Write, Wrote, Written II discussion

Sunlight bleeds through my eyelids, steadily waiting for me to wake. My mind begs for five more minutes, but I can already feel the stiffness in my bones. I huff out a sigh as I resolve to get up. My eyes open and at first I think, did I shrink? Everything around me has suddenly become huge overnight. As I look to either side of my head, even the grass has seemed to have grown over two feet in just one night. Something’s not right. When I laid down in this field the grass had been only a few inches long. Just long enough to make the ground soft, enough so for a nap. I had only closed my eyes, not really sleeping per say. It was only a moment, albeit a very long moment, but a moment none the less.
Perhaps I rolled in my sleep into a patch of long grass. As I look up, this grass is towering above me, bracketing my view to only the pale sky above. It is remarkably pale. I wonder if it’s overcast, yet it almost seems too clear for it to be clouds up there. It’s so white, and smooth like a sheet of paper. The clouds must be really high up, and very large. I can’t see the edges of it.
The sigh that escapes my body finally brings my mind out of the clouds and back to the present. Regardless of how long I did sleep, it’s daytime now. Meaning it’s time to get moving. I should go home...
No. Home wasn’t an option anymore, not after last night. Even referring to it as home is a title it doesn’t deserve. Hasn’t deserved, I remind myself. With a curt nod I turn my attention to more practical matters. I glance over at my bag next to me. Big, black, and bulky, it is full of everything I need to survive for about four days. The tangled mess of hair haloed around my head is gonna take a serious brushing to get through, I’m glad I remembered to pack a brush at least. It would have to suffice until I could get to a shower and wash my hair. My right hand tingles as I experimentally wiggle my fingers before reaching for my bag. The intention was to go, go as far as I could and not look back. I had made it through town and decided to cut through the city because at least then I could use public transportation to travel faster. I hadn’t any money to actually purchase a bus or train ticket that could take me far away. It’s not as if I had planned to leave. Everything just escalated so quickly...I wasn’t given a choice. It was near the far outskirts of the city when I felt the weariness hit me. There was a distant field, boarded by woods that I could hide in for the night. As I had laid down, I figured I should rest for an hour or so, maybe look at the stars, trace the constellations for a moment, just to clear my head. Sailors used to look to the stars for navigation, nature’s compass and all that. I didn’t know where I was going, I needed to find a direction. Direction, that was my last thought before falling asleep.
My fingers catch the strap of my bag, dragging it closer to me as I sit up slowly. Carefully rifling through the full contents, I pull out a simple blue brush and start on the war against my hair. I wonder if anyone has realized I’m gone yet. I didn’t leave a note, they probably won’t figure it out until I don’t come home from school. Even then, what if they think I just stayed out really late. They might not know until tonight. That would give me another full day before they contact anyone to find me, if they look. Would they look though, I guess that is the question.
I sigh, surrendering the battle but not the war against my hair as I peel off a hairband from the handle of the brush and sweep my thick mess of hair into a sloppy ponytail. Thick, brown and curly my hair is not the easiest thing for me to deal with, but it’s definitely not the worst of my problems. Putting the brush away again and standing up, I am finally able to take in the area around me. I couldn’t have rolled because I don’t see the spot of grass where I laid down originally. There’s no trees, or any signs of the city in the distance. Am I even in the same field?
My feet do a 360, moving my body because I can’t seem to move my head. It’s shock still, literally. There aren’t any trees even out in the distance, and not a road or house in sight. This clearing of tall grass isn’t even a field. It’s an outcropping. All around there are these sparsely spaced black things. They look almost like rigid claws, or talons coming out of the Earth, trying to grasp the sky. The shortest one is easily ten feet. The black of its, what is that bark or rock?, I don’t know its exterior is so dark it looks dead, but somehow that doesn’t seem right. Like how people can tell that a tree is alive even when it looks dead in the winter, it’s kind of like that. I can’t explain it, but there’s something about these claw things that is definitely not dead. As I look at them, transfixed by their strangeness I feel a slow burning sensation in my chest. It starts off small but grows quickly. My awareness finally brought back to myself I realize I forgot to breathe.
Gulping in air all my senses suddenly seem to resume to full capacity. I didn’t realize I had ignored them until they were working again. As the air flowed into me I could smell the crispness of it, how clean it felt. This wasn’t the second hand polluted air my town gets from the city. Not even the one time I took a vacation to the country did the air smell this clean. I didn’t realize that the air was so bad, not until now when this air feels so good to breathe. In and out, one two, slow and steady.
