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  The Raven’s Journey

  Book One

  See Me

  by Michelle Lee

  Blue Forge Press

  Port Orchard * Washington

  See Me

  Copyright 2019

  by Michelle Lee

  First eBook Edition December 2019

  First Print Edition December 2019

  Cover photograph by Michelle Lee

  Cover design by Brianne DiMarco

  Interior design by Brianne DiMarco

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever, except in the case of short excerpts for use in reviews of the book.

  For information about film, reprint or other subsidiary rights, contact [email protected]

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, locations, and all other story elements are the product of the authors' imaginations and are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or other elements in real life, is purely coincidental.

  Blue Forge Press is the print division of the volunteer-run, federal 501(c)3 nonprofit company, Blue Forge Group, founded in 1989 and dedicated to bringing light to the shadows and voice to the silence. We strive to empower storytellers across all walks of life with our four divisions: Blue Forge Press, Blue Forge Films, Blue Forge Gaming, and Blue Forge Records. Find out more at www.BlueForgeGroup.com

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  Port Orchard, Washington 98367

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  For my Mom

  who saved me before I knew

  I needed to be saved.

  For Jonielle and Loleta

  who gave me the needed push

  to get past fear.

  The Raven’s Journey

  Book One

  See Me

  by Michelle Lee

  Chapter One

  From my bedroom window I can see a tree, maybe not a large one, but it was a good enough size for what I needed it for. I angled my head back into my pillows a bit, so my face was pointing slightly upwards. I fluffed the blankets in front of me so that they blocked out the houses in the background and golden light of the street lamps. Now I can just see the tree, and the cloudy sky behind it with stars and the half-moon peeking at me as the clouds rolled through.

  It was enough for me to pretend I was the only human around and that I was surrounded by peace and Mother Earth and whatever mysteries she wanted to reveal tonight. The air was calm with an occasional breeze, but cool, the fresh rain scent still lingered, and I couldn’t breathe it in fast enough. I’m an air sign with an earth affinity, yet I’m also drawn to the water. So, the scent of fresh rain on the earth with a little breeze was like magic to me.

  I’ve been called many things, some not so nice, all because I’m different in ways that aren’t obvious to me all the time. Most call me an empath, which I guess I can agree with on a base level though more recently I think there’s more to it than just that. Some have called me magic, or an earth angel, some say I’m like a drug, others say I am light. The not so nice ones call me weird, a freak, a loser, a loner and a whole bunch of other words I try not to dwell on.

  My differences are also what feed into my suitcase of insecurities which are on constant repeat on a roll of film playing in my brain in the background. Most of the time I can block it out with whatever else is going on in my life, though at times like this when I am just trying to be in the moment and relax, they come to play front and center in my mind. I guess this means not much sleep tonight.

  I shift in my bed and change my position to try and get more comfortable and just focus on the tree. The branches now naked of all its leaves, spindly and reaching for the sky with gnarled fingers, swaying gently when a little breeze blows through bringing me the scent that soothes my soul. I do some yoga breathing in hopes that I can arrive at that calm and centered place inside where I need to be, but it feels like it is blocked off right now.

  I feel unsettled and a little restless. The scent that usually calms me feels like it’s calling me and pulling at me. Kicking off the covers in frustration, I climb out of bed and walk into my closet, blindly reaching into my drawers for clothes to put on. It’s dark out, so I don’t really care if I match or not. I get dressed in leggings and a t-shirt and grope around for a pair of thick socks. I wander into the bathroom and feel around the counter for the hair tie I threw down there earlier and pull my hair up into a messy pony tail.

  I headed downstairs to pull my tennis shoes on and glanced at the clock on the microwave, 11:24 PM. I winced slightly wondering how smart it was to go on a walk at this time of night, even though the area I lived in was relatively safe. Recalling the restless feeling I had I grabbed my hiking backpack and dug around in the bottom of it for my little gun. I don’t think I needed it, but I can’t shake the feeling that it would be better to have it. So, I clipped it on the waistband of my leggings and hid it with my shirt.

  I grabbed my coat and wallet, and then I paused and grabbed my car keys. Something was telling me walking around my neighborhood wasn’t going to be enough. Some part of my brain was thinking so I grabbed my flashlight too. The pull to leave was getting stronger so I just gave into it and headed into the garage to leave.

  This feeling doesn’t usually hit me this hard at night, so I was struggling a bit with just going on autopilot and letting my brain direct me to where I should be. I pulled out of the garage and turned the heat on and focused inward while waiting for my garage door to close. East, I needed to go east. The tug was insistent, and I wondered if one of my friends was in trouble.

  I pulled out of my neighborhood and headed east, letting the tug direct me, and noticed there was some low-lying fog rolling in. I glanced up at the sky when I hit the next stop light, looking for rain clouds, because of course I didn’t grab a rain coat. There were clouds, but it didn’t look like rain. The moon was bright, but hazy looking with the wispy clouds in front of it, giving an odd glow reflecting off the clouds.

