The Fortress in the Clouds

IT WAS NOT like she had stated.

On the outside, Naomi pretended to go along with the wedding arrangements. They were to be wed in exactly two weeks, too short of a time for Naomi to come up with a proper plan of escape.

She could perhaps lie and say that she was ridden with diseases, perhaps that would ward her sleazy husband-to-be off her case. Then again, what if one day, the man that she loved turned unwilling to marry her just because he heard news of the lie? Naomi surely did not want her plan to backfire.

So, when the weeks bled into days, and then into mere hours, she had no choice.

She had to escape.

In the dead of the night with only the silent silver moon as her witness, Naomi clambered out of her bedroom window, jumping into the soft grass as she gripped her bag tightly in her arm. She did not possess much, only a few items such as essential clothing, a loaf of bread, and her little notebook which held all of her most precious drawings.

That was all she had and was willing to bring with her. The rest of the items were nothing more than emotional baggage.

With a note placed on her bed that stated her barest confessions, Naomi did not even look back once before fleeing deep into the woods that surrounded her little cottage house. Ever since her father’s death, it had, after all, been nothing more than a building that sheltered her from bad weather. It stopped being a home for her when her mother detached herself from the world.

“I hope you find peace in your life, mother,” she whispered under her breath a prayer before darting through the thick forestation.

In a few minutes, she was so deep in the woods that she could not even see a clear path anymore. Finally, she was free of the monsters in her past.

Now, she only needed to face the monsters in her near future to be truly free.