Veiled by creeping mist and with night draped around her body like a trailing gown she ghosted through the dripping forest. Restlessly she paced, haunted by memories and silence, seeking something to occupy her mind yet shying away from company all the same. It was one of those days. Cold and raw and damp, where no wind whispered through wilted grass and the bleak light made the previous days warmth seem like a lie. Spring had never actually arrived, it was just winter taking a break, playing a cruel trick on anyone longing for change. No birds sang in the trees, no elks or red deer bounded away from her path, nothing stirred in the underbrush amidst dry fern or decaying vines.

The world had come to a standstill, and Erthë rejected it. By dressing herself in the enchanted bracelet and donning all the glimmering trinkets she had acquired accidentally and through happenstance she withdrew from the rest of the herd, denied reality in favor of her own vivid daydreams, where the darkness was full of unseen things and the ever present mist welcomed her with gentle caresses wherever she went.

It was better than to stay awake, alert, aware of the fact that time was slipping away from her, bringing maturity and responsibility closer with every fading heartbeat. She wanted it, resented it, wallowed in her own indecisiveness whenever she failed to make up her mind, shied from memories of grief and loss and happy times too - they were all the same, a reminder of things she could never experience again.

So she roamed, dancing awkwardly along familiar paths until the forest disappeared behind her and the world ended in a wall of mist, where silence was swallowed by distant cries of gulls and clucking waves far, far below. No wind would move the fog bank that had settled over the cliffs and though she did not see it, Erthë knew that the sea below would lie calm, a vast gray mass of graphite interrupted only by the restless rocking back and forth, rippling but never frothing.

Another day she would have relished the eerie stillness, but today her mind was locked in a silent cry of longing for the storm, for something that could scatter the crowding emotions that roiled around inside her.

Any other day the lively, life-hungering girl would have laughed at her own anguish, relished the dramatic melancholy and savored every second of it... but for some reason she just couldn't laugh today. It wasn't very amusing, any of it, and as she stared blindly into the enchanted night Erthë found herself dwelling on dark, unusual thoughts that left her fearing for her own sanity.

Was it really just one of those days, or was something really wrong with her?

DANCING IN DARKNESS
to the sound of a drum