I turned and headed into the marsh-lands, to hopefully escape and fight another day. Continuing I started feeling more and more tired, my heart, felt like it was going to burst from my chest. My vision was becoming blurred and I began to struggle in lifting my own legs. As I came to the marsh, the ground became soft and thick and dense with reeds which grew far above me. I struggled to move through the thick mud as I brushed the reeds away from my path. In a moment my right foot sank so deep in the muck that I couldn’t pull it free, I began to panic, as I could hear voices yelling “ He went this way!”. I struggled, pulled, and pulled, in panic, I looked back just to see the inside of a rifle barrel as it went off. Flash and smoke.

I fell forward, the force of the shot breaking my leg free of its bondage. I landed face first into the water. In seconds, it felt, I awoke and came up gasping for breath, gurgling up water. It was dark outside, you could faintly see the sun off in the distance. I began to swim around, slightly panicked, looked around and not seeing any Union soldiers, I decided to swim to shore.

As I made the swim it occurred to me that I no longer had my rifle nor boots. The rifle I figured was lost in the water of the marsh, but it was strange that my boots were gone. Maybe the Union soldiers took them off while I was unconscious or they came off in the mud, I quickly just brushed the thought away just thankful to still be moving.

As I approached the shore, a safe and peaceful feeling overcome me. I figured it was the relief of escaping death, I crawled up onto the shore and as I was catching my breath I noticed something. An item that I had seen before. There, less than 10ft away in a small clearing was a white sofa with red, pink and yellow embroidered flowers all over the ivory backdrop and the wood was a dark walnut. I looked all around me, confused at this sight, no longer breathing heavy I got to my feet to investigate. I approached the sofa and noticed that the ground beneath my bare feet became soft and pleasant to walk on.

I came to the sofa and reached out my hand and ran it across the dark walnut arm, over the embroidered flowers, feeling every delicate stitch. An overwhelming feeling came over me to sit down, unsure why or where this urge came from, I looked around and saw no one. No sign of life or any other Humans handy work, so I walked to the front of the sofa and made one last look around before sitting.

In front of me was a perfect parting in the reeds and trees, as if they were bowing to show a gorgeous, indescribable sunset. A tear rolled down my cheek as the sun sank lower I heard a familiar giggle. I turned to see who it was and in that moment the sun sank and it turned into a deep darkness, as I saw who it came from.

“Mother?”