Talisman 01 - The Emerald Talisman

out onto the paper, my eyes welled up with tears. At the end, I signed it, then folded it up neatly. I had plans for it in the morning.

8 - FAREWELL
    T he crisp morning air and the warm travel mug in my hands should have stopped the lump from forming in my throat, but this wasn’t going to be a normal stroll. Birds sang happily to welcome the day after the night rain, but I couldn’t rejoice with them. Everything inside me felt numb.
    Earlier, when I got up after another disturbing, restless night, I discovered Luke had already left the house. But to my surprise, I found a pot of hot coffee waiting for me. It could only mean he’d forgiven my girlish behavior. He also left a note telling me he was at the store, which was a good idea since all we had in the fridge were a few rotten vegetables and moldy bread. I ducked out quickly, leaving a vague note next to his about my whereabouts, to avoid any unnecessary questions. I felt within my pocket to make sure I’d remembered to bring my new fully-charged cell phone just in case.
    The road to the forest trail seemed lonely as I listened to the crunch of the wet gravel under my shoes. I wanted to laugh out loud at the irony. Every day since I’d met Nicholas, I wanted to return to our meeting spot—until today. Had it only been a few days since we made the trek in the opposite direction? I inhaled and refused to reminisce about the past, pulling my coat tighter around myself.
    Soon, too soon in fact, I stood at the mouth of the trail and my heart beat a little faster. Stairs made of railroad ties wove their way down into the dark redwoods below. I questioned my sanity.
    After a moment of waffling, I carefully limped down each step. I couldn’t help but remember how nimbly Nicholas carried me up these stairs. It was going to take me an hour at least to traverse them by myself later.
    Why did all this happen?
    At the end of the stairs, I stepped onto the muddy trail, thankful I wore my old sneakers. All the familiar landmarks were welcoming in the daylight and the ominous scariness seemed completely non-existent. No wonder I thought I could walk through here unafraid, even if it was dark.
    Unable to help myself, I looked around for evidence of Nicholas’ presence: a foot print, a possible piece of torn fabric off his shirt, maybe even fur from the mountain lion. I rounded the corner and gasped. Someone had run a tractor through the area, or at least it looked like one had. Huge holes in the ground were all that was left of the trees that once stood and the ones remaining seemed askew with fresh overturned dirt at their trunks. A huge indentation against the trail wall showed evidence something large had been pushed against it, dislodging the soil upwards, widening the fissure in the rock face.
    Whoa, did this happen before or after my fall?
    Confused, I wandered around and tried to piece the scene together. Nicholas and the mountain lion couldn’t have possibly made all this damage. A pit formed in my stomach as I remembered the hungry feelings from “it ” and then shook my head. I still didn’t understand how, for that brief moment in time, I felt its feelings. Maybe it was because I was in mortal danger.
    I slowly crept to the edge of the trail and looked down. A piece of the remaining branch stuck out of the earth part way and I gulped. This was the cliff I had tumbled over. My fall really did happen and it was a long way down to the creek bed below. Without Nicholas’ help, I would have been a goner falling from this height. Who knows how long I would have been down there, unconscious. Suddenly I felt woozy and I backed away from the edge, drawing my arms around myself. I didn’t want to think about the ‘what ifs’.
    I sat down on a stump to think as the weight of the past bore down on me. More questions than answers tumbled around in my brain. The closure I desperately craved wasn’t going to be obtained today.
    Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted the protruding tree root that started this whole mess. A broken piece of wood lay next to it on the trail. I picked it up and turned it over in my hands. One side was smooth from where people had walked on it and the underside rough, torn like my heart.
    Folding my hands over the wood, I contemplated my next actions. Part of me wanted to keep it and the other, to throw it off the cliff. My goal had been to get rid of the past and leave it here in the woods with the rest of my demons, but I couldn’t.