Forest of Forget

Once a man went into the forest; amongst the trees and moss he wandered searching for something he had lost.

However, after searching so long, he had forgotten what it was that he had lost, so he made the dense wood his home, awaiting the day he remembered what it was he had never found.

It was a comfortable life, within the forest where he was surrounded by the creatures and natural beauty that dwelt in the woods side by side with him.

He had made his house in the massive trunk of an ancient tree that reached up and out of the canopy to overlook the green sea of the forest.

It was only in the early light of the morning that he sometimes had a faint recollection that he had come in search of something. Then, as the sun’s light grew, the thought faded like a distant dream and he was content again in his wooded home.

Content, until the day a young woman came tumbling out of the trees and out into the clearing around his tree-trunk home. Behind her the crashing of trees being trampled and a shaking roar followed.

The woman ran frantically up to him where he stood beside his little garden and coward behind his back like a scared little child.

A great, brown bear smashed through the trees into the clearing and charged toward them.

The man stood his ground and the bear slowed to stand on its hind legs, towering over them.

With a deafening roar the bear loomed at the man and the cowering woman, but the man did not budge. He only stared at the big beast and nodded slowly.

The bear calmed and went back down on all fours. With a sniff it turned itself around and headed back through the thicket of broken trees at a lazy lumber.

Once the bear was out of sight and its grumbling grunts were only a faint sound, the man turned to the young woman to ask what she had done to provoke his friend the bear, yet when he saw her face, he saw the reason he had come into the wood.

How long had it been; how had he forgotten; forgotten the face that now looked up at him with the same realization upon her face.

They had both come into the woods to look for what was lost, only to lose themselves, as do any that enter the Forest of Forget.

As a child she had come after her beloved dog, who had chased a rabbit deep within the wood, and as a younger man, he had chased her; his young daughter.

They looked into each other’s eyes and remembered; for that was the Forest’s secret.

Those who entered alone would forget their lives outside the forest and become content, forever inside the calming wood. But those who came in with another never forgot and left as they came, together.

And so, hand in hand, father and daughter laughed and cried, and walked out of the woods to return to the home they had forgotten, together.