As I ambled further the Forrest around me thickened, shadows twisting and tangling around me, encasing me in a tunnel of darkness. Echoing, screeching, swirling, the wind violently whipped at my heels as if urging me to keep going. Keep moving. Don’t stop. I couldn’t look back. I couldn’t even bring myself to if I tried.

Paralysed with fear and yet I couldn’t stop moving. My lungs burned screaming at me for a break, a break I knew could be the difference between life and death. The andrenalin made my heart rattle against my ribs, begging for some sort of reprieve. Panting, the same words looping over and over and over. Don’t stop. Pleading for this nightmarish fantasy to be over.

It’s funny isn’t it? How quickly your world can come crashing down. How fortune can in an instant turn to ruin. The unpredictable nature of fate - a singular moment is all it takes to lose it all. Like life. So ephemeral and unforgiving yet oddly beautiful in a way. It’s that same fear of death that makes life so cherished don’t you think?

My vision blurred as I slowed my head still spinning round stirring my whole body. I looked around into the darkness the faint outlines of daunting trees eerily towering over me, their branches intertwining like veins. Footsteps. Closer. Closer still. Shaking the ground beneath me, rattling the earth right to its core. The bitter sweet wind even more harshly urging me to move once more. I just can’t. How much longer can I flee? Is this just what fate had decided for me?