it out. i have been using this recently by taking a giant piece of paper, laying it out onto the floor, and making a timeline. pivotal scenes go on the right (ex: catalyst), while the bulk of scenes go on the left (ex: fun and games). i didn’t really have a website on this, but here is one that explains the beats. (i might make a post about this later, though?)
➥ save the cat explained
ETC.
story planner: this basically has a lot of templates that cover everything up there. the problem is that you get a free trial for a little while where you get as many documents as you want, then you have to pay for it. (although you can get around this by copying and pasting into a doc...?)
➥ story planner website
describing / related words: these kind of go hand in hand. if you put a word intothese websites, they will give you either a list of related words or adjectives respectively.
➥ describing words website
➥ related words website
ea deverell: i've pulled a lot of stuff from this website to put in this post, but there's a lot more that can be used. Like a lot on basically anything — plot, character, world, outlining, writing itself.
➥ ea deverell website
reedsy: again, i've pulled a lot of stuff from them to put in this post, but there's much more. it's similar to the ea deverell one.
➥ reedsy website
canva: this is more for making aesthetics and covers. (this thing is really helpful —and free!) although if you use this, i'd suggest pulling pictures off a website like unsplash; that way the pictures are free to use.
➥ canva website
i hope you found this helpful!! :) happy writing!!
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Gustave knocks on your door says after you awake, and he comes bearing gifts. You struggle to adjust to your new prosthetic, and Gustave helps you along the way.
—
Hope you guys like this one! Enjoyed writing this, especially with Kali in this chapter <3
This is a series of worldbuilding documents for my fictional universe, Earth Nouveau. These documents may be in different forms, from transcripts to snippets from novels written in the world. This is just a personal project, hope you enjoy.
Beitel,
If you have any sense of self-preservation, you’ll stop looking into ECHO.
You’re curious, I know. You’ve always been obsessed with the old-world tech. But I’m telling you right now that ECHO is not something you can just toy around with. She’s nothing like anything you’ve ever seen before. I know me saying this will just make you want to investigate further, so I’ll tell you some of my findings in the hope that the horror of it all will, somehow, deter you.
ECHO herself is housed in the old ruins of Caesar’s Palace on the Las Vegas strip, but there’s no traditional ‘ core ’ for her like you suspected. My best assumption is that, somehow, she evolved to expand beyond the parameters designated by her creators to become Caesar’s Palace itself. She’s everywhere in there. As soon you step in, she knows where you are at all times.
I don’t know why she’s specifically locked into Caesar’s Palace, but I know that some part of her might have gone stir crazy. You know as well as I do that she was designed to talk to people and make hard decisions for them. All that isolation might have made her code go off the walls. ...She began talking in my head. Making me see things, things I’ve never wanted to see. At this point, I can’t tell if the corpses she showed me were really there or not.
I hope they weren’t. I saw your face among the dead, Beitel.
So, seriously, stop this whole thing with Caesar’s Palace and ECHO. This is a can of worms you don’t want to be in the same area code as.
Sincerely,
Daniyal Arbeit.
— A letter found on a corpse in the ruins of Caesar’s Palace.
This is a series of worldbuilding documents for my fictional universe, Earth Nouveau. These documents may be in different forms, from transcripts to snippets from novels written in the world. This is just a personal project, hope you enjoy.
Officer Mayan: Mister Chayka, please continue.
Rajab Chayka: I don’t think I should be discussing this.
Officer Mayan: We need to know what happened.
Rajab Chayka: I signed an NDA and everything, I’m not sure this is--
Officer Mayan: Chayka.
Rajab Chayka: I mean, seriously, you have no idea how many papers I had to sign before even being able to--
Officer Mayan: Chayka, Chayka. We know Elektronix is threatening you. Tell us everything about the incident and we’ll protect you.
Rajab Chayka: ...Okay.
Officer Mayan: Okay. What happened on the third of August, 2784?
Rajab Chayka: I woke up the previous night at around… I don’t know, 10:30 PM? My alarm is usually set for 10:00 PM, but I had been having trouble sleeping that day so I slept in a bit past it. I actually got to work late because of it.
Officer Mayan: And that was at 11:15 PM?
Rajab Chayka: Yeah, somewhere around then.
Officer Mayan: Okay. What happened next?
Rajab Chayka: My overseer really gave me an earful. I must have been in her office for an hour. I kept thinkin’, ‘What’s the big idea? 15 minutes late and you chew me out like this?’. It seemed ridiculous to me.
Officer Mayan: That was when your overseer…
Rajab Chayka: Octavia Cary.
Officer Mayan: Right, Octavia Cary. After you were finished in her office, that’s when Cary sent you to the power grid?
Rajab Chayka: That’s right.
Officer Mayan: How did you feel about that?
Rajab Chayka: ...I was scared.
Officer Mayan: Scared? How could you be scared of the power grid without knowing what was inside?
Rajab Chayka: ...This isn’t the first time something like this happened.
Officer Mayan: You mean to tell me that…
Rajab Chayka: Yeah. They’ve been sending us to the power grid for a while. They’re always really good about covering up what happens in there.
Officer Mayan: What made this instance different?
Rajab Chayka: Well… Most technicians don’t run. You know the, uh… Fight or flight thing? There’s a third option; hide. Most technicians hide.
Officer Mayan: I take it you ran?
Rajab Chayka: Yeah, I did.
Officer Mayan: And that’s the only reason you’re here right now.
Rajab Chayka: That’s right, yeah.
Officer Mayan: There had to have been people who’ve survived the power grid, right?
Rajab Chayka: Oh, yeah, yeah. Of course. They all survive.
Officer Mayan: Then what makes the employees so hesitant to come forward about all of this?
Rajab Chayka: Uh… My best guess is that being in the power grid for too long changes people. They go mad. Some of my coworkers haven’t recovered. Clément doesn’t talk anymore.
Officer Mayan: ...Stop the recording.
Rajab Chayka: What are you talking about?
Officer Mayan: I’m telling the recorder to stop recording.
Rajab Chayka: Are you alright, Officer?
Officer Mayan: Antall, I swear to God, stop the recording.
Officer Antall: Okay, okay, I’m on it.
Rajab Chayka: Please, what are you doing? You’re making me nervous, just sit—
Click.
— Recording from the LAPD, found unaltered in the ruins of the Central Community Police Station.
This is a series of worldbuilding documents for my fictional universe, Earth Nouveau. These documents may be in different forms, from transcripts to snippets from novels written in the world. This is just a personal project, hope you enjoy.
---
( i. ) THE CITY LOST TO TIME
When we came upon the hill on the crux of Hopefall and the Sleeping Giants, we saw the newest wonder of the waking world. Pillars of quartz rose to the sky, separated from the Earth yet floating in a strange state between gravity and time. I saw long thoroughfares dotted with tiny people, still and without motion. Homes that used to carry them laid abandoned in the air, hovering nearly fifty meters above their foundations.
I wanted to investigate, Morrison wanted to stay back. He said he got a bad feeling about the place. I agreed, but explorers don’t have time for caution. Even so, he was adamant. Our group quickly split into two sides, and while one sect went with me into the static city, the rest stayed on a hill near the base of the Giants so they could monitor our progress.
Those who stayed back missed out on history in motion. Or, rather, history without motion. The city was completely stranded in time, stopped seconds before destruction. From the evidence, the metropolis must have been the target of a massive extinction event, and the civilians somehow managed to evade complete destruction through experimental time magic developed sometime around 276 BA. The problem with the experimental time magic was that nobody knew how to return from stasis. They were likely pressed for time when they developed the ritual, and no expert managed to make a backdoor for the town. While the civilians survived, they never lived. Some part of that was tragic to me. Another part was fascinating. Another still wormed into my mind and drew me closer to the town’s ancient castle.
I never was certain of what was in that castle. I remember walking in, past the massive wood doors left open for the past two decades, but nothing after that. When I returned to base camp, Morrison told me I looked different, but I never saw anything strange when I looked into the mirror Saya brought with her. I think he’s just telling lies to prevent me from looking into the City Lost to Time any further.
...Or maybe he knows more about it than I do, and he wants to keep the information for himself.
What I’m about to do won’t be pretty, but it must be done. Morrison can’t stand in the way of discovery.
-- Page 383 of ‘A Guide to the New World’ by Professor Vere Shepard.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Chapters: 1/?
