Unfinished

?4?

Piper could see so many ways it could go wrong.

"My dad put it up, so it's super secure." Finn told her, tilting his head all the way back so he could grin at her.

"What if the rope snaps?" She felt her arms tiring as she gave him another push.

"It won't!"

"What if the branch snaps?"

"It won't!"

"What if the seat snaps?"

"It won't!"

Finn laughed, and pulled himself up about and inch before dropping back onto the swing to prove how secure it was.

Piper began to see the appeal of the wooden swing, even if it wasn't all metal and chain like the ones she was used to.

"Piper!" James suddenly called out, jogging through the woods.

"Hello!" She turned and waved at him, and the swing immediately hit her in the side of the face.

She was staring at the leafy canopy over head when Finn's face appeared above her.

"Ouch." He remarked, before stepping back as James reached them.

"Are you okay?" Her brother crouched next to her as she sat up.

Piper immediately burst into tears.

━━━━━⋅⋅⋅ˏˋ • ˊˎ⋅⋅⋅━━━━━

Piper couldn't quite work out what on earth possessed her to go into the dark forest in the early morning.

She felt like the fool at the start of a horror movie, about to be brutally slaughtered by some hidden axe murderer.

Why would you think that? Now you're just going to be thinking about axe murderers.

The woods felt familiar, yet so different at the same time. Piper reached a hand out and trailed her fingers along the bark of a tree, listening to the sounds around her.

Birds were chirping high above her head; the annoying pitchy noise of a fox echoed in the distance.

The bushes rustled.

Axe murderer.

Sometimes, she really hated her mind.

Finally, she reached the spot where she remembered the swing to be. Only, there was no swing.

She hadn't really known what to expect. It had been almost twelve years, and it was likely it would have succumbed under some other child playing on it. Recently, she supposed, as the ground was still swept clear underneath where the swing had hung.

Piper paced around the tree, still running her fingers over the bark until she spotted it.

Crouching down, she spotted 'P + F' carved into the base of the tree. And slightly above that, 'Mikey was here to' was also scratched in. They'd used Mikey's pocket knife, although they'd been scared of cutting themselves. The P + F and been scratched over multiple times to achieve permanence, but Mikey's message had been harshly done, the letters made of deep grooves and lines that didn't join up.