The Enchanted Wildwood

                                                                                                        

Experiences are subjective in terms of interpretation. They give us some kind of moral lesson. I hope the travelers that read this record will learn from my mistakes and will not follow suit in the areas of my gullibility. I aim to warn future travelers from repeating any fallacies that I may have committed in my endeavors.

Now that I have provided a quite detailed warning, I will now begin to explain my personality. I am an extremely voracious explorer who will devour any opportunity to travel anywhere on earth or heck, even outside of the seeable world. My origins are Scandinavian, it is within my capability to speak Norse and Swedish, and I live in Stockholm. Growing up, I heard a lot of Norse mythoi, mainly from my mormor (grandmother in Swedish). I loved each every one of the stories, even if they were out of the realm of possibility. Even though it was a fact that everything was not real, my family believed and worshipped every word of it.

I believed it all to be absolute mythical balderdash and consumed it as a fun piece of fantastical imagination from the mind of a bunch of lunatics.

It was mid-September at the time. I had a break from school and wanted to work on my studies and writing. Fortunately, my family had the best plan in place for me. They wanted to make me well rounded and independent and so they booked a lodge for me in Abisko, a small and peaceful village and a flight ticket to Hemavan.

I knew Abisko was far north while Hemavan was down south. The only thing connecting them was the Kungsleden (roughly translating to King’s trail). I asked my family if I was could hike through the Kungsleden. I talked them into it and they agreed but they told me that they would cut off my allowance if anything went wrong during the hike. I agreed to the condition without thinking much.

On the day of my departure, I felt this strange uneasiness that I almost wanted to cancel the whole operation. I ignored my senses and went on about the day. I had a short and comfortable flight and got off almost immediately after landing. Somehow, I felt the same hesitance and reluctance as before. It was as if something really horrible was going to go down.

I took a taxi ride till the start of the Kungsleden and got off. I paid and took out my map. I gazed at it for a good minute, took out my compass and started walking towards the trail that I could see in a distance. I examined the trail and kept on looking down at my map. Only after an hour of walking, I felt as if I wanted to go back. I didn’t know why this sudden cowardice was seeping into me. It felt extremely weird and I wasn’t feeling like myself.

After a long walk of about six hours, I decided to take a short cut. I looked at the long and winding trail ahead of me. It looked tiresome and it gave me the feeling of quitting and just then, my sight was caught by a densely forested trail gaping at me, almost as if it were inviting me into its open and warm forests. I almost wanted to end the trek early, so I started trudging into the vast unknown of the woods. It had successfully managed to lure me in.

I kept on walking deeper into the forest. I was completely mesmerized by its beauty and it almost enchanted me, calling out to me. It felt warm and homely. I even felt so far as to stay in the forest. Before I knew it, I noticed I hadn’t looked at the map for a single second in the past couple of hours. I had gone off-trail. I had been so reckless that I didn’t even have a single clue as to where I was standing. I looked up at the sky. It was dense as heck and not even a shaft of light pierced through the utterly impenetrable woods. I was in serious danger, for I was unaware of the creatures that were willing to hunt me down in these woods. I didn’t know if at all there were any highly dangerous predators lurking about the forest. Keeping this in mind, I flicked on my torch and I started to look around rigorously, trying to find the best place to camp at. Eventually, I found a small patch of land devoid of any shrubbery or trees. It seemed sort of an optimal place to camp at.

I threw in the towel and set up my tent as I was terribly exhausted. I didn’t have any energy so I just lit a small fire and roasted a few marshmallows. It was nice to take a break from all of the things that had been happening to me and enjoy the silence surrounding me. If you are screaming at me to use a phone to call home, I had already done it at the beginning when I got lost. However, the only answer I got was a ‘no reception’. That had pissed me off and frustrated me to my core. Now, there was only one thing for me to do. Sleep and pray that there was no one or rather, nothing that would try to tear me apart and have me for its dinner.

Morning dawned, as if my savior had just rolled in. I breathed a sigh of relief when I unzipped my tent and saw the red and yellow ball of shine yelling at me to wake up and get going. I immediately sprang up, almost causing the whole tent to crash on me. I freshened up, packed up, stuffed a chocolate covered donut in my mouth that I had bought from a cheap vendor the other day and trudged through the forest with the determination of a squirrel nibbling on an apricot.

I pinpointed my location exactly on my map (I am such a genius, bow to me), which was kind of a surprise since I think of myself as an airhead (Oh how much I love to contradict myself!). I went on about my usual chronicles of stopping and contemplating my reasons of being here. I was now a bit determined to reach my grandmother and doze off near the extremely comfortable mantlepiece. However, I didn’t have such luxury and all I could afford now was to sleep in a tent on the uneven soil and ground.

I walked without much problem for another few hours until I came upon a strange temple of some kind. It seemed ancient and odd as well. It seemed to be covered in a bunch of Norse runic scriptures. I squinted at them and could make out some of the runes. One said ‘darkness’, while the other said ‘death of light’. Another said ‘all good things come to an end’. Shivers went down my spine as I read the remaining which might be too savagely violent for anyone, even me, to comprehend so you may not want to read it and so I will proceed to not write it since it is very traumatizing to me personally. My heart was pumping with great force and I wanted to get out almost immediately or just run out of the forest but I, against my own will, walked inside the temple.

