Earth to Abbey

4 | A Ghostly Change of Scenery

The cloudy sky soon cleared up into a perfectly sunny day. From the looks of it, it was around one or two-o'clock. Walking to the Silent Forest -- as Abbey had already named it in her mind -- took longer than she'd thought. Because of the pain in her head, she woke up rather early, and left early too. She figured she was approximately one hour away from the Forest by now. Drained of most of her energy, as someone who didn't spend much time working out, she stopped and sat against a tree. A normal looking one, not the freaky twisty ones that she'd left behind. But it wasn't dark yet, so she couldn't afford to stop for the night.

Something felt a little weird, though. An odd pressure seemed to be building the further that she walked. Kind of like a large source of energy was ahead. She wasn't sure if she could feel it as much as she could hear it, in a strange cosmic sense. Abbey hoped the energy came from the next key.

"How long do you think it'll be before we get wherever we're going?" asked Baltimore, who still seemed a little unsettled by almost dying. "I really hope we don't run into anything like that place back there. I just don't know if my heart could take another near-death-experience."

"I don't know, but I can feel some sort of power source up ahead," Abbey told him. "It may not be our end goal, but we've got something nearby, and that's progress to me." She rested her head against the tree trunk. There was something else off that she hadn't noticed. The sky was still blue, but just barely. It seemed almost... white. Was the sky supposed to do that? She couldn't quite remember. Things felt a little more fuzzy than usual, but she assumed it was due to overexertion. Her memory had always been bad anyway.

Bal stood on the ground in front of Abbey and studied her, cocking his head. "Are you alright?" he asked. "You don't look so good."

"Gee, thanks," Abbey replied sarcastically. But he continued to look concern. "Yeah, I'll be fine. Thanks for looking out for me," she added, realizing she couldn't drive him away. She didn't think this journey would be possible without Baltimore.

He looked a little relieved. "Oh, good. So when do you think we could eat? I'm starved, and I wouldn't mind a little rest myself," he trailed off, looking around the forest.

Abbey smiled. "Go on, get something to eat. I'll wait here, just don't go too far," she warned. "And you weren't the one doing all the walking," she added under her breath. He took off to find lunch. Dinner? Meal names were meaningless at this point, she figured.

She chuckled quietly. You never appreciate a light conversation until you realize how truly heavy silence can be.

As she rested, soon regaining a stable breathing rate and not sweating quite so much, the sun began to creep downwards to the horizon. She decided to pull out the notepad and pencil from her bag and write down everything she knew about herself. At least this way, if she did die out here, maybe someday someone would find her with her memories written down, which almost felt like being mourned. At least they would know who she was.

My name is Abigail. Abbey for short. I'm somewhere between thirteen and sixteen years old, I think. My best friend is an owl. I'm looking for my mother and my sister. They loved me very much... I think.

She was just getting concerned about the time when Baltimore returned.

"Have a good lunch?" she asked, hoisting herself to her feet and picking up her bag. "I won't ask what you ate, now that you can tell me." She brushed off her dress gently. It was very important to her that it wasn't damaged.

"Well, yes, but I have much bigger news. You've got to come see this," Bal said nervously. His tone carried great importance.

Abbey furrowed her brow as her curiosity grew. The owl took to the air and led her through the trees. She noticed that they were going in the right direction anyway, but figured the phrase "killing two birds with one stone" would be a little insensitive here.