I watched her, like I’d always watched her.
Thoughts were slippery and transient, faint scents on a frigid wind, too far away to catch.
She sat just outside the wood near the swing, curled small, until the cold shook her, and still she didn’t move. For a long time, I didn’t know what she was doing.
I watched her. Part of me wanted to go to her, though instinct sang against it. The desire sparked a thought which sparked a memory of golden woods, days floating around me and falling around me, days lying still and crumpled on the ground.
But I realized then what she was doing, folded there, trembling with the vicious cold. She was waiting, waiting for the cold to shake her into another form. Maybe that unfamiliar scent I caught from her was hope.
She waited to change, and I waited to change, and we both wanted what we couldn’t have.
Finally, night crept across the yard, lengthening the shadows, pulling them out of the woods until they covered the whole world.
I watched her.
The door opened. I shrank farther into the dark. A man came out, pulled the girl from the ground. The light from the house glistened off the frozen tracks on her face.
I watched her. Thoughts, distant, fled with her absence. After she disappeared into the house, there was only this: longing.
