Elara's Garden Heart
Every morning, the smell of wet dirt and sweet chamomile flowers was the first thing I noticed.
It was a nice smell, different from the scared feeling in Oakhaven.
My house was small, at the quiet end of the village.
It had lots of green plants and colorful flowers.
They showed that things could grow and be beautiful if you took care of them, instead of being scared of them.
Tall sunflowers with bright yellow faces stood by the door, like happy guards against the sad talk of the village.
Inside, pots full of herbs sat on every window.
Lavender to make you calm, rosemary to help you remember things, feverfew for when Mom's head hurts.
My fingers always had dirt on them.
They moved easily between the leaves, pulling off a yellow leaf here, turning a pot so it got more sun there.
This was my safe place.
Here, I understood the wildness of nature, and I wasn't afraid of it.
My garden was like a small brave island in a sea of village fear.
My mom was kind.
She often watched me from the door.
She smiled softly, but I could always see a little worry in her eyes.
"You spend so much time with your plants, Elara.
Sometimes I think you know them better than people."
It was kind of true.
The quiet way leaves opened, the strong way roots reached down, the bright pop of a flower – these things told me things that the villagers' worries didn't.
When I talked to my plants, it was in my head.
I just knew what they needed.
They didn't think it was strange that I liked the Blackwood; they just grew towards the light, like I wanted to learn.
The memory of the shiny eyes in the forest last night made me feel uneasy again.
It was like a bad dream that felt real.
Did it really happen? Or was the village's fear finally making me imagine things?
The picture of those eyes, wild but also smart, was stuck in my head. I couldn't forget it.
I kept busy watering the ferns hanging from the ceiling.
The cool water felt good on my hands and helped me think about other things for a moment.
But my thoughts were still fighting.
My brain told me it must have been an animal, maybe a big wild dog with eyes that shone in the moonlight.
But the way it moved, the way its shoulders looked almost like a person's… and that low, rumbling sound… it didn't make sense.
My mom sighed softly, making me stop thinking.
"Old Man Hemlock came by this morning.
He saw you near the Blackwood again, Elara." Her voice sounded worried but also like she expected it.
I turned around, my hands were still wet.
"I was just looking at the moss, Mama. A really shiny kind." It wasn't the whole truth.
The moss was why I went there at first, but seeing that creature… that was different.
Her eyebrows went up. "He told you to stay away, child. He said that forest… it's not a good place for you. It's… bad."
The word felt heavy, like the village's old fears.
The village's fear was always there, even in my bright, safe home.
"Bad because of what, Mama?" I asked gently, trying not to sound angry. "Because of stories? Because people are scared? The forest is alive, Mama.
It breathes, it grows. There's beauty there, secrets waiting to be found."
Her eyes, the same warm brown as mine, looked very sad.
"Sometimes, Elara, it's better to leave old secrets alone. Some things are not meant to be found."
Her words were something I heard a lot. They showed how scared the village was.
It wasn't that she was mean, but she really believed what she said, like everyone else.
Their fear was like a wall made of old stories and things they hadn't seen.
Inside me, I was always fighting between respecting what they believed and wanting to know things myself.
I went to the table and picked up my drawing book.
The empty pages looked like they wanted to be filled with the details of nature.
But the picture in my head wasn't of soft flower petals or the lines on leaves.
It was the memory of that creature in the shadows, the strange smartness in its shiny eyes.
My drawing book usually held the pretty things I found; now, it felt like it needed to hold the strange thing I had seen.
Suddenly, I felt a sharp pain in my finger when I touched a thorn on a rose I was cutting.
A drop of blood came out, bright red against the green stem.
I watched it sit there for a moment.
Life, even the most beautiful parts, could hurt, could be surprising. Just like the forest.
The thought made me shiver.
Could that creature feel pain? Was it lonely, scared? The villagers only saw a monster, something to kill.
But when our eyes met for those few seconds, I felt something else, a little bit of… knowing.
My mom cleared her throat quietly.
"Elara, Sheriff Brody came by earlier too.
Some people in the village said they saw strange footprints near the west side of the forest. Bigger than any animal they know."
Her voice sounded tight with worry.
Hearing this made me even more worried.
The villagers were getting more scared because they had seen something real.
If they found… it… what would they do? My heart hurts.
Even though it had scared me, the thought of that creature being hunted, caught… it made me want to protect it.
The forest's secrets were starting to make long, scary shadows over our quiet village.
"Footprints?" I asked, trying to sound calm. "Maybe it's just a big wolf, Mama.
They sometimes come out of the deep woods." It was a weak lie, and we both knew it.
Wolves didn't move in that strange, almost human way.
Inside me, the fight got stronger. The villagers' fear was real, and now they had something to be afraid of.
My own fear was still there, a cold feeling underneath, but now it was mixed with a strange feeling of responsibility, a need to understand what I had seen.
The sun in the afternoon came through the window, making the dust in the air look like it was dancing.
Life in my garden kept going, bright and strong.
The sunflowers still stood tall, looking at the light.
But the memory of the darkness in the Blackwood, and the creature that lived there, made a long shadow, a question mark over the simple beauty of my world.
As the sun started to go down, making the sky look purple and orange, I heard a sound through the open window – a long, sad howl, carried by the cool evening air.
It wasn't the sharp bark of a dog.
It was deeper, louder, and made me feel a deep, sad feeling in my bones.
My mom put her hand over her mouth, her eyes wide with fear.
"The beast," she whispered, her voice shaking. "It's closer than ever before."
But as I listened to that sad sound, I felt something different, a strange feeling like the loneliness I sometimes felt in a village full of fear.
It didn't just sound like a monster; it sounded like something… lost.
And then, while the sound of the howl was still in the air, a small, smooth stone landed softly on my windowsill, catching the last light of the sun.
It wasn't from the village.
It was too smooth, and it looked like someone put it there on purpose.
My breath stopped. Had… he… left it? And what did it mean?