Each time he turned around, she was gone.

It was as if he were surrounded by her at all times, sometimes welcome, sometimes not. A faithful friend, running and playing with him throughout his long walks past the trees, he never felt alone. With childlike glee she would tug at his jacket, batting the ends this way and that.

His patience was great and as long as she didn’t cover his face with it, he rather enjoyed having his hair tousled and twirled by her. He felt embarrassed by this admittance and with self conscious indulgence parted his hair, smoothed it back, and gently patted and felt it to be sure it was in its regular and rightful place. There were times when she had not always been so friendly.

Last winter he had been carefully walking alongside the riverbank when she had suddenly come out of nowhere, and shoved him, hard, from behind.

If it weren’t for the overturned tree, the river would have seized him in its clutches and carried him off. Reasoning that she most likely assumed it to be just another game and hadn’t realized the very real and pressing danger that she had placed him in, he struggled to push the frightening memory to the back of his mind.

As he rounded the last bend before the cottage, a twinge of sadness quickly shot through his body. He did not know when his next opportunity for them to play together would come, and this deepened the grief.

Trudging up the steps, he glanced at the silver disk perched high above in the sky, its clean ripples of pure light washing over the spiny treetops and cascading down their boughs to the mossy forest floor below. As he pulled open the door and stepped inside he piqued his ears to the sound of her whistling to him from the trees, assuring him that all was how it should be.

Pleased, he sighed, smiled, and shut the door behind him.