A/N: This short story was written for Brian Kesinger's Writing Challenge.

Wind hurried across a forgotten valley, blowing the last leaf off of a dying sycamore down to the parched earth below. Beyond the tree, fog had settled over the ground.

There were no words to describe how drastically the land had changed- the valley once held a forest, and the sycamore was once part of a community of trees that spanned for miles east and west of where the leaf had fallen.

A small hand reached down to the lone leaf, picking it up gently before it could be snatched away from the wind once more. The hand delicately held it out in front of a face, and the face smiled.

Lydia Moore grinned at the sight before her. Leaves were hard to come by these days, and she definitely wasn't going to pass up this opportunity. The leaf was still green, despite the fact that it had fallen off of the tree. It's not dead yet, She thought optimistically.

She opened her small knapsack, which hung by her side, and it didn't take any more than a second to find what she was looking for- a journal, barely larger than the leaf itself.

"This... should work," Lydia muttered to herself, and she blindly opened the journal to a page somewhere in the middle. As she held the small journal open in one hand, she placed the leaf in the center of the right page using the other. She closed the journal tight around the leaf, and then arranged it back in her knapsack, exactly how it had been before she had opened it. I was right, She thought brightly, it does fit.

Lydia kept walking by the tree, at a slower pace, as if she were sightseeing. She had known the tree was here, and she knew about the leaf that had hung so desperately to the sycamore's branch since earlier that year. However, she hadn't ever had the heart- nor the height- to pick it off of the branch in earlier months.

As another breeze traveled through her dark hair and waved her long scarf into her face, a strange sound alerted Lydia and snapped her attention away from the dying tree. A howl, almost a wail, erupted from behind the fog, not as far away as Lydia would have preferred it to be.

The Sirens.

The mere thought of being caught by the Sirens terrified Lydia beyond imagination. Just the stories that she had heard about them as a younger child gave her the worst of nightmares. Their beautiful appearance which allured and seduced weak-minded men, luring them into their clutches... not a pretty thought.

Lydia took off in the other direction without hesitation. She wasn't far from her cabin; it was less than a mile away, nestled in one of the mountains that surrounded the valley. Without the fog, which hung over her like a quilt, she could have seen it clearly from a couple of miles away.

She could make it, she knew she could. Lydia had been outrunning them for years now, all by herself with very little company. Of course, she was never truly alone, but that was completely irrelevant to the point.

Lydia ran faster than she ever had before, her feet flying over the dead ground. Her heart was beating in her eardrums, blocking out the sound of the Siren's wail behind her. Without looking back, she could tell it had already changed forms, into something that the victim- which in this case, would be Lydia herself- deemed beautiful or comforting. Once you saw it, you were gone. Your mind left you, and you became mesmerized with the sight. Either that, or the Siren saw you first and you were dead anyway.

The rhythm of hooves told her that the Sirens had changed into horses, just as they always did when they saw her. They would catch up with her at any second, she could almost feel the dirt from their powerful feet brush against her ankles...

She nearly crashed into the entrance to the path to her cabin, hitting a hard object with a thud. The path was marked by two immense boulders that lined each side of the small opening, one being the object that she had run into. Lydia dropped to her feet and crawled behind the first boulder, hoping to wait the Sirens out.

As the Sirens drew closer, little pebbles began to shake in the rhythm of the hoofbeats. They grew closer and closer, her heartbeat growing louder and louder until it blended in with the outside clamor of noise. I'm not going to make it, Lydia thought to herself. My position is too obvious.

As the first Siren passed in front of her, Lydia waited for one of them to notice, for one of them to stop its wailing and look to its left oh so slightly...

None of them ever did.

They left as soon as they came, and before Lydia could manage to recollect herself, the clamor had completely died out, leaving an eerie echo in the fog of the wail that never left her ears.

When she was sure the creatures were gone, she stood back up, brushing off her dusty pants and repositioned her scarf back to how it was before. Lydia began her ascent to her cabin, following a path defined by stones lining either side of a path riddled with pebbles and smaller rocks. As she made the trek up the path, she kept peeking over her shoulder, checking to make sure the Sirens didn't turn around and chase her up the mountain. She was pretty sure that they wouldn't.

Sirens might be terrifying, but they aren't known for their intelligence.

Allowing herself one last peek, Lydia sighed away her worries. There was nothing behind her except for fog and the quiet of the midday sun. Her heart slowed down, and she could hear herself breathing once again. Ahead of her, the path took a sharp bend, and she could see her cabin just as she went around it.

From first glance, Lydia's cabin was as uninteresting as the mountain that it rested on. The wooden logs that made up most of the top half of the house were even older than 19-year-old Lydia, since it was built before most of the trees were destroyed. Two ordinary windows were placed an equal distance from the front door, which was made out of some oak or lightly colored mahogany. From the windows down, stone and cement had been compiled to take the place of the rotted wood that had once been the base of the house. The cabin itself wasn't of enormous size- it was originally built as a hunting cabin.

Lydia climbed up the two stairs that led to the front porch, and she opened her front door. The door was a bit short for her, and the goggles that rested atop her head nearly hit the door frame. As she closed the door behind her, she turned towards her desk immediately to her left, which sat underneath the window that faced outside.

