(www.jamesjean.com)
It was a lonely life, but it was hers.
She loved her forest dearly, of course; it's not that she had ever dreamed of leaving.
Even in the dead of night, when the darkness seemed to breathe, heavy air pulsing, pressing like a stranger against the nape of her neck, even when every sound was scared silent by the pressure and the fog, even then she would just wrap the smokey tendrils tighter around her naked body, pulling the cloud across her dripping candle like a funeral shroud, smiling into the misty caress until the sun's fury burned the vapors away.
It's true that she wasn't overly fond of the sun, either. Although she understood that forests need light to grow, she resented the way his relentless rays washed all the mystery from the shadows of the trees, scouring away uncertainties, revealing details but removing questions.
No, it was the twilight she loved the best, that in-between-time when the moon waltzed up the sky, gracefully forcing the heavy, reluctant sun below the hills.
During this dance of light and shadow, night and day, she would roam her forest haven, wandering, searching for someone-- anyone.
She'd tried forming her own companions from the woods around her. She'd made a pair of slender hounds, carefully stitched and sculpted from wilting petals and dying leaves, stuffed with loam and the souls of the moths circling her head. They ran beside her as the sun sank, faithful and silent as shadows, but still she searched in ever widening rings that grew with the hearts of her trees, searched for someone to share in the fleeting beauty of a spiderweb at dawn, its gossamer strands beaded with perfect drops of glittering dew, someone to share in her tiny circle of candlelight and read the patterns in the wheeling stars.
Still, she knew that if her spiraling exploration ever reached the edge of her sylvan domain, she'd never set foot beyond the treeline.
It was a lonely life, but it was hers.
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This needs some major editing.
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