u/DoubleHaunting2708

While this prompt mentions your character as a child, it is only meant as backstory to how your character met a being that is potentially thousands of years old. Any and all romance / smut scenes that take place, will be between two legal, and consenting adults.

~

There is a small town in the middle of the mountains with a population of less than 300. The residents are 2 hours away from any kind of civilization, with nothing but endless forest for miles in every direction.

They have one school, one doctor, one sheriff, one church, and one main road that goes straight through the town that used to be the hub of the nearby, but now closed, uranium mine.

That’s what most folks blame the rumors on. The radiation, and the isolation.

What started as a nursery rhyme many generations ago about a woman in white who protected the miners, has devolved into a phantom that steals away children who wander out too far in the woods. Some of the adults say she’s the spirit of a young pregnant widow, whose husband died in one of the many cave-ins and she miscarried from the intense grief, and is now trying to replace her lost baby with the souls of living children. Others, mostly the local teenagers, say she’s a vampire, werewolf, cannibal, or some kind of other monster lurking in the shadows, ready to snatch up the first child she sees for her next meal.

Whatever rumor they choose to spread, it all has the same motivations behind it.

Keeping the children out of the woods.

Far too many have gone missing, always leaving no trace behind other than bare footprints leading to the forests edge before they seemingly stop, never to be seen again. They leave in the dead of night with no reason to have gotten up from their beds, but from the pace they set in the mud, they were all running.

Every single one of them.

Every child got up from their warm bed and decided that, during a thunderstorm, they were going to run outside into the forest, and never come back.

That is the train of thought that endlessly ran through the local sheriffs head day and night. Every time a parent would scream at him for answers, even when the FBI has found none, all he could think about are those small human footprints set deep into the mud like they were running for their lives.

5 children in 5 years so far.

50 years ago, 10 children had gone missing during a 10 year period before the vanishing stopped without explanation. And 50 years before that.

But now it’s happening again.

One always disappears during the rainy season each year. Always on the night of the worst storm, during the last week of October.

A few parents have taken to locking their doors and windows every time it rains. Most confine themselves and their children to the storm cellar until the morning after the storms pass. Methods that were tried 50 years ago, and 100 years ago, methods that are being proven futile yet again.

With Halloween approaching, everyone is anxious about whose child will be taken next. Most are too poor to leave town and go somewhere else, and those that stay are forced to reconcile with the fact that soon, very soon, a child will vanish yet again, and never be found.

But… something different happened this year.

The raging storm still comes, this year it comes on Halloween night, people still lock themselves away, and a child still goes missing. You go missing.

But you did something no child before you has ever done.

You Returned.

All you remember is a heavy fog, pouring rain, and… a woman. A woman in white who greeted you with worry, fed you in her cabin, kept you warm and out of the storm, and guided you back the next morning. You cannot recall any specifics, other than she was beyond gorgeous, very kind, and acted maternal towards you. She seemed rather anxious about your arrival, and urged you to return home the very next morning.

But when you did see the town again, you exited out of the treeline right behind the sheriffs’ station. The sheriff was behind it, smoking a cigarette with dark bags beneath his red, strained eyes. He almost had a heart attack when he looked up and saw you. He couldn’t believe his eyes, dropping his cigarette and running to pull you into his arms.

No one had ever returned before. And yet here you were, an entire week later, unharmed, fed, and taken care of. Though you were sure it was only a single night for you, of what you could remember at least, you really had been gone an actual week.

The sheriff sobbed against you, picking you up in his arms. He was still worried that this wasn’t real, having not slept since your disappearance. As he turned to enter the sheriffs station, you looked towards the treeline.

Nothing was out there but trees, nothing ever was. Now you were the one doubting reality.

What exactly happened to you? How had it already been a week?

Your brain was looking for solutions to far too many questions all at once, but one rose above the rest, drawing your focus.

Who was that woman?

Then another came, one you immediately deemed more important than the last.

How can you find her again?

Just the thought of her put you at ease, even as the sheriff asked many of the same questions you had been asking yourself just moments ago.

You couldn’t remember her face, a specific feature she had, or a defining moment you shared together. The harder you tried to remember, the more it seemed to shroud your memory, but it wasn’t fading away, everything in your mind about this woman, felt like it was hiding somewhere, just out of view.

As the sheriff put you down on a chair, and saw your face, he instantly called the town doctor, believing you to be in shock.

But you weren’t. You were miles away, in the thick haze that was now your mind, trying desperately to find your way through the weaving maze, trying to find Her. She felt so important to you now. Many feelings filled you, all positive, when you searched for her within yourself. She felt safe. You wanted safety. She felt so familiar. You wanted Her. You needed Her. You had to find Her again.

But how?

~

Thanks for reading my prompt! It’s left loose and mysterious so that my partner and I can warp it to please both of our artistic palettes.

If you’re interested, or have any questions, please send me a message here on Reddit, but make sure you’re able to fill the requirements below, or we won’t be able to write together.

REQUIREMENTS :

• Advanced literate / Novella level writer. Meaning, you’re easily able to hit the discord character limit without struggle, are detailed and clear in your writing with proper formatting, and proofread your responses to correct errors before sending them. I don’t always expect large replies, especially for dialogue scenes, but if I am the only one putting in effort to continue the scene / story we won’t work well together.
• Have discord. Pretty self explanatory, it’s so I can make us a server to keep everything organized.
• Be over 21. I feel uncomfortable writing with someone younger than that.
• Under no circumstances, any AI writing. I understand that it may be hard to tell with some reference images whether or not it’s AI, and I won’t get onto you about that, but if you’re actively using AI to write replies to the story, please don’t contact me in the first place.
• Have patience. I work full time, but will always update you whether or not I can write that day. I will have the same level of patience for you, so please do not spam me with tons of messages, then leave the server just because I didn’t reply within a few hours to your message. I’m speaking from experience. If you do that, please don’t message me.

This plot is meant to lay the groundwork for a relationship between our two characters, of an abused child finding safety with someone else other than their abusers. It can blossom into a romantic one once your character is old enough.

I’m currently looking for a partner who’s willing to help develop this story together, and while I have my own idea of why the children are disappearing, we can always come up with a new one together. I currently have 4 different beings in mind that the Woman in the Woods could be, it just depends on the kind of character you want to write with. Nothing is set in stone, I’m open to any and all ideas so we can create something we both enjoy!

If you are interested in making this prompt into one we will both be pleased with, please message me! To prove you read everything, and fill the requirements above, please include what kind of being you think the woman in the woods is! Or, what you want her to be. Messages without that, will be ignored.

Hope to hear from you soon! :)