Once upon a fiery red sky, I happened across a peculiar character, in much the same a situation. Being amidst my own thoughts, I drew curious reasoning as to why she sat looking so glum. Those sad eyes I saw sent a flutter through me, of gold they stood, shining with tears that crumbled to diamond dust at her soles.

For a moment I saw only those eyes, glistening with such wretched beauty, then slowly her sobs wafted to my ear. As music, they were and they rose in such melodic strides that the fireflies found delight in dancing to them. I paused from my wonder for a brief moment to take a seat where I stood. I sucked in the air around me, which began to taste of sweet twilight. Drinking her in I came to the conclusion that she could be no more than four or five years of age. She had hair of sunlight and the face of an angel, yet she was garbed in the tattered cloth of the lowliest peasant that looked as if it had not known cleanliness in all of it's existence. She rocked back and forth with rhythmical essence, looking straight forth without seeing. Night grew near while I became acquainted with every eerie move she made. A kind of fascination grew over me, did she know not that I was there? Her honeyed cry filled me with the most upsetting sort of emotion, A girl such as she could only be called Glorious Sorrow.

I know not what compelled me, now one might say curiousity to the most of extremes, yet compassion may have gotten the best of me. I complied to the urge to ask what had been the matter. Why, I spoke, are you crying young one? From which I received only a blink of the eye. Night fell atop us swiftly and suddenly when my heart nearly broke through my skin! Her friends, the Fireflies moved faster- faster-faster as they spun around her frame. She stood,her body extended into the mold of the trunk of a tree, dense yet rich as velvet against the texture of the night. The shimmering dust of her tears drifted upward in one magnificent sweep, fading into the limbs of the tree, which sparkled still with a power outshining even the stars. The ground shuttered-the horizon fell away until resting a few feet from her base, brilliant roots shot through the earth, sending huge clumps of clay into oblivion. The eyes of the child still perched looking out, the golden hue of her gaze had washed into the pure silver light of the moon.

The wind had swanned! The earth had collapsed! Oh to run, shall I run? My feet had chosen otherwise. Suddenly, a laughter resonated through the air, I felt a rumble in the ground-a root, a serpent, burst through the earth and twisted a firm grasp around my ankle. A woman's voice thus laid itself in my ear, “Westward bound? Along such path as this? The Mighty are torn, the Wise are scolded! Just look at the footprints you leave!” I glanced down at the dust that once was scattered amuck by the wind, it had altered into a monstorous atroscity. Puddles of smoke, red as blood, sludge in thick,oozing black, lay where my feet had trod. Her only response was another sinister giggle as she set me down in the filth-A quiver raced over the surface of my skin- her eyes of starlight squinted as she whispered in the night, “Never fear the Wicked Willow.”