Lakeland

A blur of blue and white, the two children in their very best clothes ran down to the shoreline.
There, they picked out stones and pebbles, the flattest ones all the better for skimming the furthest.
The two siblings, Rose and Chester battled furiously. Each strained to flick their arms quicker, harder, stronger than the other.
Chester caught a good one. Two, three, four, five, six. His broken piece of slate hopped the small waves breaking on the lakeside and whizzed on like a rotor blade toward the horizon.
Rose managed just a couple of small leaps before her stone sploshed into the clear shallows at the side of Derwent Water.
Chester was buoyed by his skimming success. “Maybe I can hit one of the boats out in the middle?” he cried, jumping with excitement.
Rose turned and walked to the grass bank at the edge of the small pebbled beach. She plonked herself down and looked up at the afternoon sky, scudded with cirrus, scraping the day clean.
“How long will mummy be?” she asked Chester, with the hint of a whine. “I’m bored already.”
Her older brother let out a brisk ‘tsk’ noise. “She said to play out for an hour or so,” he replied. “Come and throw some more stones.”
Chester was trusting of his mother, and happy to play out at the lakeside and in the nearby woods until the sun began to make its first dip beyond the Cumbrian hills. But Rose was not an child spirited by the idea of adventures into the hills, climbing the tall trees or swimming in the lake, come summer. She sought the comfort of her favourite chair, her books and her bedroom.
“I’m going to the meadow to pick flowers,” Rose said with a sniff, turned her back on her brother and began to march in the direction of the wild unkempt grasses growing to the side of Lakeland Estate.
She knelt and the long plants bowed under her weight, protecting her knees from the wet ground. It had rained earlier and the spring leaves were dappled-down with sunlit dew. Rose watched one of these leaves for five minutes, until she witnessed one of the water droplets successfully detaching itself and falling into the thick undergrowth below.
Nature fascinated her. She loved to collect frogspawn and watch the tadpoles grow. She would stare from her bedroom window with wide-eyed fascination as lightning flashed across the lake during a summer storm, while poor old Chester quivered beneath his covers.
She liked to look at it, but she hadn’t learned to love it yet. She grew quickly tired of being outside, she was cold and bored now. It was time to head home.

...to be continued...

The Real World

A cloud of steam enveloped the bridge. Susie couldn't see and the warm rush around her made her spin and look up to spy where the sky had gone.
She didn't know whether to keep holding onto the railing before her and hope the strange smoke passed or perhaps run to the edge of the steam and hopefully out into the world again.
Below her, in the real world, on the ground, passed by another train moving in the opposite direction. She heard a whistle and the clouds thickened around her. She screamed but she couldn't hear herself over the peeping whistle. She wondered if it was her own mouth producing that shrill note. So she let go of the rail and ran, back the way she had come, back to the things she knew.
In all things now her beliefs were shattered. In terror, her senses had failed her. She stepped were no platform rested and her foot tumbled into airy space. Her body followed after it.
Tripping and skidding, and even thudding, down the blue stairs of the railway bridge Susie landed, a grazed and bleeding mess, at the foot of the flight. Her eyes filled with water but she did not fully cry for she knew nobody was around to hear her. She tried to push herself up with her wrist, but it did not seem to work any more. Her feet were still above her, on the second step of the bridge. She moved to bring them down to the ground but a crunch caused her nerves to burn and a darkness to cover her eyes.
She awoke to dusk. The sun had crept below the treeline of the wood that the railway ran through. Her legs now rested on the dirt path that ran between the bridge and the farmland beyond Sort's Wood. She decided not to make the mistake of movement again and instead lay quietly and listened to the increasing hum of the summer night insects. A centipede crossed from the grass on the right side of the path to the left, passing inches from her nose. She neither screamed nor tried to move away from the unusual creature. The insect seemed to regard the fallen girl for a moment and then passed on to whatever hollow awaited him. As he reached the edge of the path though, he changed direction and followed its border towards the trees and on out of sight.
Susie then heard the sound of a nightjar nearby. She could hear this creature from her home but he was impossible to see, said her father, unless you were prepared to wait and watch for a very long time. A tawny owl spread its wings wide and smoothed its flight 10 feet along the route of the path. Two young squirrels fought noisily on the railway line before scampering around her and on up the path.
The little girl shifted her weight and found that her left arm and leg no longer throbbed. The arm even seemed to move a little. She propped herself up and placed her weight on her left side. The left leg held, though gingerly. She sat back on the railway step.
Then, a fox. Auburn light seemed to irradiate from it's body. It paid Susie little mind, though its ears were pricked. It turned, as if to cross the bridge, and saw the girl now calm and staring in wonder at the wild creature before her.
The two waited and watched each other, unmoving and in thrall, for that length of time a mind finds hard to quantify. A nightjar flew between the two figures and broke the gaze. The fox turned around and slowly padded off along the path through the woods. Susie gamely rose and limped on behind, into the veil of trees. Always, in the distance, she kept some sight of the auburn fox, until she shambled clear into a moonlit meadow. Then the fox was lost among long grasses.
Susie saw torchlight and heard people calling her name. Now she began to cry.

Winter quakes

I went walking through a field of my own choosing and stumbled into a muddy mire.
In the hole with me I found resting three children of a green complexion. They rose from the slop like the phantoms of my youth who terrorised me as a bairn, while I lay sleeping. They spoke in turn. One was named Petandral, his sister was Leanlo, and the third, though faceless, still somehow spoke to me and called itself Gerrent.
Electrified with fear, I scrambled to leave the hole but my hands were like forks when spoons were required. The green ones touched my collar and shoulder and bade me settle. A panic reduces with touch, but the coldness of their form caused ice to burn the skin through my coat.
"It is winter, and we quake," spoke Petandral. "We are sorry," offered his sister. "When the earth is hard and frosted we have little life to give. In the summer we will soar, burning orange across the sky, dropping nectar and rich berries for you. But for now we just survive; breathe in sullen ditches and fallow meadows. Offer us your blood and we will take it."
The voice of Gerrent filtered through my head. "Leanlo looks at your beating heart with relish." Petandral answered my confusion with bold words: "Wait out the winter with us. Awake unto spring and strong new life. The waters will not freeze for long."
I reached out to his chest to push him away. His body, when brushed, crumbled slightly. A howl of death cold seared my hand. New found wildness entered me and I dived at the ditch-wall. A root, uncovered, gave me mooring from which to climb.
As I was raised from the deep rut, chill blades clawed my back but another force, some power, helped me continue to travel upward. As distant vision became possible above the trench edge a freezing fog billowed down from the foothills. A mass murder of crows sat atop each furrowed brow of the field and on every branch of every skeletal tree surrounding.
I ran back toward the River Hoole and, as I staggered on, the great crowd of black wings ascended into a devilish cloud. I turned from their mocking caws and dived over the small stone marker wall and on up the hill into the thick veil of fog.
I wandered for many hours through the gloom. Many times I heard the voice of Leanlo calling to me through the fog, begging me to return to her, but I was never again touched by her grim hand.
The lights of the village eventually cut the sodden air with sanctuary. Now I lie, beneath extra blankets, scared of sleep.
O come spring. Come summer, soon.