Page 64 - North Star Magazine 2022

pines in the forest, she saw the salt and pepper gray hair peeking out from under a fallen tree.
This realization was too much for Beeatrisa to handle. The minute she saw the hair, she ran away. She ran as fast as she could back to the cottage, back to the comfort of her home. It was easier for her to run away than to face the reality that she discovered. Her grandmother wanted to be one with the earth, so she would get that wish.
When Beeatrisa was inside, rain began to pour. It wouldn’t stop, not even for
the sorrowful girl. Her tears filled the inside of her home while it continued to flood outside. Some mornings, she woke up without the ability to see, as her tears sealed her eyes shut. Without the ability to see the future, she was trapped within her grief.
The thought that she was now alone in the forest, apart from her other-half, her role model—her whole world. She wanted to crawl under her covers, and never come up for air. Her grief soon became extreme. Beeatrisa struggled to take care of the cottage and the garden. The cottage was filled with dust and the garden was packed with weeds. She didn’t have the strength to forage for food; Beeatrisa felt hunger, but was left without the urge to eat.
When she felt moments of peace between states of melancholy, Beeatrissa thought of memories she had with her dear grandmother. She missed the times when her grandmother would push her to go outside. They would dance and jump around in the rain, forgetting that it made their clothes damp and cold. Beeatrisa remembered the blissful times that the rainy weather carried. But this occurrence was melancholy. The rain didn’t stop until the leaves changed from green to orange, and started to fall from the trees.
After the seasons changed back to autumn, Beeatrisa read, and read, to fill the loss of her beloved grandmother. She read all kinds of stories, from heroines fighting battles to people falling in love. She even read stories about society and the type of people that lived beyond the forest, within tales of villagers, knights, and royalty. She even read about dragons and monsters that endangered the villagers within the tales. Beeatrisa, as she further learned, realized that she wanted more; so much more than what the forest could ever give her. Reading tales about a world that could potentially be beyond the forest intrigued Beeatrisa to explore. She yearned to meet the people she found within the text,