Brambles

"Lets break up," He said. At first I was taken aback, then realized he of course meant the roads in front of us. It didn't seem all that practical in hindsight. Then again, what ever really does? At the time though, it made some sense. The right path was narrower, a bit wiry, but looked like it cleared up ahead, and he didn't think he'd fit through the brambles. He wouldn't have fit; also hindsight. He would have cut himself on the brambles 'til he was empty of life juice, I'm sure of it. The left path was broader, but appeared to be on some downward slope, swallowed by the dark wall that hid everything behind it. I told him it was fine, we could make the right path work, push brambles out of the way, eventually find a way to make it through, but he reminded me that we have our phones, so if one of the paths doesn't work out, we could always try whichever path worked best.

I didn't like it. but he was already lumbering off into the dark, and I had already determined that I could make it through those tight bushes. So I went in.

At first, it was relatively easy. The unified path up to the divide was rough and only got worse until the split. The path felt quite like a spy movie, almost. Dodging and weaving around the dangers. A narrow miss here, a sly dance there. It became wearisome though, and I was constantly having to stop and rest. At some point, I tried calling him, but the reception was bad, and in the end we decided to continue on our decided paths. Continuing on, I did get scratched by a sharper thorn than the others. Maybe it wasn't sharper, but it did snag me, and I bled a bit. It was one of those scratches that doesn't hurt bad though, and the bleeding stopped quickly. I did try a berry once, but it was bitter, and left me dizzy. The bushes became thicker, and in frustration I swiped at them with my hands and rushed through a patch that was gnarly, and my hands wouldn't stop bleeding. I couldn't crawl like I used to, had to find other ways around and through the bushes, mostly unsuccessfully. Trampling only worked with some of the vines and overgrowth. I took my shirt off, ripped it in two and wrapped my hands in the cloth, but it did little to help; besides, there were leftover bits of thorn embedded deep in my palms, and my ragged red fingers did little to help with precision. Without my shirt, I thought I was able to move more swiftly, having to stop less to free the fabric from tiny horns on vines, but when I finally reached the end - a clearing that ended in the distance at a shoreline with the expanse of the entire ocean behind it - I looked down, and my body was covered in red lines, my undergarments crimson, and my body was numb. A buzzing sort of numb that let me know how little blood I had left flowing in my body. I could feel the cells scraping my veins begrudgingly, moving along because it had to, because that was its job, because if it didn't scrape its heels along the path to my heart and away again, what else would it do?

I found a tree and leaned on it, waiting for him. I gazed upon the ocean, daydreaming of his return, busied myself with the task of removing the thorns I could from my hands, braided grass, made a flower crown. Time continued to pass. I looked again at my body, and found scars. The ocean held a new pallor. The trees contained new growth, and all around me were old leaves that hadn't turned ay fall colors, they had simply fallen. I turned to my left, and for the first time since arriving at the clearing, realized that the other path deposited in this very spot. Standing to view the two path ends, the left one was full of thorns, and the right one was now the broad one descending into darkness.

After a moment of hesitation - why did I hesitate? - I ran into the mouth of the right path, pushing aside my fear of darkness to go looking for him.

The dark path had many roots, pitfalls, and hidden branches that seemingly attacked me, bruising me at every turn. When it levelled out, and offered some relief to the barrage of forestry, there was sometimes a trap. Surely it was only nature, but many times it felt manufactured.

Finally, when I thought I must have descended into some sort of cave with the amount of dark roughness around me, I spotted him.

He was sitting at the head of a grand table in the middle of the path, and in his left arm, he lovingly cradled his right arm, which had been cut off, hacked up, and sewn together to look like a small child. Some seats contained skeletons, some seats contained corpses with maggots spilling from their eye sockets, but dotted here and there were other people, alive and well, some jovial, some brooding, one of them was staring off into space, another faced backwards in their chair, trying to peer further into the darkness of the forest. On the table, the food situation was nearly the same condition as the bodies around it: old to new, rotting to fresh; in each of their cups however, was the same red liquid, and no matter how many drinks people took from them, the quantity within remained the same. I sat at the other head of the table, unacknowledged by any other member of the party. It were as though I did not exist. Calling out his name didn't receive so much as a glance from any person, no matter how sane.

A cup appeared before me, filled to the same level with the same liquid, and I realized with a sinking feeling, that in order to ever be able to speak to him again, I would have to drink as well.