How mighty she was. He pushed back a lock of silvery hair from her face. Eyes closed, with a voice like autumn leaves she said, “Tell me it’s not time. I don’t want you to go.”
“Harvest is in, fish and meat hang in the smokehouse and there is plenty of wood for the stove.” It was a game they played. Snow scented air had been tickling his nose and making his back itch for a fortnight but still he remained. Pushing back the Fall ever so slightly.
Under the bedcovers she nestled like a child into his dark musky chest.
“I would stay like this forever.”
Hmm, he hummed a tune that swelled in his core. He recalled the first time he had seen her in the glade. A cape of black hair hung to her waist as she dug at the wild onions along the creek. A face gaunt from winters toll yet firm with resolve. He had been drawn in by her strength. Made whole by her grace. He came to her that first spring a young man, appealing to the eye, light in spirit and robust in all tasks. And knowing no better remained so regardless of the passage of time.
Decades passed. Pine buds, tender and vivid, signalled his decent from the mountain. He would burst forth from the edge of the forest with a song on his lips, for he knew many. It seemed that winter drew the music from people, bright hope against a frozen bite. From the darkness he would pluck verse and melodies stretching and teasing them into his own. First snows that caressed the glade swept him away.
She, tucked up in her cabin with just the dogs for company, he loping into the dark. Appearing to grow taller at every stride, a trail of rough garments leading to the foot of the mountain.
There had been children over the years. Some grown to adulthood had left the glade questing for their own homes. A few they had returned to the earth’s care in a small garden of sorrow. As delightful as their offspring were, for him there was only her. The turn of her head and beauty of her smile at his arrival and the scent of her longing at separation.
His body shuddered at the knowledge that this would be her last Autumn in the glade. A sweet loamy essence clung to her. Skin bone white and thin as papery birch.
It was time.
His voice thick as molasses, stuck time in place with the notes.
Come with me this time to the mountains.
You will race and spin like a dragon,
rend trees to pieces on a whim.
We will howl forever at the North wind
and in the springtime be reborn.
Come with me this time to the mountain.
We will never part again.
She ran awkwardly at first, sustained purely by his firm grip on her hand. Soon she led him, pulling hard for the tree line, laughter rang through the glade as snow and their garments fell.
The End.
