Excerpt: Mei

The sun falls, putting out the fire of autumn trees before covering the earth in black. Tonight is not a cold night, yet there is something about the atmosphere that leaves one shivering. Apart from the few sleepless insects, the forest is still, huddling around itself for comfort.
Krchark! – tmptmptmptmp.
An owl hoots in the distance, as if sensing the sudden visitor and flying off in a Martha-frenzy. Heavy breathing grates against the damp floor of the forest, churning fallen leaves, twigs and soil so that it leaves a darker than black trail. The moon is barely awake, but is still generous enough to give shape to objects along the girl’s path.
She is heavy like her breaths, and if it weren’t so dark, she would have seen the angry red welts surfacing like a snaking vine across her forearms. Then again, she is desperately trying to forget the burden strapped to her arms, holding her prisoner.
Until she frees herself.
That is what she believes; what she tells herself to console her own conscience – that her freedom was worth giving up her burden.
A sacrifice, her mind screams again.
She ignores it, again. Instead, she ploughs past the branches snagging her clothes, trying to abuse her will into making her legs last longer. The rasping basket she carries her burden in sways uncertainly, jerkily, protesting on deaf ears.
Finally, her legs give out and collapse on the forest floor with a guilty crunch. The blanket of leaves and humus cushions their fall, which is enough for her, but not for the basket.
The basket startles into a sob, then cry, then a wail, making the air around it resound in an unending, unyielding echo. This is her conscience.
This is her conscience, and she pants, harsh and steady, giving a beat and rhythm to the basket’s mourn. This is her conscience, and so she steadies her breath, slowly picking her feet, her legs, her body up. Picking up the pieces, she reassembles herself into something supposedly like a standing posture, though it is more like a wilted plant trying to right itself. She feels as if her legs and lungs are frostbitten, and this is her conscience.
She hesitates. Turning slightly, she hovers over the basket, crying for her soul, her life, her love. Picking the burden up now, she tries to placate it in a clumsy fashion, trying to rock it against her still-panting breast. It only cries louder, insisting on haunting her forever if she isn’t listening.
She isn’t. She closes her mind for the last time, returning the burden to its cocoon before turning back, retracing the same path she had taken by feeling with her feet, not her heart.
There is an art to forgetting. For the trees, the air and the earth underneath her feet, they do not know this art. Rather, they possess the art of remembrance. However, despite their constant reminders, she has already mastered the art of forgetting. She is forgetting this very moment while being reminded, forgetting the frozen pain in her body, forgetting her conscience.
When she left, the forest ceased to exist, and all regrets with it.