Camena Pratensis

An eerie cloud of mist sat on the pond like a frozen frame of rain while a thick cloud of fog rested on the dark green, overgrown grass like a magic carpet. The trees’ leaves contrasted the dark brown and grey of their trunks and branches. The brush grew close together like huddling children lost in a wood. Everything seemed quiet. Even the humming of lone humming birds and the occasional croaks of solitary frogs seemed a part of the silence, if silence were a sound. And everything but the humming birds that flew about with ghostly grace was still. Not a leaf moved, not a blade of grass weighed down any lower. It seemed more like a painting than a reality. In the center of this haunting wood was a glade of short, light green grass touched by the sun like nothing else. And in the center of this glade as a solitary lamp post, vines growing so thickly up its post that the blackness of the iron was nearly impossible to see. It was unlit, obviously, for no one had been there for years – or so it appeared. Yet, she was here, by an odd chance. What had brought her here again? She could not remember as she approached the lamp post with enchanted caution. A wind blew her hair violently to the side, yet not a blade of grass nor did leaf as much as shudder. What was this place?

Now the silence was broken, almost unnoticeable, by a voice. The voice of the wind, singing. The words were lovely and sweet, but she would not remember them for the life of her, however much she longed to. Step by step she drew closer to the lamp when a stream of color appeared and collided beside it, forming a real person – if she were a person. The woman donned in a spring green dress with yellow, much like an impressionistic painting of bleeding color. It was she who was singing, but her mouth did not move.

“Welcome,” she looked into the eyes of the approaching child, again, her mouth did not move, but her eyes spoke to the child’s soul.