A Clearing, A Waking

The fire crackled merrily in the distance, it's flames casting long shadows between the trees that reached until where Klaus was standing. Fiddling with something in the semi-dark, the teenager wasn't paying attention to his surroundings at all. Low voices washed over to him with the wind, talking of haunted huts and lost children. Every now and again gasps could be heard, or a faint whimper.

Klaus had been here a lot in his life, and knew these woods like the back of his hand – if it hadn't been for his over-enthusiastic dad he would never have come along to these campgrounds with his cousins and their friends. “You've gotta take the initiative son, have some energy and explore, it'll be great fun,” Klaus whispered to himself in a mocking voice. Why would this stupid thing not work? Klaus thought. In his hands he held a gameboy, an old toy used to play videogames he had found cleaning out the attic a few days before the trip. Electrical devices were obviously strictly prohibited, but this gameboy had just been beckoning to be taken along.

“What're you doing here?” Klaus jumped and only barely held back a scream. “Jesus, Marla, you almost gave me a heart attack,” Klaus moaned, clutching his sides. Marla just stared at him, kindness in her eyes. She was only a few centimetres shorter than him, a year older and the only person he really talked to here in the woods.

Klaus straightened up. “I took along this piece of junk, but I can't get it to work. It was working just fine at home, and it should still be fully charged...” Klaus trailed off, thinking and starting to fidget with it again. “But why're you here, Klausi? It's rather cold,” Marla said with a nature of aloofness she often had about her, stroking her arms with her opposing hands, seemingly making a point. Klaus didn't respond at first, stuffing his toy in his pocket and leaning against a tree. When he spoke he was looking down at the ground. “I don't know, I guess I was just sick of hearing dad's stories. He just haad to take me along, to the same f-ing place we always go,” Klaus let out in an air of exasperation. He sighed. Marla looked at him lopsidedly, with a sort of haze over her eyes, as if she were staring into another world. Klaus was still not really looking at her, waving his hands around and looking up into the trees, a few sparkling stars here and there glinting back. “It's just that we always go here; and it was fun at first, but now I have better things to do, ya know? I'm not a kid anymore.” He paused. “I feel like I've seen everything there is to see here and I'm just wasting my time. And so far away from civilisation!” Klaus groaned and turned on the spot, rolling his eyes. There was a pause, in which Klaus turned to look at Marla. Her eyes were sparkling, none of the seeming drowsiness of the few moments before left. Klaus was surprised and just stared at her, eyes a little wider than before.

“Oh you've seen everything, have you?” Marla grinned and took his hand, racing off, away from the faint crackling and laughing.

They weaved through trees, brushing against some and dragging moss along with them. They scrambled through bushes, following a somewhat-trodden path at first and then just going in a general direction, steadily away from any other source of light but the sickle moon and the stars. Klaus stumbled here and there. After recovering from his first shock, he figured he didn't have much else to do and it wasn't all that late yet, so he might as well go with this so uncharacteristically acting Marla, into the ever denser growing woods. Soon he was out of breath and the forest had gotten so full of trees, that they couldn't properly jog anymore, instead slowly squeezing their way through plants no person had seemingly ever crossed. Marla, though, seemed like she knew exactly what she was doing. Klaus wondered for a moment if they'd find their way back, but decided not to give it any credit for now and to just focus on not falling. The ground was getting trickier and trickier to navigate. Suddenly they pushed through a last couple of ivy-covered trees and stood in a small clearing, looking up at a mountain of stars.

“Smell that?” Marla could hardly suppress her glee. “What?” Klaus answered through still short, strong breaths. “What should I be smelling?” Marla turned around to look at him, the Milky Way reflected in her sparkling brown eyes, her face glowing silver in the moonlight. “The forest, you big dumb dumb,” she laughed, and took a deep breath in through her nose, closing her eyes and tilting her head back. “Can't you smell it?” She took a few steps forward. Klaus was a bit confused, but closed his eyes and willed the smells of the forest to probe his nostrils. Grass, pine and mold, Klaus thought, rather unimpressed. Marla must have a point though. He didn't budge.

Together they stood there, on a patch of long grass in the middle of a forest filled with so much life, breathing in the sounds, listening to the smells. After a few moments Marla's voice sounded, surprising Klaus way more than it should've, waking him from a trance. “Calm, isn't it.” She spoke softly, but it rang overhead and seemed to play again and again in Klaus' head, breaking the silence that seemed to have overtaken everything without notice. Klaus took another deep breath, looking up. He took a few steps further into the clearing, wondering, but about nothing in particular, and a steady calmness filling his being. “Yeah,” he answered, and his own voice sounded unfamiliar. The smell seemed to fill his lungs, seep into his legs, his arms, his head. His feet were getting damp on the dewy grass; the trees rustled in the cold wind and above shone the sickle moon.

Klaus awoke to a beam of sunlight hitting his face through a small window in his tiny trailer. He could hear birds chirping, a dove hooting. He could smell the leftover smoke from the still smouldering fire seeping into everything around, and the smell of a fresh morning. His knees and feet felt sore, but as he got up, he felt his world had lost it's complications, opening itself for him to enter.