The forest was always dark. Often, engulfed in the sterility of an aphotic world, I’d wonder if I’d ever see the sun. Though it would eventually appear above the forested canopy as it always had, I still would wonder. The nights were long, each holding a lifetime of what I assume was a week, only broken by a few short hours of sunlight. Sleep would easily overtake me in such an environment, and I’d awaken while the darkness still clung tightly to the air. It gave me great anxiety that I could slumber so easily, at first at least, though I came to accept it. It was almost always night. Perhaps it was natural for such an adjustment. I came to accept this long lasting night as natural too. I had no reference to disprove the abnormality of my adaptations. The forest was a prison. It was vast and endless, trees reaching further than the eyes could perceive. It was where I was born, It was where I lived, and perhaps where I will return to die.

The world below the trees was quite open. Besides the trunks which rose high into the leaves, plant-life was lush and sprawling, supplemented with the occasional animal. Squirrels, deer, wolves, insects, and birds all seemed content to make this world their home, and survived in more prosperous condition than either my mother or I could say. We had a cottage whose wood bent at the force of our limbs and shook as our bodies laid upon it. It was rotted, old, scarcely furnished, covered in the softly glowing weeds that too winded across the ground, inherited from some unknown successor whose fate I still haven’t a clue. Perhaps they were a relative to my mother. Her parent, sibling, cousin, someone who paved a way for our existence here. I had no courage to ask my mother, nor the opportunity. She spent much time traveling deep into the forest. I assumed it was to get water, as the dirty plastic containers in our loose cupboards never went dry, or perhaps to get nuts and berries, which piled high upon our lone table when I awoke from sleep.

The sole time I would see my mother in her routine is outside our house, relaxing just outside. I had once heard the creaking of our walls and rushed out, a dull kitchen knife in my hand, pulled from a mossy block of wood. I found her leaned up against the wall, her fingers gently pressed to the weeds, inhaling deeply as her face tilted close. Violet light emanated from the blossoming petals which sprung from the otherwise monotonous green vines, and it shone prominently upon mother’s pale face. By then I had become accustomed enough to the darkness that it seemed to flee to the sky as the violet light took hold below the leaves. I dropped the rusty knife to the ground and approached mother. Neither of us cared that it fell flat into the dirt, it was just a knife, and a little bit of soil wouldn’t diminish its use.

“Come” she whispered, “smell them.” Her voice was almost toneless, but it held an emotion that I could only interpret as awe. It seemed all of her senses indulged in the flowers that bloomed from the weeds, as if the vines themselves wrapped around to pull her close.

I approached her hesitantly, and placed my nose above one of the many violet flowers. Immediately I bolted back, almost falling straight to the dirt as I did. “What is that?!” I yelled. I could feel the smell leaking down into my mouth, manifesting upon my tongue and down my throat. It had the texture of raw meat and tasted like rotting vegetation. I spat to the ground multiple times in a feeble attempt to wash its taste from my mouth. Mother smiled as she watched.

“Don’t overreact” she said dully, “they have a beautiful scent if only you accept it to be there.”

I walked away speechless, thinking my mother was insane, or perhaps relishing in the cruelty of watching my discomfort. But in honesty, I was not content with that theory. Later, when mother had escaped deep into the forest as she always did, I snuck out the door and crept towards the violet flowers. They looked enticingly beautiful, their light warmed my eyes in the cold depths of night. I closed my eyes to imagine a scent opposite from the rotting flesh they had forced me to taste.

They have a beautiful scent if only you accept it to be there.

I imagined my favorite meal, only made for special occasions. Wild fruits crushed into a liquid, mixed with honey stolen from empty hives, and roasted deer stomach stuffed with squirrel meat. My mouth watered thinking of it, and my muscles ached thinking of the work that it needed to be made. I leaned forward to the flowers and inhaled deeply…

Scentless. A beautiful scent compared to the rot, you could say, but far from what I expected.

Over the years my mother had grown quite fond of the weeds. In honesty, I had too. It was not merely the beautiful light they emitted which melded firmly into my eyes, but the scent that peaked my interest in the monotony of what was, to me, normal life. With passing time their scent changed, and they usually found a way to make it more appealing than the last. The day, however, was the exception, where the blazing light of the sun would wilt the sprawling plants and force their petals to retract for shelter, and I’d smell a monstrosity reminiscent of my first experience, despite the dark cloak that wrapped around me at that time.

Mother would begin her, might I say nightly routine… well, there is no word for what I could use to describe how she acted, but it was similar to what I first saw of it. It was ritualistic, almost like worship. She had no book or idols, only what emerged before her. She would smell these weed-borne flowers manically, more manic every time I saw it, inhaling deeply for seconds, then exhaling whispers in a volume so low that it seemed to be another language. All her breathes were deep and slow, and her eyes glowing faintly as they reflected the violet light. After many long minutes, she’d plunge herself to the ground, landing like a small lizard would from a tree, limbs arched, barely holding her torso from the ground. Her head lacked the support of her limbs, though it mattered little, as she pressed it far into the dirt, which often held the slightest bit of mud. Thinking of it now, I can see vividly those brown marks that always clung to the sides of her head, partially hidden by rugged black strands that sprouted atop her and fell gracefully down.

