Annabelle in the Woods #1: Annabelle and the Forest Ghosts have a Dance Party

I finished a series of paintings recently. They are all about the adventures of Annabelle in the woods. 

Annabelle wakes up one day and is drawn to the woods. When she woke up, it hadn’t been her attention to go to the woods. She fully planned a day of browsing the library. But on her way to the library, she thought she saw the flicker of something magical in the tree tops at the forest edge. She followed the magical flicker until she was deep into the woods. She wasn’t afraid though, because immediately she began to experience things of great magic and importance................

The forest has been growing for thousands of years. In those thousands of years, thousands of humans had found themselves in these woods. The woods, while magical, can be dangerous. Not all survived the great woods. And while they may have died before their time, the ghosts had also obtained a certain level of immortality in the form of forest spirits. So instead of being mournful over their loss, the ghosts were cheerful over their gain of immortality. They celebrated their great fortune through dance.

Annabelle first noticed the ghosts from afar. She saw a moving, glittering, flickering mass in a clearing in the woods. “How peculiar!” She though as she edged closer to the spot. As she got closer, she saw that the glittering mass she saw were dancing ghosts!

Annabelle had seen a ghost before. When she was a child, her step mother housed a malevolent spirit in the kitchen cupboard. She avoided the kitchen because she could feel the evil radiating from the foul ghoul. But when Annabelle came across the ghosts in the forest clearing, she felt only joy and lightness. As she moved closer, she felt the rhythm seize her. She wasn’t walking toward the ghost, she was strutting, then as she got closer, she was shaking, then closer and shimmying, then, she was in the middle of the ghosts and she was consumed with the desire to dance! Her movements were full of twirls, twists, tilts and leaps. It was the best dance party she had ever been too!