The Face in the Pond

A young girl walked through a forest as the sun began to consider its descent for the day. Its light slipped through the limbs of the trees, catching in places where the wild had been left to grow as it pleased.

She moved steadily through the foliage, brushing past clusters of blue iris and low-spilling creeping jenny that curled along the earth like it had nowhere else to be. The narrow leaves noticed her and whispered against her skin as a branch here and there grazed the thin fabric of her white nightgown. The damp ground still held the day’s warmth beneath her bare feet, even as the evening air began to cool.

Finally, she came upon the clearing. The one she had been searching for.