Untitled beginning. But you should read it, it's pritty.

It was noon. The air was chilled and fog rolled over the surface of the lake silently and almost languidly, moving and moving but never seeming to get anywhere. Leah shivered- she had no jacket, only the threadbare, age-old knee length Bob Marley t-shirt that she usually slept in. Her shoes and socks were soaked through with water, freezing her feet and causing her toes to go numb. Mist clung to her hair and dampened her clothing- she wouldn’t be able to stay out much longer before catching a cold.1

In a half attempt to get warm, she pulled her shirt over her knees and crossed her arms over them. It didn’t make much of a difference as far as heat went, but she didn’t really care- she’d stay forever if she had to, even if it was cold.2

Lakewater lapped at the pebbly ground only feet from where she sat. She stared, though there wasn’t much to watch- in the still, cold weather, even the minnows had fled to their homes. As for Leah, she had no home. She had a house, a few family members and a cat, but no… home.3

“Leah.” A man’s voice cut through the mist like a pencil through a lung. Though her muscles were frozen stiff and ached with cold, Leah scrambled to her feet; fists clenched, teeth bared, and a scowl proudly worn on her face. Her wet sneakers squelched when she stood and she could feel the water pool between her toes.4

“What do you want?” She asked. Her father, a tall man with small, mean eyes and hairy arms, stood before her with all the dignity and grace of a disoriented gorilla. 5

“Return to this house right now and apologize to your mother,” he demanded, just as ready for a fight- or more- than Leah was.6

“I have nothing to apologize for,” she spat in retort, and then turned to walk away.7

“Leah, come to the house right now or I’ll ground you for a month!” Leah audibly scoffed and rolled her eyes. Was that really supposed to work? What kind of person did they think she was? Was the groundation card actually supposed to solve this?8

“Whatever you say, old man,” she drawled. “But I’m out. I’m not playing your little games anymore.” She flipped her wavy blonde hair just for good measure and began hopping from rock to rock on the shore of the lake, towards the forest. Her step father tried to catch up to her, but she was light on her feet and he was heavy and clumsy and she was far away from his clutches in no time.9

They weren’t mad at her for any specific reason. Her parents. They felt like she was rebelling from them, even though she wasn’t- at least not in that sense of the word- and the tension had gotten so strong that they were looking for just about any reason to yell at her, ground her, keep her locked up in her room or just spread negativity in general.10

She was done with them.11

She really hadn’t meant to ruffle their feathers, not at first. At first she was just curious. She got her nose pierced, signed up for a yoga class, began hanging out with vegetarians and reading Jack Kerouac novels- but there shouldn’t have been a problem. Her grades were still consistent (high honors) and she still got in on time for curfew or even earlier, and she never forgot to feed her cat, Hupple, but they didn’t seem to care. Though they put off that it did, it didn’t matter whether she followed their rules. If she wasn’t who they wanted her to be, there was trouble.12

Soon she was stepping away from the dark lake and towards the forest she had often explored as a child. Funny thing was, she had never gone that far in- Mummy and Daddy wouldn’t be pleased. Ticks and such, you’ll get diseases if you get too close to forests. Now was her chance. 13

A small pathway opened up a few steps into the brush, a pathway that had probably been used often long ago but was now overgrown with weeds and bushes and other miscellaneous plants, what had once been a place where humans tread was now a place where bugs and insects made their homes. As a child Leah had always sat on the mouth of the path and had her own secret “fort” where she kept snacks and crayons and coloring books, but she had always been too frightened to go more than twenty feet down the path.14

The object that marked as far as she would walk was a canvas painting nailed to a tree. It was a beautiful painting of a butterfly perched on a piece of bark, all greens and purples and browns and yellows, and moss had grown around it, almost making the painting part of the tree itself. So many times Leah had sat at the bottom of the tree and stared at the painting and dreamed that the artist who painted it would happen to visit it at the same time as her and show her the secret of how to make things beautiful, but she never did meet them, whoever they were. But one day, curious, she had climbed up on a log and tried to take the painting down for a better look, maybe the artist had signed the back.15

Being such an old, delicate painting, the paint on the corner she touched quickly crinkled away and fell off like dust; and she was so mortified that she had ruined the only beauty in the world that she ran and ran all the way home and never went back again.16

It was still there, exactly how she had left it. Still beautiful, though there was a little paint missing on one corner and the edges were invisible due to more moss growth. Now that she was older, Leah needed no log to stand on to reach the painting- it was only a bit higher than level with her head, and she touched the moss frame, but not the painting itself. She didn’t want to break it again.17

The air in the forest was still and delicate as a spider’s web, though frogs were burping and crickets were chirping, bugs buzzed and animals scurried, none of them disturbed the stillness in the air. The forest floor beneath Leah’s wet sneakered feet was cushioned with layers upon layers of moss and dead pine needles, and each tree was a different color- ranging from the dark, almost black barked pines to the white of the birch trees.18

Leah decided to go farther into the forest than she ever had before, not that that was very hard. She forgot about her mother and she forgot about her father and she forgot about yoga classes and she even temporarily forgot about Hupple and trudged into the woods, over bushes and logs and around rocks and in between trees.19

