Dancing With The Wind

• Charli Sephton, Grade 8
• Short Story
• 2021

I took a step.
The wind sang as it danced with my hair. It was a bold and prideful dancer. It made sure to waltz with every tuff, every string of brown.
I took another step.
The trees encapsulated me in a leafy haven, a giant hug I could linger in forever. Leaves tickled each other and their trunks, spurting with giggles every time their branches collided with another.
I took another step.
Dewdrops tickled the end of my shoes begging me to delve into its lake of dew and damp grass. ‘You could swim in it forever!’ It said. I probably could.
I laid down.
The grass was soft and moist as if I was touching the cheeks of crying clouds. Dew dampened the outline of my body. Bugs jumped in and out of the grass like the birds that mazed through the waving trees above. I laughed. I was swimming. But not in a lake. In an ocean. An ocean that I could hide in forever and watch the trees and play with the wind and birds race each other in the river of the silky breeze. Because this is where I hide from the world. Safely cocooned in a forest, tucked away from the slithering darkness that would stamp on all emerging butterflies.
I sat.
I sat, leaning on a tree as I watched the sun drown in the rolling hills of the forest. Of my forest. Slowly I got up and ran home, took off my shoes and crawled into bed.
I dreamt.
I dreamt of tomorrow and the dancing wind.