Through an ancient wood forgotten by time a sparkling blue stream twisted and rolled. Polished stones of many colours sprinkled her shores of soft brown mud. She shimmered as the breeze raced over her. She babbled on long, far, and away, gossipping with the wind and the trees. Spring life bloomed in the cool sweet water and buzzed above in the flowering trees. Around swelling dark stones, water-ripples curled and caught sunshine forming fine trails like corn-silk locks of a young girl’s hair.
Towering tough oaks erupted into wrinkly green buds that collected morning dews and forest mists and glistened as though dressed in pearls. Their flaky bark softened contentedly in the orange rays of the rising sun. They stretched their mighty branches upwards and wide in the sky, creaking and yawning, sighing in ease and fatigue as they shook themselves gently from their winter sleep. Woodland creatures scurried about, their breaths and heartbeats bubbling in unheard rhythms. Silver minnows wearing rainbows on their bellies darted in and out as if sewing the edges of the stream into a seam made with webs of sunlight. They made, now and again, lucky snatches of algae and less lucky larvae caught in the current. All in all, it was a happy Spring season in a forest beyond time.
Quite by chance one of these happy-go-lucky minnows nibbled what appeared to be a lump of clay, but what was in fact a pudgy brown finger taking a chill dip in the stream. The nibble tickled and startled the baby to whom it belonged. He had been snoozing on the bank, but now the sun came streaming into his groggy eyes, and he cried. He cried and cried and then settled a moment and then cried again, and the forest stood and the magic loomed and the wind caressed him like a silk sheet, and he calmed and he cried, calmed and cried.
He howled and he howled and he howled like a wolf with one leg in a trap. He squealed and he kicked and he threw bits of mud into the air. He was not happy. He was cold and scared. The stream shivered with goose-bumps as he screamed and the reluctant wind carried his howls deep into the forest where wide-eyed chipmunks shook their heads from side to side with shifty eyes, looking, both curious and bothered, but not knowing what it was that was making such a terrible disturbance. The oak trees did their best to cover their ears and look the other way from that awful noise coming from the banks of the stream.
One particularly tremulous and long-winded cry shook the small green cabin made entirely of twigs and leaves that perched at the top of the reddest oak tree in the forest. The tree’s trunk was massive, and his roots buried themselves profoundly in the rich black earth below. His four enormous branches reached toward the four edges of the world. The cabin was about half a child’s span in length and three digits high; it was the cozy little home of Miranda, the fairy. Now, Miranda was a beautiful fairy, forever young, who was really as ancient as the forest itself. She breathed her first breath when the sun’s first pink loving rays kissed the first sparkling drop of dew on the first green tender shoot of the first proud oak sapling that sprouted on the first morning that ever dawned on the forest beyond time.
When Miranda heard that howling screech, she burst out of her acorn-cap bed, flew straight up, and knocked her head bouncing right off the ceiling! She changed colours from white lilies to red roses, purple violets to blue morning glories. She was all upset and all confused. She rubbed the bump on her head and then zoomed out the door. She knew that something was wrong somewhere in the forest.