Hazel Flynn: Cailleach an Fiáin

[Boots]

Come away, O human child!

To the waters and the wild

With a faery, hand in hand.

For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.

- William Butler Yeats, The Wanderings of Oisin and Other Poems.

[Boots]

Hazel Flynn awoke to a cacophany of birdsong and fluttering wings. She opened her eyes and stared silently upward at the canopy of gnarled, reaching branches and the swirling mist- parting to show brilliant colours, but of strange origins. She inhaled deeply, closing her eyes again as she stretched in her bed of moss and leaves- tangling her fingers in her wild red hair and smiling.

The heavy afternoon air felt crisp and fresh in her lungs and she wanted desperately to stay a few more hours, but she knew it would soon be nightfall. Reluctantly, she pushed herself up to sit, gathering the basket of herbs and flowers she had slept beside before she stood and felt a gentle wind whispering through her skirts and her long, red hair.

These dark and eerie woodlands were home to her, their strange and ever-changing beauty had enchanted her since she was but a child. But to everyone else, they- and Hazel alike were something to fear.

She quietly made her way back through the thick forest, her bare feet splashing through small streams and feeling the soft blanket of mud and moss beneath them as she walked- and just as she reached the tree-line, she stopped and gazed at the small hut with it's thatched roof. A spiral of smoke came from the chimney, and she could hear a woman's singing within it.

Hazel smiled, and hastened herself- stepping inside the little hut to be welcomed into the arms of an older woman, with hair like hers. Maggie Flynn inhaled the scent of the earth in her daughter's wild hair and smiled, taking the basket from her and carrying it over to a table that was stacked high with similar bits and bobs.

Though they lived far from the others in their village, and it did at times feel lonely, they loved their little home, and eachother.