A whisper greeted her as she walked into the forest. It was long and thin, tenuous as a sigh. The wet air shimmered, and she seemed to be walking into an oil painting, drizzled ochre accented with light strokes of green. She stepped lightly toward a sound she could not identify, compelling as the faint strains of a childhood melody. The farther she walked, the less she could recall of how she came to be there. And so she wandered. It could have been years or mere seconds later when she finally emerged into the simple embrace of the sun.