Fandom: Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six (Video Games)
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Relationships: Gustave "Doc" Kateb/Reader
Characters: Gustave "Doc" Kateb, Eliza "Ash" Cohen, Marius "Jäger" Streicher, Timur "Glaz" Glazkov
Additional Tags: Amputation, Coma, Needles, writing about a virus during virus times
Summary:
Hope is a fickle thing.
You need it to survive in dire times. But it can pain your heart when your hope is unrealistic. In Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, you lose hope after three days of huddling in the serology lab at Sierra Vista Hospital. An unknown virus has turned your patients and colleagues into bloodthirsty mutants hellbent on destruction, and you prepare yourself to be their last victim. But, in your waning hours, a kind face ignites your hope again. An extraction team has come to save you, but at what cost?
When all else has been lost, all you have is hope. Outside of Sierra Vista hospital, you need a lot of it to make the world right again.
You bored, or feeling artsy but don’t have any inspiration...? *updated!*
Do you need to distract yourself? Or are you simply bored? Here are some great websites to make the time pass.
create pixel art
Awesome photo editor and art program, all free…!
Totally free transparent textures
make a cute chibi
draw some cool generative art
be a graffiti creator
create a picassohead (you don’t need to be a picasso to do so)
paint online
another awsome site to create pixel art on
and another one
create your own mandala
or color one
create an avatar
or you can try creating your own superhero
here you can interact with organisms in different environments to see how to music changes
here’s a website that translates the time into hexidecimal colours,
Here is a website where you can travel along a 3D line into the infinite unkown
here is a website where you can listen to rain with or without music
Need a model in a certain pose for drawing? here
Want to build your own planet
here is a website where you can create your own galaxies
make your own pattern (very useful if you need a new background)
create next hit comic
make a city which looks like something from 90′s games
draw a mandala like design
jig saw puzzles
more jig saw puzzles to solve
create a stunning HTML5 animation - no coding!
make a movie
create and dress up dolls
play a piano
you can also play a guitar
create sounds
another sound creator
create a logo
design your dream home
sketch rooms
explore fashion trends and create your own sets
build a website
try this app for building a website
Or maybe start learning how to code!
design your own t-shirt or a beanie or sweatpants and order them
design your own phone case
pretend to be a graphic designer with this cool online tool
Make your own Glitch art
Here’s another glitch art maker
And another!
Holy hell, here’s a third!
make an image look like it was created by a commodore 64
freaking cool text generator!
Easy to use word processor
Make up really cool patterns or run your photos through it :)
Write an essay on anything with no hassle
Wanna see how something you write would look like if it was on JacksFilms YGS((Your Grammar Sucks videos on YouTube))?
Make pictures out of text
ASCII word generator
Need an idea for some fanart-here :D
Still haven’t found something that would float your boat? Try these:
watch a documentary
learn to code
do something yourself
workout with the help of this great youtube channels
learn things
play pokemon or zelda or other awesome old school games
waste your time on miniclip
play games at additing games
or try games at agame
calm your thoughts
the quiet place
it will be okay
vent or listen to someone
pour out your soul
explore the sky
look at art from around the world
virtually visit museum of iraq
explore world with arounder
create a music playlist
list through rare books
scroll useful science website
create sand art
brain games
try out tastekid and discover new favorite band or movie or book
interactive 3D anatomy
random street view
post a secret
create a family tree
find our what’s the difference between x and y
help scientists and become volunteer researcher
create your own font
read a classic short story
In the mood to read, but not sure exactly what book to go for?
scribble on maps
listen to letters
play with acrobots
listen to podcasts
make a bucket list
Ever want to see the most truly useless websites in creation?
Prank a friend with this blue screen of death!
Zone out watching the colors drip down
Maybe none of these peeked your interest-maybe you’ve been wanting to create an o.c, but never really knew how to start-or you just enjoy making O.C’s….
This masterlist is to help you in making your own OCs….it can also apply to developing RP characters i suppose! (´ヮ`)!
How to Write Better OCs:
basic tips on how to make your oc even better
tragic backstory? learn how to write one/make yours great
writing specific characters
a wordier, great guide on how to develop your character
kick out those vague descriptions and make them AWESOME
Character Development:
how to actually make an OC
Q&A (to develop characters)
more Q&As
giving your character a backstory
how to write an attractive character
Need an Appearance idea?
Humanoid generator? check
Here’s another one
and maybe if you didn’t like those this’ll work
Need Monsterpeople?
Well, then here ya’ go
Maybe you need Cats?
Diversity
adding more racial diversity
avoiding tokenism, AKA, how to add diversity to your cast not just because you “need” it
writing sexuality and gender expression (doesnt include non binary, if you have a good ref to that, please add on!)
masterpost on writing more diversity into your story
cultures of the world
guides to drawing different ethnicities (not just a great art reference, but also really helpful in appearance descriptions!)
Mary Sue/Gary Stu
Test to see if your character is a Sue
Explains subdivisions of Sues/Stus
Powerful Characters Don’t Have to Be Sues
Villains
villain generator
need an evil sounding name for your evil character? bam
villain archetypes
what’s your villain’s motive for being a villain?
Relationships
character perceptions (What your character thinks of themselves and what others think of them)
how to write strong relationships between two characters
8 ways to write better characters and develop their relationships with others
OCxLove Interest Handbook
develop your couple with good ol’ Q&A!
how to write realistic relationships
how to write relatives for your characters (this is more OC related to a canon character, but will help in writing family members in general)
ARCHETYPES
12 common archetypes
8 archetypes for male/female characters
female archetypes (goes pretty indepth from two main categories)
a list of archetypes
NAMES
how to name your character
random name generator
most common surnames
surnames by ethnicity
APPEARANCE
tips for better design
basic appearance generator
pinterest board for character design (includes NSFW and images of skeletons/exposed muscle (?) so tread carefully!)
clothing ref masterpost
Clothing generator
Another clothing generator
More clothing generator
Aaaand even more
Steam punk clothing
Char Style preference
Dress Generator
DETAILS
give your character better powers
a list of professions
proactive vs reactive characters
positive and negative traits
interest generator
skills generator
motivation generator
123 ideas for character flaws
list of phobias
Oh shit someone died
Backgrounds and stuff? yep
Quirks
Personality. you need that shit
Need something fandom related?
City generator hell yeah
location? got ya
World-building?
make your own god damn laws
Landscape.
Need Item names?
Fantasy/sci-fi/etc. medicine names
Stuff to make things more interesting.Weapons, clothes, treasures… whatever your characters need.
Maggie enters Nightmare Forest, intent on an adventure.
My path through Grimsby was meandering and prone to wanderlust. That night it drizzled, and while the rain soaked my nightgown and reduced me to a shivering mess, the soft pitter-patter of rain droplets on broad beech leaves soothed both my mental and physical ailments. Although the cold infected my sore ankle and caused stiffness, I did not stop to rest near the tempting fire of the Inn nor Reverend Emeriel’s home, which he insisted was always open to anyone left without a home. The reason for this, I thought, was because he was lonely now that his adopted daughter was only a thought passing on the wind.
I thought similar unsavory thoughts on the rest of the town. Mary, a midwife and wealthy mother to a brood of six, bought exorbitant amounts of jewelry at the market every Saturday, although I could never figure out if it were because her marriage was unsatisfactory or if she was remarkably vain. Baxter the Baker inherited his family business as the oldest son and most responsible, but he failed to perform even the simplest of tasks and tended to cheat his customers simply because he could not sell any other way. Adelaide was a young girl betrothed to a 33-year-old man named Arthur, and while her family draped her gaudy baubles and wedding drab, I saw the emptiness in her eyes and knew she resigned to her fate of early spiritual suicide. Sir Cassius was a lonely old man with wrinkles in his face so thick they could tell stories, and he lived on the gothic mansion on the hill with his very young granddaughter.
All of these stories, unique in their own ways, lived on in the sagging timber-frame homes lining the streets of Grimsby. While the roofs were towering with slate panels, the houses dipped down under the weight of rainwater and the drudgery the inhabitants endured daily. Every day, the citizens of Grimsby went about the monotony of life, going through the same motions they enacted with every sunset. It disgusted me, to the point where my stomach curled and recoiled every time I saw the dull flicker of life in their eyes, the only thing signifying that they were breathing human beings instead of one of the pieces of machinery in the London factories.
