When I was little, maybe 8 or so, I loved to explore the woods outback my house. The woods stretched on for miles, and there was always something new and exciting to find.
My mom would allow me to play in the woods, as long as I knew where I was and came back before sunset. Though, I did sometimes stay out after dark, and she wasn’t worried if I came after sunset due to that.
This was before phones became a fad.
I was skipping around prancing over broken branches and brambles, and saw what little sky I could see through the thick tree canopy. It was getting dark.
I realized, I didn’t know where I was. This is unusual because I don’t get lost often, or really never.
I wasn’t worried yet, there was still maybe thirty minutes until sundown.
I start tracing my steps, but this proved difficult being the 8 year old child I was. (Should actually be the opposite, I was skipping and making a lot of visual trails, but I didn’t have any tracking skills and was just following from memory instead of sight. Though it was very dark due to the thick trees, so I couldn’t see the tracks anyway.)
After around an hour of memory back tracking, it was basically pitch black (not all the way, the moon was super bright and even withe the trees little beams showed through and allowed sight)
After a while of screaming out for help and panicking while walking in the vague direction of what I thought was behind me, the fireflies appeared.
There’s nothing unusual withe fireflies, I even remember several times being late for dinner to look at them. So I ignored them, until the fireflies did something unusual.
The fireflies, and this light sound crazy, but the fireflies started moving and ‘lining” up in a certain direction to my left.
I didn’t notice this, and it took me sitting down and crying on a stump to realize it.
Once I realized them, I thought why not follow them? It’s not like my situation can get worse just by doing so.
So I followed them.
After a while the woods parted to show a clearing. It wasn’t very big, but to my child mind it was huge.
It was around the size of a 40 feet across maybe. I don’t really remember all I know is that it was a clearing, and a big enough clearing to be a clearing.
It also allowed more light than the rest of the forest, withe wide angles and spooky moving shadows to set the mood.
I walked around three feet into the clearing before I stopped. I felt like something was watching me.
I look around, and don’t see anything.
Then I look up and see, standing maybe 50 feet high, a…thing. I’ll try and explain it the best I can.
So from my memory it was like a…tree person? Sort of. It was crouched down on a thick limb, and was the vague shape of a human. Except it had wood skin, and looked like it was blending in to the tree and the background. It was roughly 8 feet tall, but again it was crouched so I don’t know.
Also it was super high up, so it could actually be much bigger.
I do know that it had wings, or what looked like wings. They were furled shut, and was loosely held in a relaxed position.
The wings were absolutely huge, and this was them not spread out. At least more than 3 grown men length each. Absolutely ginormous.
It was looking straight at me, but weirdly, I didn’t feel threatened. Just terrified.
It looked at me withe more of a vague curiosity. Sort of like oh, a weird thing, what a weird thing. It seemed interested, but only because I didn’t belong and I was a curiosity to it. But not a curiosity worth more than a mere minute. Like when you see a funky looking mushroom.
Anyways, I ran. I bolted out of there as any normal person would.
The fireflies led me back home, I don’t know if I subconsciously followed them or something because I was definitely not focused on that at the moment.
I made it back home. My mother scolded me. And I never mentioned it, until now.