I am as feral as the wolf who paces lonely mountains.

I run among the tethers of the earth’s core and slip beneath the sun’s great eye. The winds know and hold my presence and spread my scent among the wilds. The river greets my touch and shares with me its running chill. In the palm of my hand I hold the new-sprung blossoms and bid welcome to the still-sleeping roots of the soil. The barren birch will seep with time and the fields will run with a sea of wildflowers – yellows to make the sun himself bristle with envy.

Oh, but the child.

She keeps my sense of self and matches my path of earth and spirit. I watch her among the poplars and the stilted willows and know that all will bloom; that bounty encircles all I have helped to make. I brim with warmth at the very sight of her, and though I name no home for myself I know that she has made me her own. I sense it in the way she twines the flowers of my harvest over her brow and sends her song seeping down the stumbling roads of spruce and willow.

Mother, she calls me, and I fill myself with the essence of the name.

But where goes the child now?

The stubborn oaks contain no sign of her, and winds now walk the crevices where she has once nestled. The sun burns on without her, and no longer do I catch the telltale glint of gold on flying hair. I search the meadows that she knows and wanders but hear no tell of her among the lilting blossoms. The river worries for me, but I find no time now to sit among its nymph-banks. Its caress only quickens my waning warmth.

I hear the child calling, singing, pleading, and I grapple to reach.

The winds throw my folly back at me. I can see how the trees have wept, but I have seldom the strength to reassure them. Their tears crumple beneath my fingers and turn to dust – sands of browns and blotted reds – and I move on with a whisper for their luck. The sun, too, tires of my escapades. He urges me to stop short my searches and refuses to grant his heat to the falling air. The river twists in protest.

Her flowers bow their heads low. Her voice is fading.

The sun sheds frost as he reels away far, too far. Though the mighty giants keep their power, strength is all they have. They offer their bare arms to the white-lit sky and groan beneath its ice. The meadows huddle in a skirt of frost and give vantage to weeds as discolored as the heavens. The river runs frozen over.

Cold. Hungry disillusionment sinks its shell into my spirit.

I will no longer rise with the sunless dawn. The mosses of the resting glade call me their own, and lichens sprout with the watery remnants of my veins. But the woodland child runs still within my line of sight, ever there but never approaching. She sings but her song is bare, and the garlands she keeps about her neck and brow are dried and blackened with wilt. Her hair swoons within the patterns of a cheerless glow, and she harvests flowers she can never have. I warn her, but my voice has stopped.

Mother.

Her breath draws closer. The yearning beat of frantic feet against impossibly cold soil.

He asks me for flowers, Mother. He tells me I can go when he has what he wants, and I am so cold, Mother, so cold…

I am coming back again. I shake with her words and sense a shadow of the cold she has felt throughout. The sun watches the vines fall away from me and sends his condolences as the mossy netting ripples and flies off. The river sends to me a rhythm of hope, and the wildflowers nudge their golden eyes through a cloak of earth. Warmth screams and spirals through new sky.

I am hurt, Mother. His flowers have their thorns, and I tried to be careful… But you can heal me, Mother. I yearned so long to be home, so very long…

Her blood stains the sun-drenched grasses as it has marked his sightless fields. Two droplets, three, but it had been all he had ever wanted. I take her into my embrace all the same, cure her hurt and distill her sorrow, and she is free again. Free to soar among the poplars and send heat back into my heart.

Free to keep the meadows and flower beneath the sun until her promise calls her again.

Until clouds swallow the earth.