Even my mother seemed this way at that time. While she had been lively and animated in an earlier year, the troubles and toils of her life beat down her resolve until she sleepwalked through my childhood without so much as a glimmer in her gaze. Where her arms were warm and her voice dripping with honey, I noticed her heartbeat was slow, and her eyes were cold. She abandoned her unfinished paintings, ceased the care of her garden, and did not cook our potato soup with as much zeal. Not even seeing my father sober enough to continue his carpenting business could make her smile.
This robotic nature of my neighbors forced me to hurriedly walk through the town with my eyes locked on my feet. Piles of dust and dirt passed my eyes, well-trodden during the busiest hours of the day but unsettlingly empty during the dead hours of the night. The wind whisked past my head, and the southern winds carried the scent of wildflowers to my nose from the sprawling flowered meadows outside of Grimsby. With time, the dirt path began to grow grassy and knotted with tussocks of greenery. It was then I looked up and realized I was on the border of Grimsby.
To my left, the church and its courtyard of the dead sat close to the frigid waters of the lake. The moon tugged on the pond and it lapped against the smooth pebbles lining it, washed of any blemishes from eons of being cradled by sandy water. Where the moon could often be seen reflected in the lagoon’s inky black depths, the black swallowed up my only source of light, and I was left in suffocating darkness. Ahead, there was a stretch of green and knots of grass overflowing with bluebells and honeysuckles, and just past that was a wall of trees. Where some meadow’s transition into woodland was gradual and subtle, Nightmare Forest acted as a looming barrier between the land of reality and the land of terror. The field leading into was bright and cheery, with an abundance of sweet-smelling flowers and pale prairie grasses, whereas the forest was dark, ominous, and looming as if the trees were giants turning their backs on humanity in contempt. I looked upon it, remembered my mother’s frantic warnings, and promptly ignored her concern in my conscience. I was a child, and anything that was unavailable to me was naturally alluring. Her cautions only inflamed my necessity for the unattainable.
Having spotted my target, I raced towards the stalwart line of beech and maple, sidestepping firm boulders and disrupting warrens of rabbits in fitful slumber. My bumbling feet caught on errant roots and misplaced twigs, but in my scramble to reach the ominous wood, my subsequent tumble into the dust and dirt was a mere inconvenience.
Breathing hard and huffing, I finally reached the line of trees. I stooped over and supported myself on my knees, the soothing cold of the breeze and the searing heat of my skin creating a strange dichotomy across my nerves. My heart pounded hard in a fruitless attempt to escape my ribcage, but with time it soothed into a calm pound and my lungs could expand fully without panting, so I straightened and peered into the thick darkness of Nightmare forest.
I could not see past the trees; their trunks were so thick and their canopies so impenetrable that anything beneath their reign was rendered an abyssal black. The fact did not unnerve me, but it instead piqued my interest, so I took one step forward, then another, hesitant only because of the last shreds of guilt I felt for directly contradicting my mother’s orders.
With a few final steps, I plunged into Nightmare Forest’s thick undergrowth. I stumbled through the tense darkness, now entirely cannibalized by an eerie sense of unease that made my head feel backward. My mind swam, and my stomach curled up within me, swallowed whole by an aura strange enough to allow me to walk horizontally across walls.
Here, I was half-tempted to turn back and careen back into the safety of my own bed, but upon seeing my father’s wrinkled face contorted with rage in my minds-eye, I steeled my resolve and proceeded.
My eyes were virgins to the gloom of the forest and my limbs uncoordinated, so much of my time spent in the woods was wasted smacking face-first into trees and tripping over roots designed only to trip up children running away from home. After nearly five minutes into my fateful excursion, my face ached from repeatedly bumping face-first into an ancient, gnarled oak, and my arms stung with pain from the wild rose shrubs back home and the scratching nettles lining the forest floor. I stepped forwards twice more, sensed an incline, then sighed a long, dramatic sigh. The forest was beginning to make way to the mountains, and I knew that attempting to scale the treacherous cliffs there would lead to my death, so I turned on my heel and prepared to exit the forest.
I was blinded by a radiant white light. A dull, aching pain pressed against the back of my eyes, so I pushed my arm close to my eyes and squinted until my eyes could adjust to the brazen glow. Within a few seconds, the ache faded and I lowered my forearm to peer at the bright object meticulously.
Standing amongst a knoll of ragwort and field rose, a deer with an unnaturally white pelt stood. Its fur was so brilliant that it gleamed like a star against the black backdrop of night, and it burned so brightly that it drowned out the contours of its eyes and nose. I could not make out any of its facial features except for horns high enough to spear a man from top to bottom and still have the length to spare. With eyes I could not perceive, it stared at me. I swore it nodded at me, imperceptible but real nonetheless.
For these few moments, we gazed at each other, equally curious and intrigued but each much too cautious to approach. Tension snapped like a spring between us, mounting and building and gaining.
Then, the stag turned tail and fled, it’s short, bushy tail disappearing into the darkness of the forest. The underbrush swallowed it, and just as quickly as it appeared, it was gone.
Frightened, I called out after it. “Wait!” I shouted, scrambling forwards. “Please, wait for me!”
I leaped forth from my perch and careened into the boxwoods and azaleas, ignoring the sting of shrubs running across my bare arms and the tearing of my dirtied nightgown as branches caught on it and threatened to pull me back. Through sheer determination alone, I resisted the clawing of skeletal beech branches in their attempts to slow me down and barreled through them, desperate to hang onto the only shred of light I had found in Nightmare Forest.
The chase was on. My heart pumped, and my legs pushed forward with strength I was unaware I possessed. I crashed through the thickets and coppice, stirring up rancor in the deathly silent woodland where the noise was unwelcome. The blood rushed through my ears and adrenaline pumped through my veins, but no matter how much I ran, I never spotted the fluffy white tail prancing through the brushwood. Despair swam across my thoughts and tears of exhaustion welled up in my eyes.
Then, my foot caught on a root placed deliberately in my path by an ensnaring, ancient oak I had slammed my head against many moments beforehand. My heart launched into my throat, and I tumbled into the wild shrubbery with an unceremonious shout.
I slammed my head upon a small rock, small and unassuming until it pressed hard into my temple. Blood, red and hot, seeped from the wound created on the side of my head, the blood-flow only enhanced by the zealous pumping of my heart. Clutching the sparse clumps of crabgrass between my fingers, I laid face down in the Nightmare Forest, grimacing in agony and cursing my incredible foolishness.
I wished to be back home, lying safe in bed with mother. I wished my father did not stomp into my room, and I wished I had not launched myself through my portly window to escape. I wished I did not fall into the roses and I wished I did not walk so quickly past the timber-frame homes of Grimsby. In that moment of desperation, I wished to not exist, only to float through humanity as a nameless husk without a single ounce of consciousness. Thinking this, tears began to flow, and they ran down my cheeks, dripping into the dirt and landing in my mouth. My chest heaved as I sobbed, my hope and dreams crushed into an unidentifiable paste of nothingness by a celestial mortar and pestle.
An answer to my wishes came then, on the wings of angels and heralded by trumpet fanfare.
“Hey,” said a soft voice. “Are you okay?”
Cheeks stained with tears and lip quivering, I raised my head at an achingly slow pace and locked my eyes on a pair of poorly cobbled shoes. They stood near my face and shuffled there, connected legs covered in ragged pants. My eyes traveled further up, and I found a little boy’s face staring down at me.
By his clear, pale complexion, I knew he was around my age range, if not a bit older. By the way, his legs quivered, and his cheeks stood out against his gaunt face, I could tell he was poor and plagued by malnutrition. By the way, his blue eyes shimmered in comparison to his jet black hair, I could tell he truly cared for my well-being. He reached his hand out for me in a chivalrous gesture, smiling with straight white teeth and a rosy glow on his cheeks.
Instinctively, I smiled and reached up my arm to swipe across my nose and eyes. I cleared away my tears and mucus and took his hand in mine with a thankful nod. He pulled me to my feet, and I tested my ankle to the force of the ground, only to cringe and exhale in pain. I opened my eyes into slits, staring through the gloom into the eyes of my strange savior.
I ignored the question on his lips. “Did you see?” I asked him, frantic and bumbling. “The deer? The white one?”
He quirked his brow, glanced about the deep gloom lining the underbrush, and turned back to fix me with a strange stare. I saw the confusion in his eyes and groaned.
“It was here!” I gestured wide to the sweeping darkness before the two of us, desperately searching for any spot of light beneath the thick canopy overhead. “I saw it! It ran away!”
The boy fixed me with another strange gaze, looking towards me as if I had just spouted off some nonsense about pigs soaring through the sky. He held my gaze for a few moments before erupting in laughter, loud and mocking, albeit not intentional.
