Hurry Little White

“Ready or not, here I come.”

I turn to face the grove, the sudden change of light blinding my eyes before it settles on the cacophony of green. This is quite possibly the thousandth time I’ve done this by now. The aforementioned 999^th time was last spring, same date same time and same place. Every year, I come back here and I look. Of course a year goes by a lot quicker than you might think it goes, for me, it’s nothing but a petal. Think of that petal, now watch it fall, slowly of course, but eventually it’ll land somewhere as the wind of time picks it up. It’ll land on a pond, maybe a river, but eventually the water will drown it, it will sink it until it mends with stone at the bottom of the river. It goes from flight to a submersion. That’s a year to me, it could be the petal or the river now that I think of it. It could be the wind.

I swivel my head once more, trying to spot that familiar mess of white hair that the entire Enclair family own. Courtesy of me of course. Though they’ll never know this.

A twig snaps just to the left of me, angling my body in that direction, the sound fades away as fast as it came. I take tentative steps in that direction, the breathe on my lips haggard with the anticipation of a chase. Pulling the hem of my pants high of the ground, I make sure the silk doesn't brush on anything to alert the little girl that I was just by her heel.

I carefully wind through the spindly trees that tower their gangly selves across the sky, the sun is bound to set soon, and I’d rather have found her before night takes up the grooves and she can no longer tell the difference between whats real and whats shadow.

“You’ve gotten good little one.” I call into the green.

A giggle sounds back to my right, I quickly change direction and make quick advance.This time I don’t hold back, usually I take casual leaps that humans have to take twice as many to catch up to. But the lights of the sky are staring ot show, and I forgot my coat back in the temple.

I let go of that restraint, feeling the familiarity of my true form connect with my limbs once more as my feet resemble nothing more than a blur in the corner of someones eyes. I’ve gotten a little slower, nothing to do with the mortal concept of ageing, more so like a fire running out.I push the thought away, to let go, I run.

“Not againnn.” the little girl whines from under her hiding spot. She was curled in the nook of a fallen tree, the leaves overgrown to create a small little cave filled with earth’s kiss.

“You ought to find a better spot next time.” I say as I lean over and pick her up in my arms, her bottom lip stuck out.

“But you always find me anyways,” she tilts her head up “and it’s not like I’d ever out-run you.”

“You’re very correct.” I step over the fallen tree, smelling the scent of warm soup just above the horizon.”But did you forget what I told you last time?”

“Remind me?” she says.

“Ah,” I chuckle, “so you did forget.”

“I said remind me, meaning I remembered but just to be clear that we’re thinking of the same things.”

“Mhm” I spot the tilt of shingles just between the shrubs “well, the best hiders are often not the ones that are the fastest or even the smallest. Most of the time they’re the smartest who take advantage of what other people might call their weakness.”

“But I can’t help that I make noise.” She crosses her little arms, “The forest is so loud and every-time I think I’ve done it, you stand over me again.”

“Now now,” my feet hit the cobblestone pathway, and the little girl spots the firelight coming from within the quaint cottage windows "you can’t be blaming the forest for your mistakes. Wasn’t it the very leaves that shielded you from me in the first place?”

“They didn’t do a very good job at it.” She huffs, before leaping away from my hands to trudge with her feet dragging along the stone.

Little one was always like this of course, spring after spring, she’d ask the same question. It was fileld with rapidly blinking eyes and a sweetness in her tone. No matter what I was visiting for, the birth of a new daughter, a broken tile, a refill of honey supply. “Let’s play a game” she’d say.

 Because of this her mother, who’ve I’ve played this game with too, would scold her in her motherly way which made the little girl all the more persistent and albiet, secretive in her begging. The exact same way her mother asked around the age when all they did was ask questions.

I’d never tell little one this of course, her mother would deny it and claim she was an obedient child her entire life, then look my in the eye with a glare stopping me from saying anymore. Because, in truth, she was just the same. I would know after all, I was there when she was born. And her mother, and her mother and her- you get the point.

It’s been a long time. 

Every one of the ladies from this bloodline would ask me to play, and as the days turned into generations, I decided to play their game. It was different, nothing new, but a change didn't have to be big for me to want it.

I built this house from the ground up, away from the city and well hidden by the trees I watched grow. It’s less distraction this way, a chase between me, them and the arena that morphs into something new every season. What better playing ground can one have?

“Hurry,” her mother calls from the kitchen “set up the table for him as well.” Him, last time I was 'it', before that they never referred to me at all. Before that they were frightened.

“What plate do you want” she says to me, her voice muffled as her head stuck between the cabinet doors.

“The blue one with birds” I reply, finding my spot on one of the wooden chairs.

“You always take that one,” she places it in front of me “choose a different one or else your food will taste the same.”

“Your logic beseeches me you know that?” she quickly ducks underneath my reach.

“Quiet down Althea” her mother chastises as she places a blazing pot of soup in the middle of the table. We eat the food quietly, as quiet one gets trying to sip hot liquid from a spoon bigger than her mouth. 

It reminded me of three generations ago, about a hundred years or so, another small Enclair with a wash of white hair on her head. Sapling, I called her. She was the best hider so far, her quiet little feet would barely rustle the leaves and sometimes I’d even ask the moss sticking to the bark about where she was hiding. Key word: sometimes. As an ever-living spirit you have to give me some credit.

