Rain had a way of rearranging the forest. After rainfall, roots usually surface where there had been none and puddles would take up familiar grounds, the air thick and the earth soft and rich.
I had gone into the forest in search of snails and mushrooms. After the heavy rainfall we had during the day, I knew the forest would be damp and cold, so I was likely to gather more than enough before night really settled in.
Dressed in hiking boots, I took a different path from the familiar one all the children in the village took. Most of them were out already with torches and baskets, shaking leaves and watching the ground closely for snails and mushrooms. I carried my basket low, brushing aside ferns heavy with droplets, their tips trembling at my touch. I was lucky enough to find snails clung to bark and stones, their shells gleaming in the young moonlight. The mushrooms were easier to miss, they hid beneath fallen branches, peeking through moss. Shy things, I sighed. But I knew where to look. Or at least, I thought I did.
It was fun as I kept finding more of these nature’s treasures so I delved deeper than I intended to go.
The moment I realized it, I paused and sucked my teeth, cursing under my breath. The trees around me were so tall and old, their trunks darkened. The moonlight filtered through the canopy in fractured beams, green and dim, and it felt like the forest had swallowed the sky whole. Even the sounds changed. I no longer heard the exchange between the children scurrying for snails, it was now the chorus of insects and distant birds but there was something else too which I couldn’t really make out so I held my breath and listened carefully.
That was when I noticed the water. I’d call it a stream but not quite, it was more of a shallow clearing where rain had gathered. But it was glasslike, it rippled and reflected the trembling leaves above. I never knew the forest had something enchanting like that or maybe, I’d just never treaded this far.
So I stepped closer, still holding my breath. I could swear I saw something in the water but I brushed it off by saying it was just the water shifting.
Then, she moved. I mean she emerged from the water and chills ran through my body like some electric shock.
Her hair fell in long, damp strands, dark as the forest. It clung to her skin threaded with droplets that caught the light like scattered stars in tangled silk. Her skin carried the sheen of the water and something more elusive, it was like dew resting on petals at dawn. It glowed faintly and my jaw dropped in astonishment.
Then she turned, our eyes met and my legs couldn’t hold me up. Her eyes were the most unsettling part. A deep luminous green, they seemed like objects used to gather the moonlight. Her lips looked soft as they parted slightly, perhaps she was on the edge of speaking. They were like petals brushed by the rain. Too delicate. And her nose? Fine. Seemed sculpted by a more ethereal figure. It was perfectly placed. Then I saw her ears, as she tucked strands of her hair behind them. Pointy and I mouthed the word “elf”. She winked at me with her abundance of perfectly groomed lashes and disappeared into the darkness.
She felt borrowed, not entirely real. Who would I tell of such beauty I had encountered. No one would believe me. I grabbed my basket, and pushed myself up from the ground. I would write about it instead, I said, and here we are:)
img2 generated by gemini.