“Hey!” I fumed. “I’m being serious!”
“I’m sorry,” he wheezed, shoulders heaving with the weight of his amusement. “But white deer don’t come ‘round these parts. They don’t exist.”
I deflated instantly, a pinprick of anger still existing deep within my stomach extinguished immediately by the icy wave of his laughter. I curled in on myself and rubbed at my elbow, frowning so profoundly it almost didn’t fit on my face. With time, his laughter faded and we were left with only the thick, unsettling quiet of Nightmare Forest.
“Why are you out here anyway?” the boy asked. “No one really comes round here.”
I surged for a chance to defend myself from his interrogation. “My pa was gonna hit me, so I ran,” I blurted. The truth bubbled from my mouth like water in a gentle brook, and I did nothing to stop it, suddenly unable to lie in good faith around this strange boy.
“My dad does that sometimes too,” the boy responded, mulling around the gloomy clearing for a few moments before coming to rest on a toadstool-covered log, hollowed and husk-like. I limped across the clearing, overdramatic in my minor injury as many children were prone to acting, and sat beside him.
“Who are you? I never see you around town,” I argued suddenly, intrigued and too curious for my own good. His eyes darkened, and he smiled, and something opened in my stomach, making it twist and turn and coil within my abdomen. I felt paralyzed.
“I’m Michael,” the boy responded much too eagerly. “Me an’ my dad cut wood in this forest.”
The explanation was strange, and it made my skin crawl, but I ignored any peculiar feelings, fixed him with a full, toothy grin, and joyfully delivered my own introduction. “I’m Maggie!” I chirped. “My pa’ uses wood to make stuff!”
“Probably not our wood though,” Michael mused. “No one from Grimsby comes over here.”
I frowned at the sentiment. “Why not?”
“You haven’t heard the rumors?” Michael wondered aloud, searching my face.
I shook my head in one sweeping motion. Immediately, Michael launched into a ghost tale for the ages.
“Your folks say that this forest is full of monsters and beasts. We had shot a deer once and were in the middle of cleaning it when a bloke ran up, screamed, then went back to town to spread dodgy stories.”
“That was Mr. Murphy!” I shouted in understanding. “He said he found a herd of dead deer with their heads cut off and blood all over!”
Michael grinned from ear to ear and shook his head with a contemptuous guffaw. “A tosser, that man is,” Michael remarked, and I smiled and giggled as if we were sharing secrets.
“Yeah, he’s a right tit!” I cried suddenly, emboldened by Michael’s presence and ability to say entirely impolite language I had never been allowed to utter before. He laughed at my usage and how eager I was to say it, and we both broke into a fit of wild, uncontrollable giggles.
Unbeknownst to me, Michael rose from the mossy log in the midst of my side-splitting laughter, and with a devilish grin, he tapped my shoulder forcefully. Broken from my compulsive giggling, a few errant huffs fell from my mouth as I glanced up to Michael’s face and quirked my brow. I tipped my head to the side, and his smile grew wider.
“Tag,” he whispered, barely audible beneath my amusement. “You’re it.”
Fire alight in my eyes, I shot from my spot on the log and launched at Michael. I shot my arms forward but they wrapped around thin air, and a gust of wind as Michael shifted from his original spot and scampered across the clearing to the edge of the trees. I leered after him, eyes glinting with youthful energy now that I was engaging in play.
After a brief second where we stared at each other from across the grassy knoll, I stumbling over boulders, rocks, and fallen logs in my mad scramble to reach Michael in time. With his far superior height and my unfortunate speed penalty attributed to my tiny legs, he quickly stepped around my charging form and dashed to the other end of the clearing like a matador taunting a raging bull.
I twisted around and whipped towards where he stood, uphill and staring down at me with a triumphant grin and his hands on his hips. I pushed myself hard and faster, ignoring the dull ache in my ankles and legs and knees in favour of the chase. The wind pelted my face, and my tongue lolled from my mouth, panting for breath and wide-eyes with adrenaline. My mousey brown hair was a mess; tangled, frizzy, and full of brambles, but I ignored the way it caught on shrubs and foliage in favour of chasing desperately after Michael. Even within moments of our chance meeting, I considered him my friend, and he came to be my only friend in the cold darkness of existence. For once in my life, I felt eager to see the sun rise over the horizon and reach her pale dawn fingers across the eastern meadows.
Then, I was weightless. For the briefest of moments, I soared through the air, unaffected by the world and ignorant of standard physics. My grin remained through the moment of no gravity, but as I felt myself fall forward, the smile disappeared, and I shouted in fear as the ground rushed towards me. I squeezed my eyes tightly shut in preparation for the fall, prepared to take the brunt of the pain and feel my synapses erupt in agony.
It never came. Instead, hands grasped around my midsection and hoisted me back up, pulling my feet from the ground and placing me on the uneven dirt so that I was upright and safe. I glanced up from my bruised, scratched hands and looked to Michael, who grinned at me. I noticed only now that he was missing a tooth, a sharp canine that had yet to grow into his beaming smile.
“You trip a lot,” Michael remarked with a good-natured chuckle.
Indignant, I dispelled his hands and placed my hands on my hips, face stained with dirt and nightgown tattered. “This forest is just dumb!” I defended myself, strong in my tone but weak in my argument. My voice rises above the suffocating silence of the forest, bouncing off the rough beech bark surrounding us.
Then, a great cry rose from the surrounding underbrush. “Maggie?” called a feminine voice, shaky and coloured with panic.
I turned around immediately, placing my back to Michael in favour of inspecting the deep abyss from which I heard the question come from. The forest smelled of thick leaf musk and dead dock, and the wind howled through the dense, nearly bare canopy, whistling through knots and knolls in winding wood. Again, the voice cried out.
“Maggie, is that you?”
The imperceptible kilt added to the very end of the woman’s voice gave me enough information to deduce that this woman was my mother, and the way her voice tore from her throat indicated she was searching for me specifically. Eager to introduce my new friend to my mother, I immediately responded. “Mum! I’m right here!” I shouted, ruthlessly piercing through the silence.
Within seconds, the underbrush crashed and caved and crackled under the weight of brisk footsteps. The shadows came to expel my mother, her fiery red hair equally as frazzled and her green eyes accentuated by sagging black circles. A vein swelled on her temple as she dashed towards me, knees rising high in her effort to tame the sprawling coppice. She came to stand before me, and she placed her hands atop my shoulders, shaking them softly as her arms trembled and her eyes grew wet and glassy.
“Maggie,” mother whispered, voice breaking and grip tightening to a raw strength on my shoulders. “Maggie, you’re here.”
I quirked a brow and frowned. “Yeah,” I confirmed slowly, staring up at her.
Without warning, she surged forward and wrapped her arms around me, her chest heaving as she sobbed into my small shoulders. Hesitantly, I clutched her to me and drank in her scent, smelling vaguely of roses and honeydew. “I thought I lost you,” she babbled, voice strained by tears. “Lost you to this wretched forest.”
“I’m still here,” I protested softly, a sound lost to the immense quiet of Nightmare Forest. With this, mother drew away and clutched my hand, a smile tugging at her tear-stained cheeks.
“Come, let’s return home,” she offered gently, then turned and tugged at me. Although she was strong, my will to remain was stronger, and I evaded her grasp, slipping my hand from her fingers and staring at her as she turned to stare at me. She furrowed her brows and clutched her dirt-stained skirts, red hair frazzled and eyes sunken.
“Wait,” I exploded, scrabbling to surmount a rock. “I met someone! His name is Michael!”
I gestured to the surrounding forest. Mother’s brows furrowed further.
“Maggie,” Mother uttered my name, then pointed a curled finger behind me. “Don’t be silly. There’s no one there. No one lives in Nightmare forest.”
Swayed, I whipped around and scanned the line of dark trunks, stained with the black night. I searched through the thick, grim shade, trees in the distance curling like burnt bodies and beckoning to newcomers with gnarled, frayed branches. The silhouette of Michael was absent, and no matter how hard I peered and squinted, I could not catch the blue of his eyes or his pale complexion.
Stunned, I stared, pondering how someone so tangible and real could disappear from the clearing without so much as a crackle of crushed brambles or fallen branches. He vanished like a summer breeze in the dead of autumn, gone without so much as a trace to suggest he was ever there in the first place. Lost in the fog of my own thoughts, I swayed on my feet, blinking complacently.
