Deathdream #7

really enjoyed writing this bit...was in the zone...

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A soft, warm summer breeze tugged at her shift, making her cloak ripple and shimmer in the bright sunlight as she slowly made her way across the grass to the edge of the path. Leaning over one of the lower points in the shrub border, she saw that the path was made of gravel. She knew she must follow the path, but to spare her bare feet, she would walk parallel to it, on the soft grass of the lawn.


As she walked, she trailed her fingers along the tightly-clipped bushes on her right. The feel of the tips of the leaves tickling the places where her fingers joined her palm was pleasant, and she half-closed her eyes – almost floating along the grass, doing nothing but savouring the sensations of foliage and soft, warm air against her skin.

Abruptly, she was brought back to herself as she came hard up against a dense hedge at the edge of the lawn that she had not noticed before. Dark, forest green in colour, it formed an impenetrable barrier to any further forward movement. And it worried her. keeping her eyes fixed on the barrier, lest it move and engulf her, her breath coming a little quicker as her hackles began to rise once again, Marina edged to her right, groping blindly for one of those lower points in the path’s shrubbery edges, so she could step over on to the path.

Backing away, her eyes still fixed on the unexpected hedge, she failed to find any lower places, but the dense foliage seemed to have opened out in this part of the path so, keeping her eyes on the hedge for as long as she could, she edged her way in between the small, prickly branches. As she pushed through, she felt the branches tear at her hair, her cloak, her shift, her skin. Terrified that they would rip her and her clothing to shreds, she contorted her body into all sorts of odd positions, twisting and writhing her sinuous way through, as her feet were prickled unkindly by dead leaves, dry earth, and roots.

The squirming seemed to go on forever until, at last, she felt her right hand once again break through into fresh air, quickly followed by her arm, and then the rest of her body.

Wincing as she stepped on to the wide, sandy coloured gravel path, she looked down to check her monochrome garments had not been too badly damaged by her traverse through the clinging, snatching branchlets. Fortunately, they had not. The hem of her shift still fluttered around her ankles, and her feathered cloak only seemed to have lost one or two feathers to the tugging and grasping of the shrubs. She peered into the depths of the dense woodland now beside her, and saw a couple of feathers glinting in the gloom. This made her feel somehow uneasy, but she decided to leave them there, since she had no wish to go back into that gloom. Even as she watched, branches and twigs in there seemed to be growing longer, sharper, more dense. Ivy was twining itself up from the ground, around the wizened and twisted trunks and branches, until that way was as impenetrable as the hedge that had first caused her to move on to the path.

Glancing along the wide pathway, she saw that the other side was similarly blocked; the vegetation was now, also, much, much higher, blocking out the sunlight, and beginning to cast the wide pathway into gloom. Glancing behind her, she saw the path narrowing to nothing not far behind her; ivy tendrils crawling and snaking across the path as she watched, trees springing through the gravel and barring her way. Looking ahead, she could still see blue sky and small cumulus clouds, framing the roof of a sandstone building at the end of the path. Hackles rising for a third time at the slithering and rustling in the growing green gloom behind her, she hurried forwards.

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