Wet air clings to her face. With great effort, she lifts her head from the forest floor. She touches her face and wonders how she got here and where exactly she is. Nothing familiar stood out. Was it the forest close to her family house? She sat up straight but her head spun. A growl grabbed her attention. But it was only her stomach. She hasn't eaten in a long time. She stood up and listened to the silence of the forest greeting her.

Cracking noises caught her attention anew. But again, it was nothing, or so she hoped. She sat down again, trying to remember the previous night.

The wine.

Always the wine.

She sighed and tried to remember how she got this deep in the woods. She never wandered this far. The phone call suddenly rang in her mind with the words echoing: She OD'd.

But she could not focus on this now. She needed to find her out of this forest. She stood up, again, and tried to find any familiar landmark but nothing re-entered her mind. How did she even end up here without any recollection of it?

Her feet did not carry her lightly. She tripped over a piece of dead timbre and fell to the ground. No pain. She looked up and saw only a deeper receding forest. Her mind went to those deep corners and she saw her own death play in front of her. For the briefest of moments, she was complacent about this fact. She could die without any worries. But then it sank in, she could die.

And then she saw him. As if illuminated by heavenly showers of light, K sat on a branch reading a book. How? Why? She did not know where the questions should begin. Or was she hallucinating? Was there still alcohol in her system? Was this some hyperrealistic dream she could not immediately escape from unless she died?

"Hi there."

It was K's voice, but he did not look up from his book. How did he know she was there? How did he know when to speak? She felt a sudden surge of fear run through her body.

She could not answer him. She could not speak. Words did not form in her mouth that was suddenly dry and her tongue sticking to the roof of her mouth.

"I know you might have questions," the voice echoed.

Questions, she wondered. Again, fear surged through her body as she could not really comprehend what was going on.

"All of life is a stage, and we are merely the actors, they say, but we are also the writers. Nothing is set in stone, and with every move, with every act, we actively write our stories."

The voice seemed to come from the deep forest itself. She did not like the tone of his voice. Where was the K she knew from the art classes and the coffee shop? Why the doom and gloom from him all of a sudden in the middle of a forest she did not comprehend of how she got there. She felt chained by something beyond her cognitive abilities. She felt chained by her own disbelief in the current situation. But she was free to go, nothing held her back, besides her incomprehension of how she ended up in this situation and how to get out of it.

"You might wonder why I brought you here."

And that was when the memories flooded her mind.

Postscriptum, A First Crescendo

This is the first crescendo, leading up to the final. It is closely written to the first story, or The Prelude. The story ends with a similar setting as it started. It will build up from this and will have minor differences. It might be similar or it might not. The reader is to decide.

In any case, I hope you enjoyed this new turn of events that will be concluded shortly.

The photographs are my own, taken with my Nikon D300. Some of the photographs were shared in an earlier post. The story is also my own writing and creation.

Happy reading, and stay safe!