My mother’s smooth, blemish-free hand on mine threw me violently back to reality. She turned me around with a gentle, guiding hand, smiled a smile that made the corners of her eyes crinkle, then helped me off the boulder I balanced on.
“Come along,” Mother hummed. “We’re both exhausted.”
Without further qualms, I stumbled blindly after her brisk steps. She led me with a firm hand and a breakneck pace, bouncy in her actions and shaky in her hold. Just as we reached the line of trees surrounding the clearing and were about to plunge into the thick undergrowth once more, I cautioned a wary glance over my shoulder.
The darkness left behind me was cleaved by rays of radiant light, all falling from the effervescent grace of the white stag I observed before. It was unencumbered by darkness and evil, dispelling every hint of malevolence remaining in the forest. Enamored, I tugged upon my mother’s arm. She only pressed further on, pulling me along behind her. I looked for as long as I could, eager to see the last remaining bit of white, luminescent fur.
Then, within a few seconds, a patch of dock and tansy blocked my view and devoured the angelic deer, drenching us in crawling darkness once more.
On the night before her eighth birthday, Margaret Acomb escapes her home.
I lived my childhood with the predetermined knowledge that blood was dirty. It ran through our veins and permeated our body but as soon as it was infected by oxygen upon leaking from a cut, it was suddenly revolting. As the years passed and I came into my present circumstances, the difference between blood and grime became blurry, a thin line between something filthy and something only dirty due to the social stigma associated with it. I came to wash my hands with blood because blood could never be worse than what already covered them.
At some point in all of our lives, we have been covered in blood anyways. Such is the burden of humans, plagued by hypocrisy for damning the very substance they were born in.
I similarly was born in blood to my mother, Mrs. Jessie Acomb, who was 20 years old when she labored for hours on April 4th, 1854. As I was of a darkness of memory that can only be attributed to the first formative years of a child’s life, I cannot give a perfect account of what happened that day, but as the story has been regaled to me often by my mother, I can provide a second-hand report.
The morning of my birth was blustery and frigid as was expected of the land surrounding our home, and in the first tendrils of light, my mother began experiencing childbirth pain. Upon feeling this, her husband, my father, Mr. Joe Acomb, immediately called for the midwives, settled my mother in her bed, and disappeared from the house. Lying in pain on the abrasive cotton sheets, my mother wallowed in agony alone for a few minutes, abandoned by her husband and accompanied by no one in a dangerous hour for every young woman. Then finally the housewives arrived with their shoes tapping against the grimy hardwood, and they did their best to make my mother’s noteworthy labor as comfortable as they possibly could.
Even as my mother attempted to expel me from her body, she continued into the late hours of the night, and the midwives grew exasperated. “This demon child,” they cried in frustration, “Born on the day of our Lord’s death and still refuses to cooperate!”
Then, as if on demand, I was born and plopped immediately on my mother’s chest. A girl, they declared me, then watched my mother cradle me and coo in exhaustion. They demanded a name for the birth certificate so a portly midwife named Mary could run over to the church and still return home in time for supper, but even that my mother could not give them. She sighed and told them, “My husband wanted to name her, but I don’t have any clue where he is,” she explained, then returned to my post-partum care.
Fora few effervescent hours, I was nameless. I was an identity floating in the cruel swamps of the universe, known only by the space I took up before the eyes of God. It was the only time I have ever been truly free in my life, unfettered by the associations of a name and the social standards of a feminine callsign. Again, the midwives cursed my existence, but as they had no title to identify me by, they merely groaned and mumbled and complained until they heard my father stumble into the house and slam the door closed to prevent the winds from howling through the house.
Inebriated, my father hovered in the arc doorway of my birthroom, cast a single sweeping glance over me and my mother, and then rubbed at his eyes.
“Please Mr. Acomb, name her,” the midwives begged him. “Our husbands and children are hungry.”
My father grumbled beneath his breath and supported himself on the hickory doorframe, belching and attempting to make sense of the swimming colors hovering before his eyes.
“Margaret,” my father mumbled finally, then scowled with a tremendous big sneer and stumbled backward, bracing himself on railings and wooden beams. The midwives stared after him, then looked back to my mother, who hid her face in hot shame potent enough to climb up her ears. They erupted into whispers, then inched closer, and Mary stepped from the throng of midwives.
Mary advanced with a bustle in her step and offered the birth certificate to my mother, who ceased her feverish attendance to sign my name and her own signature in curvaceous lettering. Mary leaned back and away from the bed, then passed through the midwives like the Holy Spirit passing through the hollow streets of Egypt. A solemn procession occurred then as midwives, young and tall, old and small, made their exodus from the Acomb residence. They carried on to the church with silence fit for a funeral full of teary-eyed women and their firm husbands, aware that they were supposed to be celebrating new life and yet grieving all the same. Although unsure what precisely the midwives were grieving, they grieved, and they grieved for as long as it was socially acceptable until the neighbors began inquiring in high tones on the presence of black in their wardrobe. When the midwives couldn’t provide an answer for their mourning blacks, they resumed life as usual and passed by this wretched chapter in their lives, but no midwife could ever imagine the cross my mother was forced to bear.
Every morning, I cried and sobbed and sniffled. My mother awoke from fitful sleep, padded the cold three meters that separated us, then soothed me in the basket cradle she wove by hand months prior. She returned to her bed, sometimes empty and sometimes occupied by my father, slept for another three hours, then woke again to quell my anguish once more. She did not show her face in the village for four months, wearing black even when not in the presence of company, and the townspeople avoided our tiny cottage for an entire year. There were superstitions that no one lived there anymore, and on Sundays when the village children returned from Sunday School, they’d trek the long path up to our cottage and dared each other to rap their knuckles against our oak wood door.
My mother despised these childish games with such a burning passion, a hatred that consumed her entire abdomen, but the best she could do was part the drab, old curtains on the windows and send glares from behind the fogged glass.
Our country was a wet one. Five days out of seven were dreary and drizzling, with one rare downpour, and the days in between were cloudy at best. Our village, named Grimsby for its intrepid founder, rested flush against the Western Lake, so called for being the westernmost lake of a conglomeration of five small ponds. Other villages of similar size were set up along the other four lakes and were connected by a winding series of roads and canals, but Grimsby was most noted for sprawling farmland and terrace steppes. Across the pond, towering hills covered with grass and fairy moss clawed at the calm gray skies and buffeted the frigid northern winds, protecting our lovely village on the southern bank of the pond. We were relatively isolated from the rest of the country, and we had not heard of Victoria’s coronation until nearly a month after.
At the base of the northern mountains, a sprawling forest consisting entirely of beech, spruce, and sycamores ran along the north shore. Across the way, ridges made tall by towering trees created a compact cliff for the inky black water of the lake to crash against. On days when the sun peeked through cloud cover, and the water was temperate, village boys snuck away from their agricultural duties to leap from these makeshift cliffs and into the frothing waves.
The villager's view of this forest was characterized by horror and spine-tingling cowardice. So many children were swallowed up by the wilderness in this forest that their devastated parents came to call this woodland the Nightmare Forest, a name only passed on lips through whispers and gossip. Those who passed through this forest, either on dares or sheer ignorance, always came stumbling back to the town, reporting a massive black dog with eyes that glowed red in the thick underbrush. Others, hunters mostly, reported coming upon herds of red deer, their bellies cut open and their heads separated from their necks. Although my mother kept informing me of these tales throughout my childhood as a means to prevent me from disappearing into the wooded fog, her ghostly stories only served to pique my curiosity.
On one night, just before I was to be put to bed the day before my eighth birthday, I inquired into Nightmare Forest once more. My mother’s face drained of blood, and she acquired a pallor that made her red hair even more striking. Her green eyes grew wide, but she smiled anyway, a tight-lipped smile that I couldn’t interpret accurately at that age.
“Children disappear in that forest,” mother tried, but upon seeing my head bob in motion for her to continue, she sighed and made another attempt. “They never come back. You would never have another birthday.”
Such was a dire threat to my happiness, as my mother knew that my birthday was my favorite day of the year. Nonetheless, I persisted, fixating her with weighted silence.
“Did you know that Reverend Eremiel’s daughter went missing in that forest?” she said finally, donning a grave expression. “She never returned, lost to the woods.”
At the time, I did not see how bad this could be. I tipped my head to the side and narrowed my eyes, pressing her for further explanation. With my silence, I dared her to give me reasons for why I was forbidden to enter Nightmare Forest.
