I Found A Leather-Bound Case In A Tree And I Really Wish I Had Never Found It

I headed to my room and grabbed an unopened box of generic “number 2” pencils and headed out into the woods. It was late in the day and a dreary gray sky hung over the trees, providing very little light inside the forest. I didn’t need much light. I knew where I was going. A short ways into the woods, at the top of a small, densely vegetated hill, there was a huge, dying tree I called “The Shrine”. The Shrine had an opening in it near the base leading into a large hollow section. The opening was too small for me to climb in, but I could stick my head in and look around. Light would pour in through other holes in the sides of the hollow part in a way that was breathtaking and I had spent a good deal of time by that tree, marveling in its various impressive qualities.

Except there would be no light pouring in there then, it was already too dark for that by the time I reached the Shrine. I was having second thoughts. The smell of rain was in the air and I was worried the pencils would get ruined if I left them in there. Finally I decided that I had better go ahead and do what I’d planned, so I stuck the box of pencils in the hole and hurried back to the house.

That night, it stormed tremendously. I remember waking up in the middle of the night and thinking how stupid I was for leaving those pencils out there.

The next day I rushed back out to the woods the first chance I got. The rain of the night before had been erased by a new day’s sunshine and the woods seemed to invite me in as I hurried down what passed for a path. Finally, I arrived at the Shrine and poked my head into the hollow of the tree.

At first, I couldn’t seem to register what I saw there. There was no plain jane box of number 2 pencils there anymore. Instead, there was a leather pencil case that looked like it may have a little age on it, though it could have just been made to look that way. I eagerly pulled the pencil case out and opened it. Inside were the very same bland number 2 pencils I’d left out there, except that they had all been meticulously sharpened. With them in the case was a folded up piece of paper than when unfolded had one word written on it: draw