Gone a Long Time

I have been gone a long time from the glade, and I know it.  I trudge forward into the winter glade with a heavy heart.  I had always hoped that Fantasy and I would be weathering the ups and downs of the writing life, but much has happened since I was last there.

I was shocked at what I found.  The glade was supposed to be a place of green all year round with off-shoots of seasons, which would shift from place to place and grow larger throughout the years as stories came and went.  But I haven't been a good steward.  Was Fantasy beneath this rubble?  I glanced around me; she was nowhere to be found. 

I brushed off a log and waited.  I figured that if I hadn't been there for almost a year to feed her stories, that she would at the very least be weak.  I waited for 10 minutes, then a half an hour.  Then I felt a fly buzzing around my head.  A fly?  That doesn't make sense.  Flies don't live in winter unless they're fruit flies.  I shooed it away, but it zoomed back just as quickly.  Then it started tickling me on the nose.

"Get away!" I waved it away.  It danced away, and then tickled my neck.  Then it landed on the paper I brought with the story.  It had a faint blue tinge.

It's blue!  I watched as it hovered over the top of the page.  Fantasy knew I had a visual impairment.  She would make herself seen, if that's who it was.  I had brought a small set of acrylics as well as some paper in case I wanted to continue sketching her.  I opened the tube of blue paint and put some on the palette.  I then changed to a new piece of paper.  She wrote her name just as it shows below; I knew it was her.  She had been reduced to a spec - I had arrived just in time.  I had a mystery from Kent for her to gnaw on until the next time.  Hopefully it would be enough.  I reached out my hand, set aside the painted pages and read the next story called "A Mystery."