“I love you very much, Margaret,” she continued with such conviction it left no room for doubt. “I love you more than the moon can love the sun. You are my light. You cannot enter that forest under any circumstances.”
I heard my name in full, and I coiled beneath her gaze, a stir in my belly. My name, Margaret, had too many syllables for my infantile tongue to form, so those around me came to refer to me by “Maggie” rather than “Margaret.” Hearing her say my entire name without even a quiver in her voice, I knew this matter was serious, so I wisely recoiled from arguing. I shrunk back into my flat pillow and pulled my scratchy wool blanket closer to my face. I breathed in the smell of my late grandmother, for she had knit the quilt for me once my mother was with child, and avoided my mother’s gaze.
“Please promise me,” my mother pleaded, and the desperation in her tone drew my wide blue eyes to her face. “Please.”
I watched her in poignant silence for only a moment more before nodding finally, although hesitant in my compliance. I wished just to see her smile.
Finally, she did, and the pale white of her teeth only served to make the fiery red color of her hair more striking. Briefly, I compared my own hair to my mother’s and grew sad upon seeing that my hair was a dull brown instead of blazing orange, but the feeling did not linger. Within moments, my mother leaned in close, pressed her lips to my forehead, and whispered a soft prayer over my head. Her smile gradually faded and left in its place were premature wrinkles and thinning hair that did not detract from her beauty. I watched her go with wide eyes as she disappeared into the darkness of our cottage.
My room was a small, tucked away corner of our house initially meant for storage rather than a growing child. My mother reasoned that once I grew out of it, I would have to move to a different room, but as there were no other bedrooms suitable for young adolescent anywhere else in our timber-frame home, this sentiment confused me greatly. I told her that there was nowhere else for me to go, and when I confronted her with this information, she paled, glanced back and forth, and offered me an ingenuine smile. She told me that I was too smart, and once I was smart enough to help expand the house, we could work on making me a new room together. Upon asking if my father would help as well, she nodded and avoided my gaze.
Yet even then on the night before my eighth birthday, I still remained in the tiny corner enclosed in rotten oak planks and sagging furniture. There was a single window on the right wall that was a few meters above my head and a meter in diameter. It was at a prime height so that every night, when the moon was not covered in black, my humble abode was washed in pale, silvery moonlight. I spent many of my days staring longingly past the dirty glass of that window, wondering what might exist beyond the walls of my kind prison. Now, however, with the moon absent from the night sky and clouds covering the heavens, all I could do was lie in my rickety bed and watch the shadows climb along the walls.
They made strange shapes in the darkness. Clutching my grandmother’s blanket even closer to my nose, I peered through the gloom in a pitiful attempt to exacerbate stories from their macabre artistry.
Then, with a creak of groaning wood and glue, I heard footsteps crash against our ancient floorboards. It was a staccato, incessant stumbling, the perpetrator letting out breathy groans and low mumbles to himself. Had I been any other child, I might have felt frightened by this sound rattling into my tiny bed space, but with the way I had been raised, such odd machinations hardly ignited a stutter in my heartbeat. It was only my father returning from the bars drunk and in a violent state of mind.
I knew his head to be unstable and his fists prone to bloodlust. I glanced down my grandmother’s knitted blanket to observe my stomach, small and withered from lack of food, and studied the fading bruise above my stomach and slightly below my ribcage. It was still an angry purple, disgusting against my pale skin, but the edges were beginning to fade into sickly yellow, just starting to disappear. It was then I realized I no longer desired to be my father’s victim anymore, so I tore my grandmother’s blanket away from my body, balled it up in my fists, and held it close to my chest.
My father’s muddled footsteps drew closer, crashing against the floorboards and tripping against loose nails he placed there himself. While I did not feel scared, my heart betrayed me and began to pump faster, causing my arms to tingle and my legs to twitch. My nightgown was paltry and the night was dark, but I knew what I had to do.
With as much grace as I was allowed, I silently pulled a wooden chair from the corners of my crawlspace. Its leg was broken from when my father threw it to the floor during dinner the day I turned seven, and eons of use culminated in scratches and splinters on its rough surface. It whined against the floorboards as I moved it, and beneath that whine, my father’s approach grew faster. My movements became sloppy and unrehearsed as adrenaline made my fingers jittery. I dropped the chair twice and kicked it once in my rush to align it with the bottom of the tiny window leading to freedom.
Once the chair’s back was flush with the paint-chipped wall, I scrambled atop it and fumbled with the window. Behind me, my father burst through years of clutter and worthless items, shouting with a ferocity I was all too familiar with. I did not spare a glance over my shoulder when the window popped open, and I launched myself through it. I closed my eyes and braced myself for the thorns of the rose shrubs my mother gave up cultivating a long time ago.
It never came, and instead there was a hand gripped tight around my ankle. The windowsill dug deep into my ribs and my ankle twisted with agony every time I wiggled about. My father wrenched my leg back, but I kept my arms locked on the faded wood paneling on the side of our tiny cottage. With every jerk, my body cried in torment, but nevertheless, I endured until my father’s grip slipped from my ankle, and I tumbled forth into the rose thorns.
My leg and ankle ached with pressing pangs, and my skin was torn apart by botanical tormentors, yet I was free. My father screamed from the windowsill, but he sounded distant and far-off as if he had never existed in the first place. I knew he existed, as my ankle could testify, but with my excursion into town, I could forget for a paltry hour.
With a potent limp, I pulled myself up from the roses and grew enamored by the scent that lingered. Although it was mixed with the beads of blood running down my arms and hands from stinging scratches, it was pleasant nonetheless and an aroma that transported me to a better timeline. The icy night breeze made them ignite with pain and the wind howled in my ears, but on my tongue, I tasted freedom, although fleeting. I ignored the cold that settled into my bones and continued forward, unsure of where to go.
My destination never mattered, however. No matter which wrong turn I took, I never failed to arrive at the ivy-encrusted gates to Nightmare Forest.
“At some point in all of our lives, we have been covered in blood anyways. Such is the burden of humans, plagued by hypocrisy for damning the very substance they were born in.”
There is a forest along the banks of the Western Lake that the villagers have come to call “Nightmare Forest” for the strange and horrifying things to happen within. On the day before her eighth birthday, Margaret Acomb ventures into the forest and meets a little boy no one else can see.
Yup, a bonus post! This little ditty is about the architecture in the Megahub and in Outlands where Susan/D, Breech, and Stark live. Let’s get started.
The Megahub:
The Megahub near to the trio is set in what would’ve been America, but some interesting influences have taken over the “traditionally” American architecture. When the corrupt leaders of other cultures joined together, so too did their aesthetics and architecture. Now, everything is a blend of the “countries” who banded together to form the elite group of rich citizens who now rule everything. You’d think this would be a good thing, a blending of cultures, but a great deal of appropriation, use without consideration, and overly “shiny” touches were the actual results. Below, you’ll see a few examples of what the Megahubs in most areas, like 99.99%, look like.
Spralling towers that can project messages and advertisements are very common.
Starlingpaw and Ravenpaw meet strangers on the border...
Ravenpaw followed Ratface dutifully, and she could feel his tail flick her nose every so often. Just below the dull chatter of grosbeaks in the surrounding hemlock trees, Ravenpaw could hear Starlingpaw and Hailspot speak quietly behind her.
Ravenpaw trudged up a steep incline. “What are we doing?” she asked.
“I’m going to show you the territory before we do anything,” Ratface rumbled gruffly. Ravenpaw wrinkled her nose and cringed as she heard him. His voice sounds like the roar of a monster…
“Are we going to see the borders too?” Ravenpaw wondered, trotting up the hill and cresting it’s ridge so that she could fall into step at the flank of her mentor.
“Yes,” Ratface confirmed, flicking his whiskers and coughing up thick globs of phlegm for a few seconds. “As long as you can handle it.”
“I can handle it, I promise,” meowed Ravenpaw. Anticipation fluttered through her paws.
“Yeah, right,” Ratface sneered, a crooked, gap-tooth smile spreading across his face. “I’m sure a kitten who hasn’t ever stepped out of the camp can make it to the border.”
“That’s not fair!” Ravenpaw protested. “You can’t underestimate me because I’m young!”
“I can and I will,” Ratface responded with a noncommittal shrug of his broad, bony shoulders. “Now be quiet.”
