Where the Pine Trees Grow

The soaring pine trees surrounded the young girl. The rain had started to come down faster now, and the thunder crashed around her, causing her to fall to the ground. She lay there unmoving, listening to the forest to cave in about her. But suddenly everything stopped. She looked up; a blurred figure loomed over her. The air around them warmed and things became brighter.

“Who, who are you?” she asked with her voice wavering from the cold and the fear that this may be the end of a life that had only begun 10 years earlier.

“Obviously your saving grace, little one.” The man held out his hand to her and lifted her up.

The next morning the girl was in bed in her parents cabin, sleeping contently beside her older sister. When she woke she looked around, not believing that she was safe in the cabin again. It wasn’t till later that she noticed the moon pocket watch that had found its way into her clothing.

The years that followed didn’t improve her life, as things only got worse. Her parents died in a drunk driver accident, leaving her and her older sister to fend for themselves in such an unforgiving world. Then one day when the young 18 year old Dillon came home from school, she found that her sister had hung herself in the living room. Dillon’s life then started to go down hill; she found herself doing drugs and drinking, but found hope in a band that she and 3 others had started.

The melody that drifted from the moon watch sang its slow song that always made the world around her seem like a good place, but the world around her in fact wasn’t. She really had no place to call her own, and was lost once again with nothing to do. Her family was gone and her friends had disappeared. Life was . . . failing her. She had been a singer, not famous but it brought in money (some money enough to keep her alive in the world were money in fact was everything). But then the band fell apart. It had started over something stupid and then grew to become bigger, lies and deceit fallowed along this downward spiral. After all was said and done she was left with no singing career, then the bills started to add up.

There was someone at the door; probably the landlord again.

‘I have to leave soon, I haven’t paid rent for 3 months now’ she thought to herself

The banging increased and the shouting became louder.

‘Shut up you old fuck. I said I would get the money to you . . . Somehow’ D thought again as she packed a bag containing what was left of her possessions.

“D! D, get down here now!”

She flung the door open, sending the old man reeling backwards. She glared at the man standing in front of her. How weak people could be, and he was the weakest person she could think of. Another human striving to bring the people around him down to his level.

“Listen to me you old fuck I’m done with this shit go bother someone else!” D yelled at him and he stood flabbergasted, not knowing what to do to the young girl. She started to walk down the street of the crowed city that she hated with every fiber of her being, with everything that was left of her broken self.

“Where are you going to go?” She stopped and looked back; her anger melting away, being replaced with pity for herself, the pity she never wanted to be there.

“I don’t know and like you care” D’s head hung low as she walked.

“Good question. Where am I going to go?” she asked herself.

Her hands searched the contents of her pocket her thumb grazed the watch that she had treasured for almost 12 years now. Her mind reeled back to that day and how that man had saved her from being lost in the woods. Afraid. Tired. She couldn’t find her way back to the cabin . . . The cabin. She had gone there every summer when she was younger.

She got her car from the parking garage and started to drive out to that far away land where her imagination had drove her into small stream that rose into oceans of the deepest blue, jumping from low rock that turned into endless gorges, and climbing into short tress that’s become a whole city of tree houses. Before her eyes the city turned into country, country into forests and the forests to blurs of greens and browns. She got there just when the sky was becoming a haze of purple and pink with its normal blue in-between.

The path was over grown, making it hard for her already-breaking... (broken)... down car to make it through. D looked at the forest that surrounded her. She had had so many memories, too many memories, and they all hurt because of all of those people had been taken from the world and left her behind. This cabin was all that was left, and even it was falling to pieces

“Why am I here?”

D lay back on the molding bed. The house reeked of it; everything dying and decaying, like everything else in her life. The door was easy enough to kick in and break down. The house was no different, other then the smell and the thick layer of dust that had settled over everything, causing it to seem blurred. She fell asleep on the musty bed that made her head hurt and her mind yearn.

She woke early that morning and what little light that came into the house was dim. All the windows opened with some difficulty, but the dust was swept away on the warm breeze, she watched the cloud for a moment, wishing that she could fly away with that dust and become the earth as it surely would do.

Dillon drove to the small town located an hour away the only job opening was in a sleepy restaurant that never closed. In town she picked up what would be needed to clean away the cobwebs of her past and the dirt/grim that would surly fallow her into her future.

Dillon finished the bedroom in that same day (the one that she would be in). A new mattress would be coming in tomorrow, no use for the other bedrooms to have new mattresses to be put in there. The other rooms would go unused the dust would surly once again settle in the place were memories could have been made. She polished wood repeatedly, swept floors 10 times over, dusted couches that she wished she could replace a few cheap sheets would have to do for now.