Morwenna haven's Arc

Chapter 3 of 3

The crow led Morwenna deeper into the purple wood. Wisps curled around the pale trunks. Faint figures peeked from behind the bark, then slid away. She kept the crow in sight and her candle high. For once she did not plant the flame to mark her way. She trusted the bird instead. The path thinned, then vanished under moss. Still she followed. The crow stopped on a low branch. It looked back at her once. Then its blue glow thinned to nothing and it was gone. Morwenna stood alone among strange trees. She turned in a slow circle. No path lay behind her. No path lay ahead. She had no beacon planted, no flame left burning to call her home. She was lost. Then the trees ahead began to glow. Not pale, like the wisps. Orange. Red. A heat she had not felt in years. Morwenna walked toward it because there was nowhere else to go. She stepped into a clearing and stopped. A house stood there, made of drifting smoke and dim timber. Its edges faded as if half-forgotten. But the windows burned. Ghostly flame wrapped the walls, blue and green and curling. She knew the shape of the door. She knew the slope of the roof. It was her house. The house that burned. Her breath caught. She walked closer. Through a window she saw the mantel, and on the floor below it, a candle lying on its side. Pale flame spilled from it across the boards. The same candle. The one she had left burning the night she went out. The one that would not go out now, no matter how she tried. Morwenna sank to her knees at the threshold. In the smoke of the front room sat a small stuffed bear. Glowing flames licked through its stitched body. Her daughter's bear. Her daughter had carried it everywhere. She had carried it that night. "I did this," Morwenna said. Her voice shook. "I left the candle. I was not here." The fire did not answer. It only burned the way it had burned before, slow and bright, eating the walls that were not fully there. She had told herself for so long that she walked the forest to find her children. Now she saw the truth the fire showed her. She walked to escape this. The tipped candle. The empty house. Her own hand that left the flame. Morwenna looked down at the candle she carried. The same shape. The same stubborn flame. She had been holding her own guilt in her fist every single night. The burning house faded slowly, until only smoke remained, and then nothing. The clearing stood empty and dark. Morwenna knelt in the cold with her candle, far from any path she knew. She was lost in the deep wood. But she no longer wondered why the dead would not come to her. She knew now what she was.