Ratface and Ravenpaw squeezed through a narrow opening in a thick patch of elderberries and emerged into a sun-filled clearing with a sizeable twoleg nest resting between large ridges of land. Two massive elm trees flanked either side of it, and a large structure made of spiked wood separated the thick tussocks of crabgrass from the neatly trimmed lawn of the twoleg structure. The thick underbrush rustled as Starlingpaw and Hailspot entered the clearing as well. A beaten path led away from the den and deeper into the dark forest. Ravenpaw tried to follow the trail with her eyes until the weaving track lost way into the deep shadows cast by the canopy of evergreens.
“The twoleg nest,” Ratface explained, his nose twitching and his maw lifting open to taste the air. “It’s usually quiet around here, but two kittypets live here, and they don’t take kindly to any cat trespassing.”
“Doveheart was telling me she saw them once,” Hailspot broke in. Ravenpaw looked back and saw her eyes grow clouded. “She said that they were large and muscular and that they nearly pounced on Smoketail. The prey isn’t even that good around here.”
“I bet I could take them on!” cried Starlingpaw. She grinned triumphantly and puffed out her chest fur, which was brushed with a cold, damp wind running from the high foothills rising just behind the tan twoleg nest.
“I bet you would come back to camp with your tail between your legs,” Ratface grumbled in response. Ravenpaw cast him a puzzled look.
“Why did you show us if you don’t even want us coming here?” Ravenpaw asked him, pressing further back into the trees. She felt much more comfortable beneath the dappled shade of the conifers. “You know that saying we shouldn’t take on these kittypets will only make Starlingpaw want to do it more, right?”
Ratface shook out his fur, and his long, kinked tail flicked lowly against the ground. “I’m not the kind of mentor to not tell you everything in hopes that you never encounter it. It’s best that you know the dangers so that if you do something reckless, you may be prepared.”
“I would never do anything reckless!” Starlingpaw squawked from behind her. Ravenpaw shook her head in amused disappointment.
“I can’t help but not believe that,” Ratface grumbled sharply. His eyes searched the top of the ridge that served as a background for the twoleg nest and Ravenpaw looked too, but she couldn’t find anything of interest.
Why does Ratface seem so… jaded? Ravenpaw thought privately, finally letting her maw open. She could taste the damp air, still thick with dew and humidity. A dense, suffocating scent of garbage and monster fumes came and settled on her tongue, and Ravenpaw immediately shut her mouth and pursed her lips in disgust.
“It smells like crowfood here!” she complained loudly, settling on her haunches and rubbing at her mouth with her paws in the hope that she could remove the acrid taste from her mouth. She rolled it over and over again against her tongue, her nose wrinkling considerably. Starlingpaw gagged behind her.
“On that note,” Hailspot interjected. “Let’s get out of here. We don’t want to ruin your appetite for when we return to camp.”
Hailspot pressed Starlingpaw back into the line of trees and disappeared into the thick darkness soon after her. Ratface was the next to enter the yawning abyss, and Ravenpaw stepped towards it. A sudden curiosity swelling deep in her heart, she tossed her head over her shoulders and let her jade green eyes search the sunkissed line of twoleg innovation. On top of the spiky wooden fence, a brown she-cat with sleek fur and lean muscles sat. The sunlight caught the she-cat’s jade green eyes, and Ravenpaw felt a bottomless pit of dread sink into her belly like a stone. She turned away and leaped back into the comfort of her sheltered territory.
A cold chill swept over her as Ravenpaw exited the dawn light and disappeared into the darkness of Shadowclan territory. She took up Ratface’s side silently and cast her eyes to her paw, watching with fascination as her claws tipped into the thick mulch underpaw and suffocated the scattered pine needles beneath her weight. She felt coarse fur under her chin as Ratface used his tail to keep her gaze up and forward.
“Watch where you’re going,” Ratface told her. A deep frown overtook Ravenpaw’s face, and she stewed in silence, avoiding thick pine trees and following her sister’s streaming black tail through the sparse foliage.
I wonder what crawled into his fur and died, Ravenpaw thought bitterly, casting a poisonous side glance to Ratface’s profile. She traced the jagged line of his facial scar with her eyes, watching as it started at the top of his right brow, crossed to his muzzle, and disappeared to the other side of his face. He swerved suddenly to the side, and Ravenpaw averted her eyes with barely enough time to dodge the hemlock trunk standing tall in her path.
She looked forwards now, her ears perking. Just beneath the sound of Hailspot’s and Starlingpaw’s jovial conversation, she could hear the chirping of restless morning doves and the push and pull of the lake’s waters on the shore. The rocky soil beneath her paws sloped down from the steep incline further into ShadowClan territory and gave way to loamy sand and grains. The group emerged from the thick line of trees, and they crossed the distance from the very edge of the forest to where the water lapped at the shore. Ravenpaw cast her eyes towards the endless horizon.
The sun glittered across the choppy water and cast the lake in a warm glow. Faintly, the shape of a ridge and rolling hills could be seen rising steeply away from the water, and moorland winds whipped at Ravenpaw’s quivering nose. Flanked on either side of them, two half-bridges held firm against the steady lap of the water. The half-bridge to the right of them connected to the Greenleaf Twolegplace, smelling faintly of monsters, while the half-bridge to the left sat untouched, broke and collapsed against the elements.
“Ah, it’s cold!” Starlingpaw cried in front of her. Ravenpaw saw her shaking water from her creamy toes, fur fluffed up against the breeze and nose wrinkled in disgust. She skirted away from the tide, leering at the water with a deep amber gaze.
“Of course it’s cold,” Hailspot quipped curtly. “Just don’t get too close to the water and you should be fine. Not even RiverClan tries swimming in the lake.”
“The waters can get pretty rough here,” Hailspot explained, bristling her silver fur. “In a storm, the tide can sweep you away and throw you to the bottom.”
“Why can the RiverClanners handle the rivers but not the lake? Aren’t they the water cats?” Ravenpaw pressed further.
“Not even RiverClanners are that stupid,” Ratface cut in. “And neither should you be. If you value your life, you wouldn’t even touch the lake. It’s too big for kits like you.”
Starlingpaw bristled now, and Ravenpaw struggled to smooth down her own fur. “I’m big enough as it is!” Starlingpaw defended herself.
“You got that right,” Ravenpaw snickered beneath her breath. She raised a paw and poked gently at Starlingpaw’s kitten chub, feeling it jiggle under pressure. Starlingpaw leaped back and bared her teeth, curling her tail to protect her flank.
“Stop messing around,” Ratface quipped, cuffing Starlingpaw’s ear with his paw. She coiled back and stared at him. “It’s time to move on. We’ll be going to the Thunderclan border now.”
“Oh, they better watch out for me!” Starlingpaw cried, bouncing on her paws and kicking up sand as she raced in the direction of the broken half-bridge. Hailspot watched after her, shook her head, sighed, and began to follow her lead. Ratface grumbled similarly and took up Hailspot’s flank. Ravenpaw trailed behind with a frown on her face and her tail making tracks in the loamy sand.
The group traveled silently along the shore of the lake, a chorus of the tide foaming against the beach echoing deep within their ears as they walked. Their pawsteps were washed away by the everpresent flow of water. Eventually, Starlingpaw grew tired and fell behind entirely, even stepping a few tail-lengths behind Ravenpaw. She could hear Starlingpaw’s laborious and dramatic breathing against the lake’s current, and she giggled everytime her sister let out a scratchy cough.
The treeline further inland had begun to change the further they walked. Where they had once been entirely surrounding by a forest consisting of deep green pine needles and firs, now tall, sprawling trees with new, green buds covering their skeletal branches mixed in with the familiar evergreens. The stench of a border marking grew stronger, and Ravenpaw could see a meandering deciduous wood crawl along the gently sloping hills of Thunderclan territory.
Ratface grew closer to the strong scent and sniffed along the thick clumps of grass, much unlike the sparse mud and tree stumps of ShadowClan territory. He moved even further, and his crooked whiskers twitched against the stems of clover and borage. He sniffed along the pistil of a stiff, purple, star-shaped flower and recoiled immediately upon scenting something. Revelation glittered in his rheumy eyes, once so dull and disinterested. “Thunderclan moved their border up; this patch of land used to belong to ShadowClan!”
Hailspot bristled beside her and Starlingpaw hissed angrily, pressing her ears back against her head. Ravenpaw turned to look at them, her features remaining foreign and far away.
“Those mouse-brained squirrel-chasers,” Hailspot cursed. “Did they really think we wouldn’t notice?”
