Emerald Green (Continued)

How was this possible?

Perhaps in her loneliness up here in these mountains;

she'd imagined him. She laughed at this idea.

Was she so desperate for company,

that she would imagine a man before her? And only for a few moments?

A vivid imagination, certainly she had one,

but this felt nothing like a waking dream.

She tried to recall exactly what she saw,

what she felt, and she knew that she should be paralysed by fear –

yet she felt nothing but a strange calmness,

and logic told her that because she felt no fear,

what she saw could not have been real.

Darkness fell now, completely enveloping her in it's cold blanket,

with the first icy stars glinting in the sky, as she tilted her head upward to the heaven's to behold their wonder, and tried to think of her surroundings:The cool mountain air, the trees and forest surrounding her home, the mountains in every direction she looked, the valley's far below – and the snow, how she loved the snow. All these things invigorated her, had made her feel that she was alive again. And now, she couldn't stop her mind from returning to the stranger on her land, to the beautiful and unearthly being which had appeared and disappeared as suddenly as if it had not happened at all... but something within her knew... she saw it's eyes, it was real. It MUST BE REAL. But how, if a man, did he gain entrance to her property, which was secure. What was the purpose of his visit? If given a moment or two longer, then perhaps she would have found her voice and asked...

But something tugged at her mind, something she was purposefully leaving out of her memory... she had no choice but to confront what she denied.

She had not seen him arrive, for all she knew, he'd been standing there at the edge of the clearing for minutes watching her, as she beheld the sunset... and then when she had noticed him, and his eyes shone luminous for her, as though showing a display, he did not retreat into the forest. He did not turn his back and walk away... How was it possible that he just vanished into thin air?

She tried to recall his clothing, what he was wearing, and she could not see any detail in her minds eye, only darkness that seemed to surround him, like a halo, his face was almost a shimmer, she'd thought, and then his eyes lit up, like a switch had been turned on, and those eyes seemed to hover before his face, and she'd felt a kindness in them, a raw soft emotion beginning to make itself known to her, before it was suddenly ripped away...