We took a ride in my hot air balloon, swooping elegantly over great lakes and forests of pine, searching for the elusive glimpse of adventure. We found it in a small cave, hidden from sight beneath the crest of a rocky outcrop. We saw it from a height, and knew that there lay our prize.

No sooner had we alighted in the nearest clearing, you took to fright, and fled into the trees whooping and gibbering insanely. I pursued you, naturally, with shouts and imploring but you would not listen. Soon the light began to dwindle, not only because the sun was down but because the trees were thicker here, in the middle of the woods, and every step I took cracked eerily beneath the otherwise silent canopy of grey branches.

A scrap of cloth caught my eye. Red, like your neck-scarf, yes... the one you wore to keep your face free of the chafing winds as we sailed through the clouds, cold, despite the brilliant sun. Down here it was warmer though, stiflingly so. I fancied you had removed the scarf in favour of freer breathing, and trailing it behind you as you ran, had snagged it on the branch.

Peering into the gloom I caught no glimpse or sign of the direction you may have taken from there, but I knew I'd at least been going the right way so far. Trudging on, too tired now to run, I followed what I hoped were tracks you had left. As the hours drew on, I found no sign of you, and the light finally gave itself to complete darkness. It was with a growing horror that I realised I had left all equipment with the balloon, in my haste to catch you, and was thus deprived of a blanket to sleep in and fire making equipment. Blindly, I fumbled my way to a tree and leaned my back to it. It was with mixed feelings of distress and loneliness that I slipped into an uneasy sleep.

Upon waking I found that everything was still dark, and try as I might I could not fall back into slumber, so I resolved that enough was enough. If you were going to be a fool, then I would suffer your idiocy no more. Feeling the tree I had leaned against, I deduced the direction from which I had come by the clammy moss on the side I had not slept on, and thus I half crawled, half stumbled my way along until, gradually, light began to return. Looking up I realised it was not the setting sun that had caused darkness but the increasing density of the intertwined branches overhead. I could almost see the divide between darkness and light, and I fancied I heard something for the first time. A titter coupled with a child sobbing.

Shivering in disgust, I walked briskly away from the darkest part of the wood and soon I was walking in the relative brightness of the outskirts of the forest. Indeed it was only a short while before I passed the same scrap of red scarf that had served as a clue earlier.

Emerging from the forest, dusty and dry into the blinding sunlight would have been painful, had my heart not ached so much for a breath of moving air and the feel of water on my lips. Preparing for flight, I considered exploring the cave we had spied from above, but I longed for the feel of the clouds and the view of the impossibly blue lakes, so I flew away, leaving only a patch of earth torn up to fill three bags of sand. The weight of a mad child.