Living in a tree house, you pine for the forest.

Lit Up — January’s Prompt: Winter.

Cleaving home to unravel.

Leaving the garden is frightening. Getting out of your tree is not recommended. But leaving your mind is just part of your routine.

“This will be like any other out of your tree house day,” you reassure yourself and anyone else considering travel.

You pack your bags.

It will be cold in the heart of the forest, in the middle of winter… But then being cold with one another is what keeps your family so close. Each winter solstice, you gather together — one little family huddled around a candle. Shivering out Silent Night in a frosty forest is one of your family’s warmest traditions.

You feather line your bags with woolly, hoody, hopey things, and toss in a handful of sparkles, to keep up your sleeve. You pack gifts for your sisters: Sandy, Brandy and Dandelion.

Sandy likes to fix things. Which is handy when you all break down together. You got Sandy an auger, a drill, and a corkscrew. They may not sound like exciting gifts to you, but Sandy gets a kick out of boring things.

Brandy is a hot shot of bright sparks and games. She keeps things sunny through long winter nights. Her gift is a cook book: How to Bake Winning Secrets into Your Branding — In a Ginger Snap!

Your youngest sister sees the forest for the trees. So you pack snacks for her pet rats and a calendar of monthly bats. Last year she breezed about pollinators. This year she’s hung up with bats. Your sister Dandelion is just wild.

You get ready to leave.

Preparing for the garden’s absence, you find your edge and grow over it, one more time. Shedding an old skin, you rake the garden for your leaves. You fix a few messes and mix up your blessings.

You get this way when the garden takes leave — all scattered and seedy.

Without being sour, you cover the lemon trees in netting. Not to brag, but people envy how life brings you lemons. You just shower them in your lemonade standing, which makes some friendships sticky, and bitter sweet.

Whenever you travel you feel anxious, or excited, or vaguely heroic — sometimes it’s difficult to tell. So, you give yourself a farewell moment to pet the moss. You lichen moss, love it, really. Long before you became a tree hugger, you were a moss petter. There’s no shame to admit it. Leaning in a soft embrace, you whisper in mossy code, “You are gorgeous, you soft, green creep, and I love the way you’re spreading.” This makes the moss go all squishy.

You never used to be so clingy.

You feel insecure, or intrepid, or vaguely doomed — sometimes it’s difficult to tell. So, you give yourself a moment to creep round the garden walls.

You’re not the clingy type, not like Ivy. Until today.

“I’m feeling a little insecure,” you admit to yourself and to Ivy. “I think I really ‘get’ you now. The longer I stand here, the more you are growing on me.”

But Ivy just puts up a wall. Not everyone can handle it when you’re being authentic.

Leaving your garden makes you feel agitated, or exasperated, or vaguely desperate — sometimes it’s difficult to tell. So you give yourself a moment to sit on the garden swing. Legs dangled, gently swinging to the edge of a moment, then back over it again.

You twist and turn, winding the ropes up tight, all ready for springing. Letting go, spinning and whirling, garden’s untwirling, a spiral of small blisses unfurling. In an instant you unravel. Now you are ready to leave the garden and travel.

You bolt in security.

You stride toward the garden gate before remembering to dash back and grab your bags. You look up at the guardians, Cleaver and Clinger. Each seated on a pillar either side of the gate, they are hunched and gnarled, their ancient wings folded. They smell like well seasoned demons.

“Watch over the garden while I’m away,” you say.

Clinger looks bereaved, his bottom lip trembling. His soft lavender eyes grow wider, welling up to glisten. You think he might burst into tears, but then you see a wink among the wrinkles. He is teasing.

On the other hand, Cleaver heaves a great sigh and yawns. She looks out into the distance, way over your head and out of your league. Occasionally she looks down on you, if you are lucky.

“I can stay here if you really need me,” you blurt out, losing yet another battle in your lifelong struggle with impulse control.

Cleaver turns with a sharpened glare, cutting your baggage right down to size. Thoughtful of her — saves you paying excess baggage. Then in a great orbit of eye rolling, she cleaves you right out the gate and bolts the lock behind you. Your luggage, briefly delayed in transit, flies after you with a crushing reminder that you should pack lighter.

You just got thrown out of the garden. You hate it when that happens.

You sharpen your bleak.

You forgot to plan how you will get to the airport. The crows swoop in to watch you weighing up your options. Fluttering their dark silhouettes against the garden walls, more and more crows keep descending and pecking, caw-cawing all about you grimly. You hate it when that happens. The crows just make you sharpen your bleak.

Perhaps they’re trying to tell you something. Perhaps you shouldn’t leave. What if your plane goes down in the cloud, with your laptop, and your iPad and your iPhone, all on board? Then you will lose your files — especially the ones you haven’t backed up, which is every last one of them. What a virtual disaster!

You try to ignore the crows. They’re not really helping.

Normally you would ride your unicycle…

…but it went home for the holidays. Your cycle is the only child of a freewheeling uni family, which sounds like the picture perfect nuclear tricycle, except when family gatherings get explosive. You just hope they make it through another season.

Without your cycle, you only have two options. You put one in front of the other and begin to walk.

Unicorns don’t believe in you.

As you farewell the garden with a wave of adventure, a herd of silver unicorns surrounds you in silence. Staring in utter disbelief, they can’t understand your awkward walking, why you won’t put all four feet on the ground.

Silent stares from unheard unicorns can be unnerving. All those spiked foreheads pointing at you sharply. This is why you don’t like to travel. The improbabilities outside the garden wall seem to be weaponizing.

You should say something bold and reassuring.

“I believe in you.” You say to the unicorns. Silence. The feeling may not be mutual.

“Go unicorns,” you pump in the air, hoping they will.

Tough crowd.

The neighbors blame you for taming the unicorns, which is not quite true. You find them intimidating, the unicorns not the neighbors. The neighbors are mostly just annoying.

You take a deep breath. You consider the possibility that everyone is not out to get you, even the unicorns. The reality is that a herd of mythical creatures is simply pausing to take pity on you, which makes you feel very special.

Feeling perfectly inappropriate, you give the herd a cheerful little ‘thumbs-up’, and smile hard. You really are a dreadful unicorn-pleaser. Unfortunately, putting out your thumb makes them think you need a ride. Which you do, but you hate taking a road less traveled, especially with unicorns.

You get saddled with the unicorns.

This is why you don’t like to travel. Experiences like running with the unicorns are vastly over-rated. Riding with them to the airport is not some fantasy tour for the lucky unbridled. It’s not some galloping flashback down the mane street of flings. It is a ride with a feral herd across a wave-length of fright. It is a denture denting, rocky road over all your discomfort zones.

Making it worse, the unicorns have no idea where they’re going. Either that, or they don’t care. You shout directions above the deafening roar of their thundering truths. “Stop, now, please,” you shriek, or whimper, or maybe you just scream that inside your head.

Outside the airport, you spiral off the saddle into a puddle. Trembling to stand you wobble up your dignity, “I appreciate the way you flashed my whole life before my eyes,” you say bowing before the herd, which is also a convenient moment to heave your lunch on the pavement.

“I like to fear for my life before I get on a plane,” you add. “It was kind of you to give me a running start.”

Laughing like hyenas, they gallop off to frighten more traffic.

“Well done.” You say to yourself, hauling your hoof-battered baggage, along with your suitcases. Getting out of the house is usually harder than that.

All you need to do now is go through insecurity and survive getting high on fossil fuel with a crowd of coughing dangers.

After you cleave home to unravel, you will arrive. Then you will fix things with Sandy and take hot shots with Brandy, while everyone runs wild in the forest with Dandelion.