Puzzlewood Olivia Brookfield

Puzzlewood

Shadows were rising, so I melted into the wood, and became no more than a wind through leaves, between the scowles and leaning trees.

I left the seething world behind, treading on cushions of moss to find Hart's Tongue ferns unfurling near twisted roots of Yew, labyrinthine and mystical.

The clamour had gone, transcended by the music of water cascading from stone to stone, the drop of an acorn on soft loam, and the forest breathing.

Tree light streamed in. Fingers of sun caught the sheen of a bird's wing, and everything was limned in gold. Fairy motes twirled in the air, as if a new world had begun.

Olivia Brookfield

53