Write Brained Girl

Flash fiction challenge from a few years ago. The prompts/parameters they gave us were genre and an object or something that had to be included. This one was magical realism (I think), and you had to mention a scooter. There was also, of course, a word limit. Which was a struggle for me! I had so much fun with the flash fiction challenges both that year and in previous years! If I can find the older pieces, I will post them as well.

Inherited Magic

I was caught between the ‘real’ world, and the world of magic my Grandmother believed in. I had lost her, but in looking for the magic she wanted me to discover, I found her again.

Branches catch at my clothes and scrape my face as I push through the thick underbrush, dry twigs snapping under my feet. It makes me nervous that I had to leave Lila beside the trail and continue without her. (Lila is the scooter my Grandfather built me for my 16th birthday. She’s got a custom paint job – iridescent white with purple filigree, just like my favorite My Little Pegasus from when I was young – and is my most prized possession!) But I’ve walked her as far from the trailhead as I could manage. She could barely handle the old, rutted logging road I took just to get that far, and while normally she may be my trusty steed, a rugged dirt bike she is not. I’ve gone deeper into the forest this time than I ever dared before. It’s disorienting in here, and makes me uneasy. I always feel like I’m somehow going backwards.

My grandmother always swore this was an enchanted wood. I used to find it endearing that she expected me to believe in magic just because I was a child (and all children must), but I only ever humored her. I was never a princesses and fairytales kind of kid. After my 16th birthday, though, she insisted I come out here with her. She used to say that it was at the very heart of this forest – where an underground river emerged from beneath the mountain, and both a ravine and sharp ridgeline also converged in a strange, triangular polestar – that she, a wild river nymph, and my grandfather, a dryad from an ancient line of the Tamarack Larch, met for the first time. She so badly wanted to take me there; where, she said, our family’s magic was strongest, where she hoped I might discover my own enchanted nature. I don’t know why I still thought she told magical tales for my sake, but as we hiked into the forest together that day, I realized she truly believed it. And . . . well, things happened that I’ve never been able to explain. I’m determined now to find answers.

I pause to catch my breath, leaning my hand against the rough bark of a tall spruce tree, feeling like everything is suddenly a bit blurry at the edges. Like anything I’m not looking directly at is slightly watery or soft, somehow. I shake my head, though, and dismiss this as my nervous imagination, as each thing I turn and look at is in perfectly sharp focus. I have no idea how far Grandma’s polestar is supposed to be, or if I’m even still going in the right direction. I just know that I have to try to find it. I have to try to find her. I think back on that day we hiked into these woods, though we didn’t get far. I remember how she kept fidgeting with her charm necklace. I remember how one minute, we were walking side by side, and the next, I was sitting back at the trailhead by myself, the mark of swirling water on one wrist, and of a tree on the other.

As I start off again, sliding through a narrow gap between two cedars, I hear a distinctly footstep-like sound just ahead. I freeze, and hold my breath. Anything could be out here. I stand quietly, still between the two cedars, and slowly peek around them. For a moment, I could swear I saw a flash of white and purple through the dense trees up ahead, and quickly look backward as well, wondering if I’ve gotten myself all turned around and am heading back toward Lila. I frown, listening hard, waiting for more footfalls. When I hear nothing else, I slide the rest of the way through the opening and though I had not heard the sound of water at all just a moment ago, the roar of river rapids is suddenly a roar all around me. For a moment, I even think I hear the slight jingle of Grandma’s charm necklace she always wore as well. Confused, I step back through the trees and everything falls silent again. This. The strange things that happened that day with Grandma were like this. My heart begins to beat faster. I must be getting close!

I step back through the opening again, and my breath catches in my throat! Besides the sudden rushing of water, besides the twinkling bells of Grandma’s charms (which I am sure I hear this time!), there, standing tall and impossibly real, is a Pegasus – a shimmering, rainbowy white, with purple filigree scrolling up around her legs and around her eyes. Eyes with which she watches me expectantly. Knowing eyes. I finally let out my breath, slowly, as though even that might make all this disappear. She steps toward me and lowers her head, nudging my arm. I am in awe! “Lila,” I whisper, and she lets out a soft nicker. Reaching out, I touch the softness of her muzzle. I am pulled from my reverie as I once again hear the sound of Grandma’s charms.

Lila tosses her head, her mane throwing prismatic colored light all around the trees. She leads me toward the rush of water, and I follow. Soon, we are standing on the bank of the river, and I stare into the white, frothy rapids rolling over and around the rocks where it comes out of the mountainside. To my left is a deep ravine, looking dangerously steep, and to my right, a high ridge, lifting sharply from where I stand. I look back at the river ahead of me, and suddenly feel a thrumming pulse in the wildness of the water. I look more closely, and there, in the midst of the thrashing water, is a face. A face I remember so well. She smiles at me. My heart is bursting, and I know I have found my magic here after all.