She listened to the dirt’s silence and smiled… smiled. She must’ve known I was there, watching, silently noting her actions, but no notice was given to me. Instead she smiled with her ear buried in dirt. I had seen it before, her… ritual, it always ended like this. What did I see then? Her head bobbed back and forth, rubbing in the dirt. She mouthed words to the ground, practically kissing it. Why did I care then? Only then? When she finally rose, half her face was wet, mud pressed into her ghastly white skin covered by a slick layer of water. In the trees I heard a group of birds scream loudly, then fly away through the leaves. Piles of green fell around us as they did, wilting before out eyes as they embraced the forest floor. I heard another screech, and I glanced to the branches to see a single bird remain, its eyes glowing a piercing violet with a flower clenched in its beak, staring at my mother and I.

I had seen plenty of times mother rise with dirt or mud upon her face, and it would slide back to the ground as soon as gravity permitted it. But wetness? Perhaps it had always been there and I had never noticed, yet it still confused me. I gazed to the dirt, clouded by a thick sheet of grass. Not a single puddle.

Mother smiled at me. “I’ll be back in a few hours” she said. I scoffed quietly. How could she be so cavalier? When she finally faded into the distance trees, I quickly knelt to the ground. There was almost no moisture that clung to my finger when it buried in the ground, only loose soil. I gazed into the distance expecting to see some kind of river or stream, even if microscopic, flowing from the distance, but there was nothing. Trees, grass, and those sprawling weeds, all dimly lit by the violet blossoms that sprung from them. My hand moved to caress a violet flower, then slid under to grip the stem that connected them. It was stiff yet flexible. I tried tearing the stem, bringing forth my other hand to keep its base still, but all remained unchanged. My feet moved me from the ground, then led me back indoors, wherein I decided to wait for mother to return.

She would always return sometime while I slumbered. My skin quivered thinking of my actions, what if she knew I was awake this time? My heart aggressively attacked the ribs surrounding it. I began to hear voices in my head. Perhaps I was going crazy, that was long past due.

“She’ll know” they said.

“Sleep… sleep…”

Darkness crept in the corner of my eyes, spreading like water on wet cloth across my vision. I blinked and in an instant it returned to the periphery to again begin spreading.

“You are not meant to do this.”

“She leaves for purpose.”

“This is not for you to know.”

I began blinking profusely, with dedication as insane as mother’s to the violet. Just as suddenly as that began, I heard the door swing open. My face buried itself in the flat pillow and my eyes squeezed tightly. I kept two fingers pinching my flesh below the blankets. The pain spread at a gruesome speed across my body. Somehow it was comforting. I promised myself, by then, that consciousness would not leave me, no matter what happened. When I didn’t here footsteps or the horrid squeaking of our wooded floor, a small slit opened in my eyelids for light to come through.

What I saw was no person. It was certainty not my mother. Its body hovered smoothly above the ground, never breaking a seemingly chosen height. It had no legs to walk, just a body that condensed to a tiny tail as it fell to the ground. It turned to the side and opened our cupboards with two flexible and fingerless limbs that came from its torso like arms. They were bent sharply where a wrist should be, making hook like monstrosities painted in dried crimson. Its entire body, the body that it had, was covered in vines… weeds… the same weeds that covered the forest floor. I heard a sprinkling noise, and I realized that this beast was filling our water jugs, its face buried where the bottles open. It then turned to our table after slamming close the cupboards. It’s chest had a violet flower grown into it, sprouting from it. The skin tore where the roots took hold and buried within, and I saw a rotted heart through the wound, but no blood. Just the slightest hint of moisture sparkling under the violet light that shone from the flower. I was paralyzed in fear, I couldn’t move or escape. Perhaps I was lucky for that to be so. It must’ve believed me asleep, it had hardly glanced at me, or so I like to believe. It had no eyes, nor sockets for them to be, but a single deep and elongated hole upon the center of its forehead. What was in that hole I could not tell… it was almost entirely covered in darkness. Perhaps I shouldn’t have become used to the violet, then maybe I would’ve seen through it. And beneath that hole… a smile? The end of those closed and cynically joyful lips were markings that ran all the way to the side of its head and into its eyeless hole like the roots of trees. My eyes were paralyzed open long enough to see everything, but after that I could not bear to look any longer. I embraced the darkness in my vision till sound of wood hitting wood pierced my ears, and when my eyes opened again, the table was covered in fruits and berries, the cottage door was closed, and the beast nowhere to be seen.

Mother didn’t return till later in the night. It was hours, maybe what you would call days. I’m not sure, it’s impossible to be sure. The sun didn’t peak its head through the forest canopy while I waited. It didn’t worry me in the slightest that I wouldn’t see sunlight during that time. I was content thinking that I might never see the sun again. The weeds and flowers indoctrinated or maddened my mother, a monstrous beast found career in feeding us like pets, and a trickle of yellow light through a tightly wound roof of leaves would likely do little to deter all of it. Too much was seen and I believed my life to end soon, so decided its last hours be spent chasing the truth of my world.