The desk was exactly as she had left it- two large sketch papers rested in the middle, with her mindless sketches decorating the front of each. Several writing utensils, all sharpened to utmost perfection, sat in a cup on the left side of the sketch papers. Her erasers- which she used more than she'd like to admit- were placed closest to the window. Several miscellaneous tools bordered the desk. There was only one thing missing.

My paintbrush!

Lydia growled in frustration, looking under the desk. Her paintbrush wasn't there, of course, and all she found were remnants of heavily-used pencils.

After a few minutes of searching her small, two-bedroom cabin, she couldn't find her paintbrush anywhere. Not even in the tiny kitchen that was on the opposite end of the house. "Great," Lydia muttered under her breath. "I'll have to go on without it, I suppose."

She grumpily shuffled back to the desk, not pleased with her current arrangement but she figured she could survive with only two. Lydia always had two paintbrushes with her- if she was forced to spend the night away from her cabin, there were several practical uses for them- but they weren't the paintbrush. The paintbrush had an impeccably designed handle, and the bristles on the other end always were neat instead of sticking out in an irregular fashion.

Beside all of the cosmetic features, there was a little bit of sentimental value to it. It was her mother's.

As Lydia sat down in her chair, she took her small knapsack off her her shoulder and placed it on the floor on her right side, so that it was propped up by the leg of her chair. She bent down, opening it and taking out her journal. Opening it to the middle, she found the leaf; it was still green, as she wanted it to be. She situated it next to her pencils, so that she could see it as she drew.

Maybe this time, I'll actually be able to finish the leaf... Lydia hoped, thinking back to a few months before, the last time she had found anything that shade of green.

She had only just started a rough sketch- barely having made a mark on the paper- when something sharp and pointed hit the back of her head.

"Ow!" Lydia jumped clear out of her seat, nearly dropping her pencil.

A harsh hissing noise, sounding distinctly like laughter, vibrating behind the chair alerted her to exactly what- or who- had poked her.

"Glycon!" Lydia lectured, her eyes narrowing as the familiar figure flew in front of her.

The creature flew in front of her, into her field of vision. It was small, only slightly longer than Lydia's forearm. Wings sprouted from its back, keeping it level with Lydia's eyes. An innocent, yet crooked smile was etched across his face, and in his hooked arms, he held her one and only favorite paintbrush.

"What is it?" Glycon asked innocently, a sheepish smile upon his lips. "I was just watching your beautiful work, and may I just say, it is looking magnificent."

Lydia attempted to remain unflattered, but she couldn't help herself as she grinned at the reptilian creature. She raised an eyebrow, as if looking him up and down with slight judgement. "You're a detestable creature, you know that, right?" She asked, a mischievous glint in her eyes. Her patience seemed to wane as she snatched the paintbrush from Glycon's clutches and placed it back where it was supposed to be.

"Ah, I may be, but you still adore me." Glycon's answer was as brusque as it was cheeky. "You can't get rid of me, anyway. I'm your first creation."

Lydia shrugged. "You can always be replaced." She motioned with her hand to a blank canvas leaning against the desk that she was using. She returned back to her work, trying to ignore Glycon's narrowed eyes.

There was another bump on the back of her head, undoubtedly from Glycon. She ignored him yet again, trying to focus on the leaf in front of her and the sketch below her.

Yet another bump upon Lydia's head drove her to the point where she had to set her pencil down so she could get her next point across.

"Glycon, I must get this drawing right. I can't recreate the leaf if you keep distracting me." Lydia frowned, her eyebrows furrowing.

"Of course. Then you will do... what with it? You can't replant a leaf. If you truly wanted to help this mess of a world, you would paint a whole tree." Glycon's sharp words rang in Lydia's ears.

"You know I can't," Lydia replied, tense in posture yet calm in her words. "It could go wrong, I could create something... else. Like that time with the flower."

Glycon rolled his eyes. "You painted a wilting flower. You created a wilted flower. What did you expect?"

Lydia shrugged and returned back to her work. "Maybe one day I can paint a better friend," she warned, adding more detail to the rough sketch. "Maybe even one that doesn't steal paintbrushes." She looked back up to the leaf she had taken from the tree, checking her work.

"You can try, but right now you're more focused on inanimate objects and small plants than talking creatures," Glycon hissed back. "If you truly want to make a difference, you have to do something different. Not just sitting here and drawing leaves." With that, he flew away, leaving a breeze and an empty room behind him.

A sigh escaped Lydia's lips, and she almost called for him to come back.

She didn't.

Her eyes shifted upwards, out of her window. The fog had begun to dissipate over the valley, and she could almost see the top of the tree that she had just visited.

The sun had begun to set. Lydia realized that she was losing the light of day, and put down her pencil. She could work by candlelight, but the work would take longer and would be much more tedious. Besides, the eye strain wouldn't be worth it.

Lydia took the journal, opening it once more to the middle, and placed the leaf once more into a random page. She closed it, and placed it next to the sketch.

She pushed her chair back, standing up and pushing it back quietly. She looked out of the window once more, and then closed the curtains to the outside world.

As Lydia rested her head on her pillow later that night, she could have sworn that she heard a wail of a Siren in the valley below.

She chose to ignore it, and fell asleep.

Final Word Count: 2,298 words (7/4/16)