  I agreed with being an empath at the base level, but when I started to think that there was something more to it, this was what I was talking about. This compulsion that leads me off in different directions. It’s part of being an empath because it is an emotion pulling me, but I think that there is something more to it that just that. It doesn’t feel the same. It has this weird sense of just knowing that I am supposed to be there that is separate from the emotion. Like it is two different pieces of thread pulling me in the same direction, and while the threads may cross, the energy of the two have their own distinct feel.

  Being an empath is hard, and it’s exhausting. Emotions can be heavy, and I can almost always tell when someone is lying to me. An empath is someone that can read the emotions of others, feel what they are feeling, and in my case, take on the emotions of others in order to ease their burden. Empath’s are usually healers of some sort, and people are drawn to them. It’s even harder when they touch me, and its skin on skin contact.

  When I go into a crowded place, it’s sensory overload. My brain tries to shut everything down because I can’t process the amount of emotion hitting me from every side, pressing down on me until it feels like I have become gravity itself. It has taken me years to learn how to build walls inside to protect myself from that. When the emotions are that heavy and that many it gets difficult to tell what my emotion is and what belongs to others. If I am not careful, I can suddenly find myself in an all-consuming rage, or deep depression without knowing why. It becomes a never-ending rollercoaster of emotional insanity.

  Add that to the chronic pain I seem to suffer from, and life can get pretty intense. The past couple of years I’ve been able to
get a better grip on it all. I attribute that to yoga, it’s been a life saver for me, even though I suck at it. I am definitely not one of those graceful people you see on the videos that everyone strives to look like. I look more like a lump of playdoh twisted into weird shapes. At least I am trying, and it’s made a huge difference in my everyday life.

  Suddenly I snap back into reality and find myself turning down the road I take to go to Mt. Peak, but I pull off on to the shoulder by what looks like a tiny little trail. The only light is the moon and my headlights which will disappear once I get out of the car. Strange. I haven’t been here in at least a year. The pull is strong though. I grab my coat and flashlight and get out of the car slowly taking in my surroundings.

  My instincts are screaming at me to get back in the car as the darkness starts to swallow me up, but the pull is so intense that it overrules me. Fear has never stopped me from doing something, though it will sometimes slow me down. Nor am I one of those slight in stature, fragile looking females. I’ve always been thick, and I have curves. I am short, but I am strong. Even still, this was an isolated forest area, in the patchy fog and dark. So yeah, I was going slow.

  I refused to allow myself to relax because I didn’t know what was pulling me here, and I really couldn’t see what I was walking into. The farther in I walked, the thicker the fog became, and the beam of the flashlight was just reflecting off it. It rolled over and around the exposed skin of my face like it had a heavy texture to it, dampening the sounds around me.

  I paused to try and get my bearings because it sounded like I was approaching water, and as much as I love the water, I didn’t want to fall in it. I didn’t bring a change of clothes and it was not warm out. I searched through my memory to try and remember the area around me. I think a river was dead ahead, and that there was a stream offshoot to my left that dumped into the river. The last time I was here it was a bank on either side of the stream, probably at least a five foot drop on either side.

  Given how many big storms we had the past year though, I really couldn’t say if it was going to be the same. I’d already encountered a bunch of fallen trees. I focused on the pull again and it was leading me to the right, away from the stream, but towards the river. I couldn’t remember what that way was, so I just resumed a slow walk. The path started to have a downhill grade to it, and it felt like I was getting closer to the river. The fog thinned a bit in places, and then suddenly, the terrain changed, and I was standing on rocks.

  I looked around and saw that I could see the river and my breath caught. All the heavy emotions of others I had collected over the past week evaporated as where I stood filled me with a healing energy and I felt light again. I smiled in the dark and ignored the pull for a moment. I think I forgot to mention that for me to recharge as an empath and let go of whatever I had taken on, I needed nature. I needed the energy of the earth to release all those collected emotions.

  It wasn’t just any nature area either. I had to go until I felt a spot that filled me with light energy, something to combat all the darkness that I took from others, and there was no other feeling quite like it for me when that baggage was stripped away by the nature around me. Often it brought me to tears feeling the release. It was no different tonight. I let the tears fall and gazed out on the river.

  The moon showing enough of itself to spark tiny diamonds of moonlight over the little peaks of the rapids as they flowed around the rocks. The fog thin and hovering about a foot above the water in places, and small tendrils flowing with the river in others with just enough moonlight to reflect off it all to make it mystical and magical feeling. Like I had stepped into another world.

  I needed this, I knew it deep in my bones, and let myself stand there and just breathe it all in. Slow, deep breaths that cleansed me inside and out. The moonlight and fog wrapping around me like a blanket of heavenly light, freeing my soul and mind. As the last tears fell, I whispered a thank you to the universe and reached out for the pull again.