Her face was groggy and worn when I saw it peak through the door. The bones huddled again that tired face were more protruding that I’d ever see them, as they were on every visible limb and sheet of pale skin. She limped haphazardly to the cupboard, grabbed one of the dirty jugs of water, and drank it all in a single breath. She then strode desperately to the table and shoved a handful of berries in her mouth. They were hardly crushed under her teeth when she collapsed onto the ground, her eyes wide, yet unconscious. That woman was hardly my mother. It was a corpse, a shadow, some remainder of a life stripped away by a cruel world. Whether she died or not, I still don’t know. There was no interest found in the victim or the method that corrupted it, but the identity of the things perpetuating torture in an endless prison. I rushed out the door and fell to the ground, my hands madly caressing the dirt till I found the markings of my mother’s feet. I crawled inch by inch till a pattern of direction planted itself in my head, then bolted up to a sprint, straight into the endless forest, the violet light of night, the unknown.

The forest seemed to copy itself in my journey. It was an environment that repeated infinitely. Perhaps if it were like any other forest, that wouldn’t be obvious, but a grand landmark kept finding itself before me. I saw a tree with a large scratch across its trunk, like it was torn from a giant claw, and nesting above it on a slanting branch, a flock of crows clenching violet flowers in their beaks. A few minutes later I saw it again. Then an hour, again. More time, then for a fourth time I saw it. That exact tree, with the exact surroundings, those exact crows. I tripped in my disorientation when I saw it a fifth time, and my face slid across the dirt. I was already filthy by then, covered in sweat and dirt. The fall couldn’t have changed me much.

“You run to nothing but the infinite forest” I heard echoing around me, like the trees themselves were taunting me. I rose to my knees and my face leaned to the distance before me.

“Just let me see!” I screamed. “I want to see where she’s went!”

The forest laughed. “A cost for everything, child.” A crow flew from the branches and pecked at the scar of that recursive tree. Tears swelled in my eyes and clouded the world, the violet reflected by bubbles in my vision.

“What are you willing sacrifice for knowledge?” Another crow thrust itself from its branch and dropped a violet flower on my shoulder. My hand stumbled to grab it, and painfully retreated when it found a sharp spear at the end of the stem. I could hardly see through the tears, but I saw enough to grab with my uninjured hand the flower when it began falling to the grass. The blood across my finger was warm, the wound of its origin shallow, the pain sharp but bearable. I smeared the crimson across my arm and clenched my fist. I thought the pressure might reduce the suffering, small it may be.

“Just a scratch?” I heard the forest scoff. “Far from sufficient. Extend your arm, show us the bulging veins beneath your flesh. Yes… yes… so fresh… ripe for harvest. We demand our thirst be clenched, not teased.”

I unwrapped my fist, brining the sharp stem to my already bleeding finger. The muscles in my hand loosened, yet everything else condensed. I began to feel as if my body was suffocating itself. The violet, the enticing and hypnotic beauty, about to open my limb for sacrifice. As it was a leaf’s width from my flesh, I paused. “I don’t have to do this” I thought, quietly, though my thoughts were not nearly as loud as reality, screaming that I having left to lose. I dragged the stem from the palm of my hand to my wrist, and blood poured like rain from an unblocked sky, though rarely those spots were found. The forest moaned in pleasure, the crows screamed their delight, and the blood was quickly consumed by the hungry dirt.

The cutting pain rode from my finger to my wrist and engulfed my entire arm in an aura of misery. I probably should’ve passed out, or maybe died. That entire half of my body went numb and felt light with lost blood. The sacrifice was satisfactory, in the blink of an eye I found myself in another world, and the blinding violet light kept my conscious within it. The forest still surrounded me, the scarred tree and the gawking crows behind me, but before me laid a massive lake, glowing with the flowers floating upon it, pushing back light from the waning moon. Tiny rivers, the width of a finger, sprawling from the forest like the endless weeds, flowed into the lake from some godless source, all with a red taint floating like clouds within them. The surface I stood on sunk sharply into the nebulous water. In the middle of it all, more accurately floating above it, was that beast. Its tail was gone, replaced with some whirlpool that consumed the water it was above.

“It took you years to come here.” it said.

“Excuse me?”

It made some kind of sound, I presume a laugh, but it sounded like suffocation. “Usually the children come here at a young age, but you are adolescent.” It turned to me, and the lips of its grin parted, revealing teeth thin and sharp like needles. “Your curiosity has developed far past due.” The beast turned to me, and drooled through its wicked smile. “It is time for you to finally join us.”

The beasts arms reached out to me, I felt the blood in my veins go cold as ice, and the consciousness in my head faded through my stifled and struggling breaths. I later awoke next to a clear river, blinded by yellow light without a single tree casting a shadow. I wondered the authenticity of my experience, running my fingers across my aching arm. I found that the pain was still sharp, and the skin still leaked its crimson life.