unfinished

She started. There was an eerie feeling in the foggy air; the woods seemed to emulate tension. Raising herself up, her cloak rustled, the sound amplified in the near silence. Rubbing her ears absentmindedly, she thought.
She wondered what was making everything so upset. The lack of birds or really anything was quite unnerving. So quiet...but no, there in the distance, there was a faint roar of sorts. She wondered if there was a waterfall nearby. Standing, she grabbed her knives and long, thin sword and held them rather longer than necessary, as if to show an predators that she had weapons. She packed slowly, thinking her sense of direction must be off. The river was supposed to be the <i>other</i> way....
She thought back. Her mother had sent her out here, although she preferred her forest city to the huge, "civilized" world. In her home, girls and boys alike would go scouting for a place in the world at a mere sixteen years old. She would travel alone and find civilization, and then see what she could do with her life. This tradition wasn't so necessary anymore, because there were jobs to be done in the Gelcian Woods; but it did help young Gelks, as they called her people, get a sense of the world, and some of them were travellers at heart, just waiting to discover their passion. Cleasary wasn't sure about any of it. She merely wanted to stay home and continue being a kid; she had no special talents she could think of, besides the fact that she had a certain way with animals. But that wasn't exactly a useful skill if she wanted to do something interesting with her life.
Still thinking, she trotted off, her bags packed and on her back, towards that strange sound. It got louder and louder, yet she still couldn't identify the source. And the thickly fogged air was beginning to smell strange. Clea was baffled. Perhaps...perhaps there's a smelly bog nearby the waterfall.... She thought, although she didn't believe it in the least. All she could do was keep going towards the sound.
At last, she broke through a clearing of trees and saw the source.
"Cleasary! NO!" Came a long, devastated wail.
But Clea had fainted.

---

Cleasary's foster mother, Nora, was sitting in front of the hearth, thinking. Clea had been gone one day, and was probably no farther than five miles from their city, yet Nora worried. She knew Clea was someday destined to do something monumental, world-changing, in fact, but she didn't know what. But Clea would probably discover what it was when she got farther north, to one of the main cities, and the whole thing would no doubt be revealed to her. Clea had no idea she was adopted, and only Nora knew of her real origins. She had never told anybody that Clea was--
Somebody shrieked wildly. More screams followed. Nora scrambled out of the door and onto the wide, thirty foot high branch that served as their porch. She gasped. Her mind went blank.
The forest. The forest was on fire.
Even worse, the base of her living-tree was alight, blazing and spitting. There were no trees to jump to nearby. Nowhere the swing. No way down her beloved tree at all.
Nora knew then that she would die. Her part as the mother in the prophecy had ended. She was calm, she accepted it.
While people all around released their souls, she watched the fire eat away the base of her tree until finally, finally, the tree began to sway. She grabbed a branch and waited.
The tree lurched. What was that coming through the forest beyond? A person? Huge snaps from her tree. Cleasary! It was her! No, she couldn't be here, her beloved Cleasary....
"Cleasary! NO!" She screamed. The tree was falling. Nora was on fire. Butterflies in her stomach, unimaginable pain, horrible anguish. Just before the tree hit the ground and Nora drew her last breath, she saw Clea fall.
"No! No, Clea, NO!" She screamed raggedly, knowing only complete loss of hope and happiness in her last moment, and was gone. The fire ate her vacated body, and her spirit wept.

----To be continued.