But even then it would take me until the moon was at it’s fullest to find her. She’d be in a grove, underneath a small waterfall, over some twig. It would always make sense to me later once I spotted that wash of hair, and that was the whole point of my promise in the first place. With my blessing and their curse, it was that no matter where they roam on this planet, I will always know where to find them when they need me.

With an existence as lengthy as mine, human lives become inconsequential. Not forgettable but predictable in their need for unpredictability. Most of the humans that make history find some way to do that, relish in the what was oh-so missing from humanity and be the saviour to bring those ideas into light. Sometimes their light is bright enough to burn.

It was the only way to keep me sane really, and I’ve seen them all go mad. One by one, they’d run away, it would be too much for them or they would do something even the dark can’t hide. The forest is as old as time, it sees all.

But I’d always find them. Eventually. 

I picked up my bowl and extended my hand towards Althea, she eyes me from atop her bowl and slurps it in a hurry before passing it to me. Her mother already finished prior and is setting kindle by the fire. I walk towards the sink, something I’ve done numerous times the light can blind me and I’d still find my way back here. Sad isn’t it? To be familiar with a sink.

“Tell me how to hide from you.” Her little voice questions.

I stop my scrubbing, the water still runs past my fingers but it’s almsot as if I stopped breathing altogether.

“Why do you ask?” I say, after a pause.

“So I’d win dummy.” She says all knowingly.

“Dummy?“ I turn to face her, and she senses something that makes her back straighten as she lowers her eyes to the floor. I grab the cloth to wipe the bowls down.

“And why would you think I’d give you the secret?” I ask after a while, leaning on the counter opposite to her. I did nothing less than tower.

“Why would it be a secret?” Her defiant tongue, the fire, “or is it you just don’t like to lose.”

I laugh at this, fully and wholly with something I forgot I could even feel.

“But wouldn’t that mean you’d have an unfair advantage?” I push further, delighting in the way her brows furrowed “And as I’ve said before, it’s the sweetest pleasure to win something all in your own power. It makes you stand up and say : this is all because of me, ha.”

“But you always have an unfair advantage”,she whines.

“No I don’t.” I settle the bowls in their respective shelves.

“Yes you do,” she squints her eyes out the window above the sink, as if peering into her backyard trying ot find something that’ll pop up and save her from this conversation. “You move as if you are them”,she whispers.

“Them?”My back still faces her,“Who’s them?”

“The trees.”

“Tress don’t move.”

“The stuff between the trees” her voice rises.

“You mean air” I say matter of factly.

“Air can’t move to be seen.” Her mother walks up behind Althea, picking her up until the stubborn child rests in her grasp, giving me a pointed look with a challenge just like her daughter.

“See thats where you’re wrong.” I take a step towards them “Air is seen by the things it moves, it’s violence is ever-changing, because it’s something that humans dont realise it’s there until it makes a move.”

“Isn’t that all it is then?” she starts walking away, I stare at Althea’s eyes just above her shoulder. 

“You’d be angry too if you were air. Imagine poets praising the light, earth and sea like gods themselves, and there you are, all left forgotten if only to be talked about when the others are mentioned.” Leni stops to look at me, Althea turns in her hold too, “Never your own stanza or verse. You exist only in the company of other material things. When things like fire only exist because air is there, yet they praise it as if it’s on it’s own.”

“Then you’re nothing like Air.” Althea says nothing to this.

“Maybe.” I call back.

As I hear them settle under cotton blanket,I am reminded of why I seemed to have this warmth for them in the first place. All of them eventually, once they’ve grown and once they’ve had the moss under their feet imprinted onto their skin. I would never care much for any other, and they never questioned for my endless company. 

They would run with a wildness I’d have given them, they’d argue and question and speak their minds like a constant hum around the house. And then they would hide, they’d shriek once my shadow casted over them but they’d still hide the very next day. They’d hide as soon as the last snowflake dies under the sun, as birds start their songs and as the city beyond lift their blinds.

And I would find them, always then always now. Always.

“Tomorrow,” I leaned over Althea and Leni, my love “you will win once you start finding me instead.”

“Better watch your back.” Althea drawls underneath her covers.

I don’t tell her I’ll never get the chance to.

I kissed their temples, and walked out of the cottage, closing the door behind me as I muttered the holding spell to keep the Gods from ever finding this bloodline. Then I went home, to others, I was nothing more than a breathe there, and gone.

There it was.

Then,I felt it more than saw it. Formless as I am, I followed that sense through the dark as I always did, further and further away from Althea when I felt a searing pain. It was everywhere this pain, nothing like a physical stomach ache or a bruise, it was like there was a before and after, Pain and not.

The city was growing faster than I thought, it’s borders extending as more humans find peace and more of them are made. They wanted space, always wanted more than they needed. I had hoped the game would distract me, but as most things do when you try to forget about them, they end up coming even faster.

As the smoke rose and covered the rising sun, I felt it as my presence was slowly drifting away with it. The forest was dying. I’m dying.

Well, as close to dying as an immortal non-conforming entity can get, by every lick of flame and every shard of metal cutting me down the cottage seemed further and further away from me.

It seemed humans found another place to hide.

It lasts for hours the fire, which eventually simmers down to which the humans take matters into their own hands. They cut and cut until days pass and I find it harder and harder to keep myself tangled in any form. 

With all I’m left I run one last time.

With all I'm left,I pass by the cottage one last time.

I watch little one rise from her bed to rub the sleep out of her eyes.

“I guess I’m supposed to find you now.” I hear her whisper into the dark, hands covered her eyes like a prayer.