Free time or just need an escape from your life? Sit at the edge of the woods one day. Just sit and stare into the trees. Through the trees. See the birds, the squirrels, a fox? Do you see a clearing? Keep on watching.
You'll see them, only a glimpse, to let you know that their realm still exists - that they are still real. Who? The ones lost in the woods of course. Don't tell me you've forgotten them and their fairytales already?
Don't go into the woods. Don't try to follow them. Our people left the woods behind long ago. Its not our place, not our home, not anymore. We cannot survive the tests and trials of the woods no matter how much we want to. We can't go back to believing in the same magic that defeats a gingerbread witch or helps a red-clad girl escape from a wolf. A magic allowing them relive, again and again, their own happily-ever-after forever. A magic lost to the world we created outside the woods in the realm of adulthood.
Its the same magic which stops them from learning calculus or holding a minimum wage job. It binds them to the woods left behind from our diaspora to the outside world. Our stories take place in cities now; towering trees replaced by towering buildings, cruel trolls swapped for cruel bosses.
And you may hate it when you go back to the city and leave the woods in your rear-view mirror. You may dream about going back and leaving your life in the city behind. You can't. Some have tried and instead polluted their own imaginations, corrupting the pristine landscapes and fables of childhood.
So just sit and watch and remember. Later return home. Unlike the ones lost and left behind in the woods, you still have just a single story to bring to a close. One day you'll return and look for hours into those same trees, not hoping to catch glimpse of the fantastic, but merely to search for why it was that you used to come here so long ago.
