The Girl Who Lived in the Forest

Elara lived in two worlds. By day, she was a quiet young woman in a small town nestled against the dense Philippine rainforest, her life dictated by the humdrum rhythm of school and family expectations. But by night, when she closed her eyes, she truly came alive. She lived in the forest.

It wasn't a dream, she insisted to herself. It was too vivid, too consistent. In this other life, her feet knew the soft, yielding path of moss and loam. Her lungs breathed air thick with the scent of damp earth and blooming ylang-ylang. She spoke the language of the rustling leaves and understood the silent stories in the eyes of the fireflies. There, she was not Elara, the shy daughter; she was Liwayway—the dawn—a creature of wind and wildness.

Her real-world room was her anchor, the gateway between these two existences. Its window looked out toward the real forest, a dark silhouette against the starry sky, a constant promise of the world she preferred.

One night, after a particularly harsh day where the real world felt like a poorly written play, Elara retreated to her room, seeking the solace of her forest. She fell asleep to the chirping of crickets outside her window, a sound that seamlessly blended into the chorus of her dream-world.

That night, the forest was different. A deep, unnatural chill had settled. The familiar trails were shrouded in a mist that clung to her skin like cold fingers. The fireflies were gone. The only sound was the frantic beating of her own heart and a low, rhythmic thump, thump, thump that seemed to come from everywhere at once.

She tried to run, to find her favorite clearing where the moonlight always pooled like liquid silver, but the trees seemed to shift and block her path. The thumping grew louder, more insistent. It was a dull, wooden sound.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

Elara’s eyes flew open.

She was back in her room. The pale light of dawn filtered through the window. The chill from the forest had followed her, seeping into her bones. And the thumping sound was real. It was coming from her door.

She sat up, confused. The thumping wasn't someone knocking. It was the sound of something being hammered.

"Hello?" she called out, her voice hoarse from sleep.

There was no answer, only the final, definitive THUMP followed by the screech of a heavy object being dragged across the floor outside her door. Then, silence.

A cold dread, colder than the forest mist, trickled down her spine. She scrambled out of bed and rushed to the door. The handle wouldn't turn. It was locked. She pulled, she pushed, she rattled it, but it was immovable.

"Nanay? Tatay?" she cried, her voice rising in panic. "Kuya? Is anyone there?"

Silence.

She pressed her ear against the cool wood. She could hear the faint, normal sounds of the house waking up—the creak of the floorboards, the distant murmur of the television. Life was going on just on the other side of the door.

"Let me out!" she screamed, pounding her fists against the solid wood. "I'm in here! Please!"

The sounds from the other side didn't falter. No one came. It was as if they couldn't hear her at all. As if her room, and she within it, had been erased from their perception.

Tears of frustration and terror streamed down her face. She stumbled to the window, yanking back the curtains. The world outside was the same. The forest was there, green and beckoning. A neighbor walked by, whistling, and glanced up at her house. Elara waved her arms frantically, but the neighbor's gaze slid right over her window as if it were a painting on a wall.

That’s when she understood. She wasn't just locked in her room. She was locked out of her own life.

Days bled into nights. Meals were silently left on a tray outside her door, retrieved only after she retreated to the far side of the room. Her family never spoke to her through the door. Their silence was a wall thicker than the wood that imprisoned her.

Her only escape was the forest. But now, even that world was tainted. The chill remained. The mist was thicker, the paths now leading only in circles. The vibrant, living forest of her soul was becoming a reflection of her prison—a beautiful, lonely cage. The figure of Liwayway, once so free, now sat by a stagnant stream, listlessly tracing patterns in the water, her spirit breaking.

One evening, as the real world outside her window darkened, she sat on her bed, hugging her knees. She could hear her family laughing in the living room, a warm, happy sound that was a universe away. The heartbreak was not in the anger or the shouting, but in the simple, normal sound of a life continuing perfectly well without her.

She had finally realized why they had done it. Her family, in their own superstitious, fearful way, had seen her drifting away. They had seen the wildness in her eyes, her preference for solitude, her connection to something they couldn't understand. They didn't see a girl with a rich inner life; they saw a daughter being claimed by the engkanto, the spirits of the forest. Locking her away was their desperate attempt to "cure" her, to anchor her to their reality by force.

They had locked the door to save her, but in doing so, they had shattered her completely.

That night, Elara didn't try to go to the forest. She simply lay in bed, staring at the ceiling. The girl who lived in the forest was gone, withered away from neglect. And the young woman in the room was a ghost, a secret the house would now keep forever.

The door was locked from the outside, but the true heartbreak was that the key had been thrown away long before, lost in the vast, unbridgeable gap between the world she was given and the world her soul called home.