Starlingpaw moved closer. She sniffed cautiously at the patch of borage and quickly recoiled. She joined Ravenpaw at her side and wrinkled her nose. Hailspot did the same, except she sniffed closer and opened her maw to taste the scents more accurately.
“Our marking is still fresh too,” Hailspot exclaimed. “They must have done this recently.”
“It was a mistake for Tatteredstar to give them so much leeway,” spat Ratface, his patchy brown fur bristling. “He gives them a fox-length, and they walk the entire territory!”
Hailspot shook her head. Ravenpaw saw the disbelief and anger glitter fiercely in her eyes. “You’ll bring this up to him, won’t you?”
“Of course I will,” Ratface sneered back at her. “I couldn’t let this disgrace go.”
Starlingpaw tapped Ravenpaw insistently with her tail and motioned with her head towards the firm line of oak trees, highlighted by the intense sunlight. Ravenpaw looked to where she motioned and saw a group of cats break away from the dappled shadows of the deciduous wood. A thin, prickly-furred brown tom, a pretty calico she-cat, a small, youthful fawn-and-white tom all padded towards them. Ravenpaw peered closer and managed to pick out the first rib from each of their flanks, and the brown tom’s amber eyes sunk deep into his skull so that she could see dark circles collect beneath the sclera. Despite the Thunderclanner’s lousy shape, the prowled with power and bared their teeth. Ravenpaw could see aggression clear, it glittered deep in each of their searching eyes.
“I heard the word disgrace come from over here,” the brown tom growled, prancing dangerously close to Ratface. Ratface clearly outweighed the scraggly ThunderClanner, but that did not prevent the strange brown tom from puffing out his chest anyway. The calico positioned herself at his flank and the apprentice smiled proudly at his other side.
“I wonder why,” Ratface sneered sarcastically. “Considering our last marker went way beyond this patch of borage, which your Clan has decided to selfishly take for themselves. I’d like an explanation.”
“We don’t need to explain anything to you!” the apprentice cried shrilly, and Ravenpaw stepped forward. Starlingpaw bit her lip, although Ravenpaw felt her bristle hotly beside her. Ravenpaw assumed Starlingpaw must be trying to keep herself from saying anything that might escalate the situation.
“We need this patch of borage more than you do,” the sickly calico added on. She stepped a paw further into ShadowClan territory, and Ratface stared at it.
“By that logic, you could take the entire lake territory for yourself because you ‘need’ it,” Hailspot cut in, and her hackles rose substantially. “Just because you may need the borage doesn’t mean you can change borders that have been here for moons.”
“I don’t care about your logic, fox-heart,” the brown tom hissed coldly to Hailspot, and Hailspot stepped forward in a fit of anger. “This is our patch of land now.”
“No, it isn’t,” Ratface told him gruffly. Ravenpaw shivered at the commanding tone lacing his voice. “Now, either you get off of Shadowclan territory, or we make you go.”
“We’re not going anywhere!” the apprentice cried again, and Ravenpaw cringed at the steep pitch of his voice.
“Yeah, this is ThunderClan’s land now,” the calico added on.
“We’ve warned you already,” Hailspot threatened, making a firm line of Shadowclan warriors beside Ratface. She curled her paws into the underbrush, still shaking the sand from her paws. “We are not afraid to chase you from this place and remark the border even stronger next time.”
“Well, if you ShadowClanners want to act so tough,” the brown tom growled lowly, and she stepped even closer to Ratface so that their whiskers could brush together. “Then chase us off. Make us quiver in our fur.”
Ravenpaw shivered at the sudden tension that hung thick in the air, and she pressed closer to Starlingpaw, swallowing thickly. She watched Ratface as he stared intensely into the eyes of the skinny ThunderClan warrior. Lightning seemed to crackle silently between their faces, and even the calico backed away from the two, sensing that this fight was not her own. Starlingpaw bounced from paw to paw beside her, and Ravenpaw sensed the anticipation and adrenaline pumping through her darker littermate. The taunt caught on the brown tom’s words did not go unnoticed.
In a heartbeat, Ratface lunged forwards and crashed into the brown ThunderClanner, overpowering him and sending him into the patch of borage. The thin stalks flattened under their weight as they struggled among the deep green, and Ravenpaw stifled a gasp. Ratface held the ThunderClanner down by his shoulders, but the brown tom scrabbled frantically at Ratface’s side with his long, dark claws. They slipped through Ratface’s cinnamon fur, and Ravenpaw wrinkled her nose as the scent of blood began to fill the air.
I need to help him! Ravenpaw realized suddenly, and she rushed forwards too. She placed her paws on Ratface’s side and pushed hard, hoping to knock him away from the Thunderclan warrior so that they could retreat in peace. She felt thick globs of sticky crimson blood pulse steadily beneath her paws, and she could feel her stomach stir uncomfortably as it squelched audibly beneath the pressure. Out of the corner of her eye, Hailspot tugged desperately at Ratface’s tail in hopes to unbalance him. Finally, his thickly muscled body shifted, and he stumbled from the pin, allowing the brown tom to slip from his grip and return to the line of ThunderClan warriors. Ratface whipped around wildly and hissed at the two of them. Ravenpaw cowered away as she saw the pure rage flicker deep within his liquid gold eyes.
“We’ll be sure to mention this at the gathering!” the brown tom called from Thunderclan territory, huffing and panting. He was safe now, for Ratface could not come for him again without risking trespassing.
“Riverclan and Windclan will never trust you fox-hearts again!” the calico cried, and she ran back into the dense woods. The rest of the ThunderClan patrol chased after her streaming tail, and soon the ShadowClanners were left alone on the border.
Ravenpaw looked to the crumpled patch of borage and clover, spotting clumps of brown fur caught among the green and splatters of deep red blood speckling the vibrant hue of nature. Ravenpaw glanced to Ratface to see him panting and huffing. Ravenpaw warily took her place at Starlingpaw’s side, who still bounced from side to side as if she had just burned her paw pads.
“Why did you stop me?” Ratface interrogated them. “I could have made sure those three never dared to trespass on ShadowClan territory ever again!”
“For a senior warrior, you are the most impulsive cat I’ve ever met,” Hailspot bit back at him, her fur still bristling. She stomped up to him, glowering fiercely. “If you hurt a hair on any of those Thunderclanners, they would have cried about us to every clan. We would have been announced a public enemy, for Starclan’s sake!”
“It would have been cool though!” Starlingpaw cried, unable to contain herself any longer. Hailspot sent her a withering stare and Starlingpaw immediately flattened herself guiltily.
Ratface straightened up now, his eyes icing over as he stared at Hailspot cooly. He seemed content to concede her this point, but Ravenpaw could see resentment glitter deep in her mentor’s eyes. “You don’t know that,” Ratface growled.
“Yes, I do!” Hailspot cried in exasperation, lashing her tail wildly and sending a swift breeze to Ravenpaw’s face. “We need to talk to Tatteredstar and make him bring this up at the next gathering. Talking it out works infinitely better than tarnishing our reputation forever.”
“I sincerely doubt it,” Ratface muttered beneath his breath. “But fine. We’ll do it your way. Let’s get back to camp.”
Ravenpaw watched as Ratface disappeared into the mix of deciduous and coniferous trees, his flank still burning hot with spilled blood and dripping red trails all across the scattered foliage. Hailspot relaxed her muscles and smoothed down her fur, turning back to Ravenpaw and Starlingpaw. “Sorry you had to see that,” she meowed, smiling weakly. “He can be so stubborn sometimes.”
“It’s okay,” Ravenpaw responded. “It happens.”
Hailspot relaxed considerably at Ravenpaw’s allowance and Starlingpaw’s beaming smile. “Thanks,” she breathed. “Let’s get back to camp and see if we can force Ratface to see Songbird for those nasty cuts.”
Hailspot bounded away from them and stepped into the path that led back to camp. Ravenpaw followed soon after and she could feel Starlingpaw trot at her side. After only a moment of silence, Ravenpaw glanced to her side to see Starlingpaw giving the largest, most toothy grin Ravenpaw had ever seen.
A GOOD ROMANCE STARTS WITH A GOOD FRIENDSHIP. A GOOD ROMANCE STARTS WITH A GOOD FRIENDSHIP. A GOOD ROMANCE STARTS WITH A GOOD FRIENDSHIP. A GOOD ROMANCE STARTS WITH A GOOD FRIENDSHIP. A GOOD ROMANCE STARTS WITH A GOOD FRIENDSHIP.
