Oneshots and Crazy Little Stories

Moonlight

(I wrote this while in a tree at 8 pm on a frosty night XD)

You wandered through the night like a phantom, a woollen blanket drawn tight around your shoulders. Frosted grass crunched under your boots, the tiny ice crystals breaking into hundreds of droplets ready to refreeze after you had moved on. You looked up at the clear, inky sky, wishing every night could be like this. Just you, the stars and the three quarter moon. Even though you had a cold and your mother had told you to stay in the warmth of the house, you had come out anyway, the peace of early night tempting you like a candle flame irresistibly attracts a moth to its death. 
    You walked past apple trees that had long since lost their ripe fruit, their branches now bare except for the lichen clinging to the bark. You ran your hand over the trunk of a copper beach as you strolled past it, heading to the clump trees that called to you. As you ducked under a branch you slipped, not falling but leaving you off balance. It was lucky you had slipped and stopped when you did, for there was a step partially hidden in moonlight shadows before you. 
    You stepped down onto mud and wet leaves, the squelch that came along with it making you wonder if it would seep through the hole in your shoe. You wouldn't go back, though, it was too nice a night. 
    You made your way along a path, dry, wind scoured leaves brushing your head like the fingers of a long dead creature. The moonlight even reached in here, through the canopy of skeletal branches the few evergreen firs. 
    The stream you halted by gurgled and whispered like a siren, your shadow, so sharp, cast itself upon the silvered water like some beast of the darkness out to dominate the world. Even though it was eerie, with the crackling of branches, the small sounds of mice and the shadows playing with your eyesight, it was still beautiful. 
    You turned and looked up through a gap in the canopy, seeing the constellation of Orion shone down on you from so very far away. Many light years from now the light from those at this very moment would reach Earth, catching the inquisitive eye of some other night wanderer. 
    You blew on your hands and slowly walked back the way you had come. You really wished you hadn't forgotten your gloves now. But even numb fingers couldn't take away the peace and quiet, the fantastic magicalness of the night. 
    This was the best medicine for a cold, no doctor could prescribe it, no apothecary could concoct it. Only the natural turn of the planet could be the cure.