  It led me parallel to the river and farther to the right. A bridge came into sight, the pull leading me to go under it, and I paused a moment to shine the flashlight around. There was no fog under the bridge, but there wasn’t any moonlight either, and it was just a dense darkness that had an otherworldly feel to it. A not natural feel, but it also didn’t feel dangerous.

  The feeling was intense though, and when I didn’t see anything with the flashlight, I let it pull me forward, under the bridge. I swear it felt like I entered a portal to another place. All sound stopped when I was under the bridge, I couldn’t even hear the river flowing two feet to my left. Not even the sound of my breathing was heard.

  I wasn’t scared, though I would be hard pressed to name the feeling that was taking over me. I just knew it wasn’t fear. I kept walking. I was about halfway under the bridge when a sound made me stop. It was the first thing I had heard since stepping under the bridge, but I couldn’t identify it, or where it came from. My heart didn’t race, I didn’t speak or cry out, just moved the flashlight around to try and see what it was I heard.

  “Are you real?” a voice said somewhere in front of me, though I couldn’t see anything.

  “Are you real?” I replied in a whisper. At this point I wasn’t sure my mind wasn’t playing tricks on me since I couldn’t see anything but rocks in front of me. Hell, I couldn’t even tell if the voice was male or female, or young or old.

  “Strange, you aren’t scared. Define real,” the voice said.

  “No, not scared. Curious, maybe a little concerned. Why do I need to define real?” I questioned, starting to move forward again. I felt like I needed to be out from under the bridge.

  “What is real to some, is not real to others,” the voice said, a tinge of sadness coloring the voice making me sense it was female.

  “Well, I’m starting to feel like Alice falling down the rabbit hole,” I answered, doing my best not to let sarcasm taint my words. “I guess to me real would be something I can see, hear and touch.”

  “You can’t see me?” she asked, definitely female I thought, and certainly sad. I could feel it.

  “No, not yet,” I replied softly, feeling the sadness and pulling on it with my mind.

  “I can feel you doing that,” she said. “It feels weird. Are you an angel?”

  I laughed quietly, “No, I’m not an angel, but I am real. Just a human. Where are you?” There was an odd energy in the air that felt like little electric tingles on my face.

  “I’m not far from you, in front of you,” she said and made a sniffing sound.

  “Are you smelling me?” I asked wondering if I smelled bad.

  “You don’t smell like a person, you don’t feel like a person, you feel like an angel,” she said softly, and I felt a whisper of a touch on my mind and a slight cinnamon scent wafted in front of me.

  “What do angels feel like?” I questioned, still walking forward slowly, keeping my voice even and calm, even though strong emotions were hitting me like rocks being thrown.

  “Light,” she replied.

  “Light,” I repeated back to her as I finally stepped out from under the bridge and slowly looked around, realizing I could see better on this side of the bridge. There was less fog, and less trees, but the river still looked like magic to me, stealing my attention for a moment.

  “It’s beautiful,” she said.

  Taken off guard I wasn’t sure what she was talking about. “What’s beautiful?”

  “The river of course, since that is where you were looking, but also I was describing what an angel feels like,” she answered, her voice coming from behind me now.

  “I’ve never met an angel,” I told her. “Although I do not believe I am one.” I still faced the river, but began to gently tug at the sadness, fear and anger that were rolling around me, trying to collect them and ease her pain.

  “You need to stop that,” she said in a firm voice, still behind me. “Those are for me to carry, not you.” Her anger spiked with t
hat statement, but also the sadness.

  I walked towards the river and squatted down in front of it, balancing on a couple of rocks before I let my fingers trail across the icy cold surface of the water. The cold seeping into my fingers and up my arm before I pulled my hand back. I traced my cheeks with my wet fingers, letting the essence of the river soak into my face. I took a deep breath before I spoke to her again.

  “Sweet girl, you are allowed to share your loads, you don’t have to carry them alone,” I said quietly, but in the voice I used only when I needed to convince someone to let me help them. I stood up and carefully turned around to face the direction her voice was coming from.

  Then I saw her. I stifled a gasp and just focused on her. She was there, but she wasn’t. Ethereal is the word that came to mind. She was completely bathed in moonlight that made her shimmer like the river I was just touching. Though I could see colors, she glowed a blue that made me think of starlight. Her hair was red, long, straight and moved like the wind was teasing it. Her mouth was wide, but her lips were thin, nose slightly off center like it had been broken before. Large almond shaped eyes that glowed with the same blue light making it so I couldn’t see what color they were. She appeared waiflike, but not fragile. Maybe in her early twenties.

  “Are you real?” I couldn’t help but ask her again, as the energy rolling off her was unlike anything I had ever felt before and I was drawn to her. I wanted to wrap her up in a hug.

  She smiled sadly, “Again, it depends on your definition. You can hear me, you can even feel me, and now you see me, so, am I real?”

  Understanding seemed to sink into me then, and I tilted my head to the side and asked, “Will I be able to touch you?”