The Spriggan's Child

The weather grows warmer. I can smell the glow on the air, and the ice beside me is becoming slicker. Soon it will fall back to its watery form, and the world will be one of musical trickles, gentle streams and meditation.

It was enough, once.

But at the moment the world is formed of potential, of power frozen in a single second in time stretched to months.

She giggles as she snaps off an icy stalactite from the rocks, holding it gently in her gloved hand. She sits on the ground, tries to write into the frozen dirt with it, but it snaps. Not deterred, she takes another, larger ice formation from the rocks. She will keep going, determined in her task.

I sit on my ice throne, and simply watch her. We may have been there for hours, or maybe even days, with my watching her and her trying to draw into the frozen dirt. It does not matter, time...like the water...is frozen for us. As is our contentment.

This moment.

“What's wrong?” She says, standing before me, barely tall enough to see over the edge of my ledge. She is all eyes, eyes and a red scarf and a hat with ears on it that make her look like a cat. “Why are you crying? Are you sad?”

I shake my head, and smile. Because tears do not always mean sadness.

She holds out her closed hand, and I cup mine beneath it. The ice is cool as it falls into my palm, a perfect circle, a droplet.

“I found that. It's for you.”

I smile my thanks, and watch as she continues to play.

The world is formed of potential, and soon it will flow, and time will move forward and they will find it. That place where the bank has broken, and the ice reformed. The tiny form trapped in the river, red scarf and and a hat with ears like a cat. They will take her frozen body back to the human world, and put her in the ground. And never again will I hear laughter.

I will miss it. Having someone to look after. Having someone to protect and care for, to teach about the world around us, to sing to sleep and greet upon awakening. Until she arrived I never realised, in my world of water and light, how lonely I was.

For now, time is frozen, and I appreciate ever second stretched to a month, watching my little spirit child as she finally cuts into the dirt, and writes her name.