When a person is lost, they become confused. At first, they're in denial—trying to backtrack or just pushing forward. I had no sense of time there, because the sun never set. There were no animals, and one of my most recent observations was that I cast no shadow. All the trees looked the same, and there were no trails except the one leading to the pond. It felt like no one had ever walked these lands before.
After everything that had happened, I decided to keep track of every detail I noticed. One of the strangest was that my feet got so cold sometimes—so cold they went numb—then, all of a sudden, it was like I had been wrapped in a warm blanket, and I felt fine again.
From all of my observations so far, I could conclude one thing: nothing in this forest made sense.
After a lost person accepts that they are lost, a rush of emotions takes over. At this point, I didn't even know how I felt anymore. I had cried my eyes out, but that didn't get me anywhere. I had ran, walked, stomped, and screamed, but none of it ever amounted to anything. Nothing I did really mattered there.
When I screamed, it felt like my voice got caught in my throat. When I ran, it almost felt like the trees were closing in on me—and the moment I stopped, I was right back where I started, as if I'd never moved at all.
I didn't know what was real anymore. I didn't know if what happened really happened, or if I was just gaslighting myself.
The only thing that brought me comfort was the smell of the hyacinth—sweet and heavy. I'd grown to like it over time. It felt so familiar, giving me a strange sense of home… even though I didn't know where home was.
As the stress and fear build, a lost person slowly loses the ability to reason. Over time, despair creeps in, hopelessness settles, and eventually… they give up.
Maybe that's why I'd been drinking from the pond. Every time I circled back to it, every time I found myself standing at its edge, I instinctively drank. I could almost feel it rushing through my veins—or maybe it was just my brain and body refusing to work together anymore.
This strange place was slowly driving me insane.
Was I even lost to begin with… or was I just crazy?
At some point, I started to feel like the forest was alive. I heard whispers, though I told myself they were only in my head. The breeze stirred the trees, but I couldn't feel it on my skin. The sun blazed overhead, bright and hot, yet I felt no warmth.
It was as if this place hated me—like we shared some history, or like it was a world of its own and I was never meant to be here.
As time went on, the whispers grew louder. The scent of hyacinth thickened in the air. And then, at last, I heard it:
"ELYSIA".