Prolog

She often wondered what would happen after death. Though she did not consider herself to be a religious person she often found herself staring out the window during school days and just contemplating over the beauty of the sky. During those times she felt as if her soul was reaching out for something different. Perhaps something better.  

She would sit in the very back of the classroom and observe the birds soaring over the small lake you could just catch a glimpse of out the window if you really strained yourself to see. With quick strokes of a pencil she could draw whatever caught her eye in great detail during these treasured moments. These drawings were then carefully hidden and stowed away and while her friends and classmates knew she often doodled during class none of them had ever seen any of these pictures.  

One thing both she and the people around her could agree on was that she was a dreamer – or at least very absentminded at times. Of course she would often hang out with her friends. She would laugh. She would crush on boys. She would share her insecurities and in turn she would listen. She would stay out late with friends having a good time. Do things she would regret – mostly because her parents almost always found out about it. That is not to say she never felt sad or alone but she wasn't the type to dwell on it. All in all she was a seemingly ordinary girl in her late teens.  

Her house lay on the edge of a grand forest. She would often take a daylong trip in the weekends with her sketchbook, pencil case with all her favorite pencils and a book or two in her backpack. She would do this especially in the summer but was not averse to a few shorter trips during the winter as she found all seasons to be enchanting. The brown color of her hair would blend in with the bark of the great oaks she sat beside while either drawing reading or just enjoying the day, her avid green eyes would sparkle with wonder and she would have a gentle smile on her face. This was one of the few things she had never shared with anyone as she always went alone.  

While she was often absentminded, she was actually quite levelheaded when it came to this, as she knew exactly how dangerous it could be if an accident should befall her while she was deep in the woods, and she took care not to be overly reckless in her choice of route and what she packed of practical necessities (for example extra water or food if she should be unable to return home) on such trips. And while she knew that it was not a good idea not to have a partner she simply could not bear the thought of sharing this deeply personal part of herself with anyone. Apart from this she was an avid reader and if she had not been so absorbed in her own world she would have been very likely to be the top of her year. As it was, her grades were average.  

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It was on one such trip during the late spring of her seventeenth year that she disappeared. She always informed her parents of her route for the day, when she expected to be home and carried a GPS-tracker with her as an extra safety measure. Her parents had always worried about their youngest out of three wonderful children as she had always been quite independent. The two oldest – both sons – were already in their late twenties and had long since moved out and settled down with a girlfriend and wife and two children respectively. Even though both of her parents greatly worried for her safety when she went out on her own they knew they could not stop her as it was an irreplaceable part of her life. So as the day of her disappearance slowly drew to a close and one hour past time became two which became three and then four, they became more and more frantic as this had never happened before. She always called in if she knew she would be late. Hurriedly they got a search party out to look for her starting from the location of her GPS-tracker. They found the tracker, but there was no sign of the girl or her other possessions. They searched for days, but there was no sign of her.  

In the end the grieving family, her friends and classmates buried an empty coffin. Her mother was inconsolable for weeks. She stayed almost every minute of the day in her daughters room either crying her eyes out or slowly going through what things her daughter had collected over the years. On a sunny day early July her mother stumbled upon a relatively small wooden chest beneath the bed. It had been tucked behind several boxes filled with bits and pieces of her daughters posessions. The wooden chest was something the girl's mother had given her which her mother in turn had inherited from her mother. She put the chest on her knees, smiled, brushed the dust off and opened it.  

What she found was seven completely filled sketchbooks. All filled with beautiful drawings. Her right hand flew to her mouth. She almost began crying once again but restrained herself. Slowly she began looking through the sketch books picture by picture. Completely dumbfounded. Had her little girl really drawn all these? It took her all morning to look them through. She carried the chest down to the kitchen, called her sons and her husband and then sat waiting for them to come home.