She didn’t notice the first or the second newer paintings. The first was lodged into a pile of rocks, and Leah stepped over it, the heel of her blue high top sneakers just brushing against the surface, without noticing. The second peeked out from behind a pile of leaves that Leah walked right passed without even giving a passing glance. But then, gradually, she began to see them out of the corners of her eyes. Gradually, she began noticing that some of the birds and butterflies and leaves were not real but images captured on canvas, until she realized with awe that she was surrounded by paintings. She stopped and looked around her- they were everywhere. Hanging from tree branches, lodged between tree roots, sticking out of the ground, and leaning against tree stumps. Her eyes were finally opened to all of the invisible beauty around her, and she soon began noticing flowers as well- flowers that had not been rooted where they were by chance of pollination and wind, but by human hands, the same human hands that created the brush strokes which formed the paintings surrounding her, and the same human hands that had carved away at blocks of material until the statues that hid behind trees were created.20

Leah wandered through the forest for hours, always bumping into statues and secret gardens and paintings the farther in she went. Some of the statues were marble, some wood, some even iron; all beautifully capturing the images of angels, fairies, nymphs, humans: but only a few common things withheld their liaison- they were all so detailed that they looked like real figures turned to stone, and they were all expressionless.21

At one point, Leah, through the mist and her own drunken awe, stumbled upon a painted statue so live looking that she jumped and proceeded to stutter apologies, thinking it was the artist who created the masterpieces, when, in reality, it was just another piece of art.22

Leah found flowers. She found flowers as deep, red, and velvety as theatre curtains, flowers smaller than your fingernails, and flowers so absolutely large that you could press the flower’s face to yours and breathe in the sickly sweet scents. There were flowers of all colors, flowers that were multicolored, and flowers that looked like they had eyes peeking out at her. There were flowers that went up to Leah’s knees and flowers that covered the ground in a thick carpet, and even flowers that climbed up the trees and bloomed with the leaves.23

These were the flowers that crowded around the statues, always ready to say “Yes, you may come close” or “No, you may stay where you are” to approaching passerby. 24

The forest was not all beautiful gardens and statues. Occasionally Leah found herself trudging through brush and over sticks, pushing tree limbs apart so that she could walk through, tripping on rocks, and anyone could have sworn that it was a regular forest. But then she’d stumble over a stray branch and land in a bed of bleeding hearts or look up and scream with fright and surprise because she was face-to-face with a blank-faced angel, and she knew it was no regular forest.25

After the morning glories’ blooms had closed and the fog had cleared, revealing a deep orange and red sunset mirroring the flowers, Leah began to worry that she would not be able to find her way home. It was only a minor worry- she had not had much of an intention to go home, though it would get dark soon and her lips were purple with cold, but she found comfort in knowing which way her house was.26

She had decided to keep exploring only a few minutes before she found the greatest masterpiece of them all. In the dead center of the woods, there was a clearing- moss and rock face covered the ground, the usual inch of dead pine needles gone due to lack of trees- and, in the middle, was a table.27

The table was old and circular, probably four feet across, and it was clear it had been there a long time; moss climbed up the legs and pieces of the cherrywood side was chipping away. The table was covered in an uncountable amount of objects: an enormous bible was propped up against an oar on one end, and on the flat side of the oar was an empty brass candlestick. Other things that adorned the shrine was an antique globe, pinecones bigger than both of Leah’s fists together, a delicate blue and white china gravy holder, a rusty tambourine, a bloated green vase, a clothing iron. Upon closer inspection, Leah was delighted to find that the surface of the table was a mirror; reflecting all of the things decorating it. Leah explored the surface of the table with her eyes, and one piece that caught her particular attention was a canvas painting, made on the same size canvas as the butterfly painting, propped up against elephant bookends- she couldn’t quite tell what the picture depicted, it was blurry and somewhat abstract, but it looked somewhat similar to a few of the statues she’d encountered, or maybe it was even a real person.28

Leah was about to reach out and touch a porcelain bowl when a twig snapped behind her. She whirled around to see an old, bent over man with a cane standing at the edge of the clearing. Her first thought, though she had seen him move, was that he was a statue- but quickly realized he wasn’t when he croaked, “What are you doing here?”29

His tone was less grumpy and more curious, though he was scowling and his face was bent into a permanent frown. Lonely hairs speckled his chin like dog whiskers, and he was wearing old, grey slacks with a matching button-up sweater vest and a brown, long sleeved shirt underneath.30

“Oh… I was just… I was just exploring,” Leah said. She could never tell a lie if it wasn’t 31

premeditated.32

“I see,” the man said. His voice was cool and whispery, like the wind. His eyes moved from Leah to the table, and then he walked over slowly, his bent back and arthritic joints slowing him. Eventually he came to stand right next to Leah, gazing at the objects just as she was.33

“So… Is all this stuff yours?” Leah asked tentatively, holding her hands behind her back. She was a good six inches taller than the man, which was saying something, because, being only five foot five, she was not very tall herself. “Are you the one who made all the statues?” She asked. The man was silent, and she was afraid he hadn’t heard her. Maybe, in his old age, he had gone partly deaf. He sighed, shifted his weight, and remained silent, still staring at the table, as if he had forgotten Leah was there. In the forest in front of them, a bird darted out of a tree and perched on another one with a loud rustle of leaves. The wind blew. The grass continued growing.34

“Yes,” the man said. “Yes, it is.” Leah didn’t know what to say.