The Pink Forest at Dawn

Cesare was dying, and she didn’t know how to stop it.

So much of this world wanted her dead it seemed, and yet she persisted, wandering further and further from home - away from Sundown Harbor.

She was fleeing. That much she could admit. She’d tried. She’d tried to pick up the pieces after the fire. After most of the harbor burned due to the greed of the few.

Cesare found work from those few greedy merchants who’d survived, helping rebuild the docks, take in heavy shipments from trader’s ships, and shuck barnacles from the sides of those massive vessels even as her hands bled and her back - though no more than 13 years aged - began to ache and pinch.

The survivors renamed Sundown to Sunhaven, piling their lofty ideals onto the city that now rose from the ashes. It was a beautiful dream, one Cesare would have believed in had it stayed the course. But once more those who coveted gold above the silver tears of the needy cast shadows across the glittering sun-kissed city.

After three years of grueling labor with barely any return; three years of nights sleeping in the charred ruins of her family's home that had been abandoned by the city builders to sink into the sea, Cesare was done.

Cesare couldn’t be there any longer. Sundown Harbor was gone, and Sunhaven was not her home.

She refused to fade away into the waste of her former life.

At sixteen, she journeyed from the city and into the wilds. Hoping nature could cure her of her melancholy, and make her forget all that she had lost. A new life - or so she thought.

Now months later - starving, wounded, scarred - Cesare laid down on a mossy forest floor in the dead of night, the trees thick enough to blot out the stars in the sky. She’d long lost track of where she was, as she never quite grasped how to read a map, and she was loath to see how little progress she had made getting away from Sunhaven.

Cesare turned onto her side, wincing as the old burn scars pulled on the skin of her back and shoulders. She was so tired. So…done.

She wondered if mother and father would greet her soon.

Her silver eyes closed, and darkness took hold.

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Dawn crept into the dark, and Cesare was still breathing.

Upon coming to consciousness, Cesare was struck by how well rested she felt. Rejuvenated - like she’d had a full meal and the best sleep of her life. She slowly opened her eyes, heavy from rest, and gasped at what she saw.

Littered all around her were piles of vibrant pink leaves interspersed with the green moss of the forest floor. When she tried to sit up to investigate her surroundings more, she found delicate vines had grown over her legs and midsection, those same pink leaves sprouting from them. Gently, she pried herself free from their embrace, being careful not to needlessly break the stems.

When she was free, she stood, and properly laid eyes on the forest around her.

Massive trees with trunks too large to wrap her arms around stood like ancient pillars to a temple of the wild. Their branches spread out like veins and covered the entire sky overhead, only letting in thin pillars of light through their blooming pink leaves. Moss and grass and wild flowers grew unchecked around their thick roots, creating a colorful carpet of rampant growth and life.

Cesare’s mind turned to the few encounters she’d had with hunters and land-bound traders on her months-long journey. The maps they’d shown, the landmarks they said to watch out for; this pink forest had been mentioned in every explanation of what lay beyond the scattered islands where Sunhaven stood.

The forest of Saint Louve; a one of a kind, magical font of nature.

“I…I made it this far?” She whispered in wonder, bending down to cup a pile of pink leaves in her hands, letting them fall through her pale fingers like grains of sand. “But, how am I alive? Did…did you do this, forest?”

The forest did not reply, but somewhere deep in the core of her being, she could sense a gentle warmth she’d not felt since her mother’s embrace all those years ago.

Somehow, Cesare de’Louve knew: she was home.

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Story by Amanda Starks

World Building by Zane Alberts