Spark

The air is crisp as you slip into the reading room, it smells of oakmoss and dew-damp leaf litter. Hazy moonlight pours in through the window giving the nook a ghostly cast. There’s a pile of blankets as usual. But this time they look as if they’ve just been abandoned, a corner trails to the floor, oak leaves tangled in its tassels. The Book sits, it’s cover the color of sage leaves in the pale light. You shake out the blanket, and settle in…

A spark.

Bright among the twisting branches. The mists recoil, and then move in to embrace it. The night inhales, pauses, tries to extinguish it with an icy breath.

The spark makes the mist glow, it bobs, spins, carries on.

The boy watches all of this with wide eyes, his bladder forgotten. He takes a tentative step, wet leaves cling to the bottom of his bare feet. A twig tugs at the hem of his pajamas. The whisper of someone stirring in the tent, Mama, probably, almost draws him back. But the spark flares, a mini explosion no bigger than a pea but all the colors are present in that one vibrant moment. The boy squints, leans forward, creeps closer.

The spark dances through a beam of silver moonlight, it crackles along the edge of a moss draped branch. It grows and giggles and whirls and shrinks again. 

The boy giggles too. Behind him the remains of the campfire give a muted pop. Before him, the spark chases a drifting whorl of mist turning it green then blue and back to silver again. He edges forward, the forest floor cold and soft against his soles. With a grin he curls his toes into the damp soil. The smell of it rises up, rich and earthy.

The forest shivers at his touch. The spark turns back, and then darts deeper among the trees chasing the cascade of leaves that are now falling. It jumps and shimmies, it glows bright and flashes his favorite colors.

A sound, the rustle of a bird wing, or the spark skipping along a stone, a sound that is remarkably like the boy’s name: Leland.

The boy, a slow dreamy smile spreading across his lips, no longer hesitates. “Coming,” he whispers, and steps into the forest.