The jolting torchlight illuminates the dead grasses beneath the pounding of my bare feet until the marshy forest floor resembles the hellfire I feel on my heels.

Every frantic pounding step away from where the heat and I had previously resided rips my heart and nightdress into tatters.

“This is just so typical,” I scoff into the endless obsidian of night.

I’ll be the first to admit I’ve never been good at following instructions.

“Maybe people are just bad at giving them,” I reason aloud to no one.

In a mocking voice, I repeat the directive, “Go to the tower and retrieve the scroll,” in full narration of my short descent into madness.

My ankle snares in a particularly testy vine that incurs my wrath in the form of conversation.

“And what did I find in that tower?” I ask it sarcastically.

The vine’s silence speaks volumes.

“That’s right!” I whisper shout at it, “A library. Scroll city! That’s what it was.”

Although my hapless captor seems to shrivel a bit under my ire, it continues to have nothing to say for itself. I yank my foot out of its grasp in disgrace, take a step forward, only to spin back around on my heel.

“And another thing!” I start with an accusing point down at the regretful growth. It’s saved by the sudden and unwelcome sound of hounds baying over the steep hill I just crested.

An unmistakable sign that they’ve picked up a trail. I hope it’s not mine, but then that would almost be worse.

It would mean I’m not out here alone.

I’d never put much thought into the purpose of cursing until now, but it’s only those words that seem capable of coming out.

Pointing a threatening finger at the weed once more, I then recover my path, but I swear I hear a breath of relief at my back.

My journey is obviously unplanned and entirely horrifying. I laugh a little madly as I continue it, only able to perceive about a five foot radius around my fading light while being forced to clear nearly that same distance with every panicked stride.

I’m not one for stealth with my clanking lantern, pounding feet, & swish of my skirts pretty much clearing a path for my pursuers, one that I wish I had.

The dogs decide to take that moment to send up a resounding howl.

Oh yes, thank you.

That’s what I was missing in my harmony of horror.

It’s like, I get it.

You don’t like sharing your fancy hidden library full of endless shelves of scrolls that I’ve been secretly reading for over a week in order to find the one of most apparent importance.

No need to be so dramatic about it.

Did they find me asleep in their child’s bed tonight?

Maybe.

But the kid passed away decades ago.

Move on!

Alright, that’s mean.

Not ‘release the hounds’ mean, but it’s unlike me.

Maybe I’m a bit more sleep deprived than I’d like to admit. This becomes even more evident when the abyss I’ve been sprinting into alights ahead in a green glow, casting treacherous trees into silhouette but illuminating a blessed clearing beyond them.

“You know what?” I proclaim breathlessly as I barrel towards the ominous luminance and into the unknown ahead. “I’ll take it.”