A pair of blue eyes greeted me inside the heavy darkness of the temple. My heart skipped a beat as my eyes adjusted to the darkness. The creature looked like a wolf, towering about fifteen feet above the ground. Its giant legs seemed as if they would crush me any second now. It gave a sort of war cry and lunged forward. I unfroze, turned around and sprinted. I looked at the behemoth following me. It seemed confident, more so than chilled out, but it still (sort of) ran at me in an unusual manner with an air of undoubtable credence that it would catch its incompetent prey. I looked behind myself once again and caught a clear glimpse of the creature. It had black fur, and a gray stripe running down between its nose and eyes. It seemed a wee bit like a monster that my grandmother used to narrate stories about once in blue moon. She used to tell me about a giant, who was fifteen feet tall, had big, strong legs and dazzling blue eyes. I recognized what it was, or rather what he was, almost instantly. A Jotun. One who was the son of the terrifying destroyer, Fenrir. One who chased the moon untiringly. One who was prophesied to snatch the moon for himself. Any Scandinavian at least once in their life, has been told to finish their food or else he will come and eat you alive (No one? That’s just my family that played the cruel trick? Maybe I didn’t eat my food once and had to bear this catastrophe by myself). It was Hati.

I ran for my life but didn’t dare try to scream. Well, it isn’t even in my nature to scream like a child, but just throwing it out there since Jotuns are said to be sensitive to sound. I had all of this knowledge thanks to my family being very much into our Viking origins. Well, as I was sprinting and praying to Thor (for he is the one who is most amused to kill off the Jotuns birthed by, or are indirectly connected to Loki). If you didn’t know, Loki is Hati’s, and his brother Sköll’s grandfather. Their father being of course, Fenrir.

Speaking of Sköll, I saw a pair of ORANGE eyes peeking out of the bushes a good distance away from me. That was extremely nerve-racking, and I immediately figured out who it was after seeing its towering height of almost fifteen feet. It was Sköll, for I saw him covered in grey fur and a black strip running down between his nose and eyes. I was sweating bullets at this point as I saw Sköll running in the opposite direction of Hati. He was running straight at me. I changed my direction and made a break for a tree that was about seventy feet tall which I had seen earlier but which was a good distance away from me. Since Hati had been so overconfident, he had slowed down, like me, but the main problem now was Sköll, since he had just picked up speed. I jetted towards the tree which was maybe pine, but I wasn’t about to research trees. I was about to get away from two speedy wolf boys who would kill to tear apart and have a feast on a fifteen-year-old risky girl. I picked up momentum and ran up the tall tree, climbed it as fast as I could and sat on the highest seated branch on it. I saw the two behemoths looking around and trying to locate me.

In the meanwhile, I searched through my backpack to find a lighter and a random bag of flour. The lighter was just a camping essential and the flour? I remembered my aunt telling me to keep that huge pack for good luck. I didn’t know what kind of weird logic it was but now I knew how it would help me to get through this disaster. I knew now. Thor was definitely looking down at me, possibly even proud. Let me explain.

The flour was ground into a fine powder. Grains of such powder are highly reactive, meaning that if one small grain was lit, the other particles surrounding it would immediately catch fire. This chain reaction would result in a powerful explosion, logically called dust explosion, enough to kill anything. In this case, the two annoying foes of mine, Sköll and Hati.

I put on a grin and cut the ending of the flour bag horizontally. I then threw the flour particles in air near some dry leaves and the brothers. I instantly I lit it up and within half a second, I was gone from there. Before the brothers could even have the reaction time to flee from there, the explosion activated and I heard a loud WHAM! Sparks were flying here and there and all I saw in place of the two demons was piles of ash. I breathed a sigh of relief and got out of my hiding place, which was behind a few bushes a few feet away.

Now, you must be questioning how I managed to not get any sparks on me. Well, I did, but fire doesn’t hurt me. I know it sounds insane, but I have never gotten a single burn in my entire life. If anything, I just feel a slight tickle and that’s about it. I have even gone so far as to put my hand on a burner which was on. I think you already know what happened. I just felt a weird tickling sensation. My skin didn’t react nor scorch. So yeah, I am immune to fire.

That sounds cool and I don’t object to it. I have tried several experiments and have successfully deduced that I can manipulate and create fire. Basically, to create it, I can ignite the air around me just with my body heat. To kind of sum it up quickly, I have to have some sugar in my body to do so since sugar is basically a producer of heat.

Regardless, I proceeded to walk away from there and set up my camp by some tall trees. I woke up by dawn, packed my stuff up and followed the trail. I saw signs of civilizations by evening which was indicative of the trail finally ending. It was the small yet familiar town of Abisko, inviting me with open arms. I grinned and walked towards the village with all of my troubles finally ending with this one stroll.                                                     

                                                            T