As I focus on breathing normally I tune in to my other senses. I can faintly hear the rush of water, but not smell it. The air doesn’t feel particularly humid either. There’s a soft wind rustling the emerald grass, and that’s really what it looks like. Mother was always obsessed with making sure the lawn and the flowers looked nice. So focused on keeping up appearances. She would kill for grass this green, so vibrant. It seemed to contrast with the black of the claws protruding from it. Their rigid tendrils extend high up with grooves, or maybe just patterned bumps, along the sides. My head tilts up as my gaze trailed higher up the largest talon on the claw. The base is at least five times my arm span, bigger than any tree I’ve ever seen. It is so big that it has other smaller talons protruding off its sides. At the very top of the main talon there is a weird object.
It isn’t as dark as the rest of it, almost like it was added on or something. Just as I’m focusing on it, two big shapes emerge from it. As they start to move up and down I realize it’s a bird. I watch as it takes off from the tip of the talon. It flies over my head, swift and dark against the pale sky. As it rises higher into the clouds it looks small, but with a tip of its wings, the black body becomes steadily larger as it swoops down. I have to turn around to continue watching it as it passes overhead. That’s when I notice what’s beyond the claws. When I first looked around, I couldn’t get over the strange things right in front of me, but now I notice what lies beyond. About twenty feet away from me the ground falls away. The bird angles itself as it dives steeper through the air and disappears over the edge of the cliff. In the distance I see the water that I faintly hear. It’s coming from a waterfall that’s at the base of a tall structure. The structure is also dark, like the talons, but it almost resembles a building. A very old building, like the gothic kind with many severe lines and ancient height. Even from so far away, I can tell this building is enormous, like everything else so far. The spires reaching up from it are thin but remind me of medieval times. What is a place like that doing in the middle of nowhere? Actually, where in fact is nowhere? My black, bulky backpack may not qualify for a straw basket that can carry Toto but I certainly know I’m not in Kansas anymore.
I look down at my bag, suddenly wishing it was that straw basket, at least that would make more sense. Instead all I have is my backpack, stocked with food, clothes, and a few essentials, in a strange place with no recollection of how I got here. I can feel the familiar sour taste of panic in the back of my throat. It’s rising, choking me, and sending funny signals to my head, clouding my vision. My fingertips tingle as sensation begins to leave them. I don’t think I’m breathing right now, I can feel that burning again. But I can’t, I can’t breathe. To breathe means I’m real, and if I’m real then so is all of this. And this can’t be real, these things don’t exist, therefore I don’t either. This must be a dream, a bad dream that I can’t wake up from, but if I try hard enough maybe I’ll wake up from lack of oxygen.
Somewhere close to passing out I taste a well-known metallic flavor on my tongue. I am biting my lip too hard, it’s bleeding. Somewhere, my brain registers the pain and it clicks. Dreams aren’t supposed to hurt. It’s like how some people can kick something during the night, hard enough to get a bruise, yet not wake up from the pain. Dreams don’t actually hurt. I give in to the burning need for air, gasping in gulps of it as I feel my heart pounding out of my chest. Looks like I’m stuck in this dream. The panic of that thought threatens to overwhelm me again but the taste of blood brings me back. There’s nothing I can do. If I can’t force myself to wake up then I must wait to naturally wake up.
My eyes close for a moment as I take in a deep breath and then exhale, getting my panic back down under wraps. When I open my eyes I fix them on the structure in the distance. I might as well go check it out. Who knows, maybe I’ll find a good witch who can explain all of this to me. I snag my bag from the ground and swing it onto my back, fastening the clips around my waist and chest. The only question now is how do I get there from here?
I walk closer towards the ledge where the ground disappears. The bird is gone. I peer over the edge, down into the dark abyss of a lake that’s fifty feet below me. The subtle calmness of the water was contrasted by the deadly distance between it and me. The only good thing is that this lake is probably connected to the waterfall. If I follow it, eventually it should take me over to the castle thing where I might find someone who can explain things. I back a few paces away from the ledge and huff out a short sigh, finally having determined my course. It may not be a yellow brick road but at least I don’t have to do this in red pumps.

Ooh, I like this story. There are a few gramatical errors (laid, rather than lay etc.) but I like the writing. It seems a bit rushed, but these are tiny spaces to tell stories in, so I guess the big thing is getting the main ideas down. I love the lines about waging war on hair. I can understand that concept!

Thank you so much for reading it! This is my first time pursuing a story in the first person, present. I want to flesh out some parts a bit more, but yeah, space here is limited

Updated!