Faery Story



Sticky mud lives up to its name, coats my boots till my feet are near hobbled. Step into long grass just in time; it licks the mud off with soft bladed tongues. Wind my wide-eyed way up to the flank of the corn crop. Here, no human sight can spy me. This is not a people place. The nettles bite. It takes two hands to break a spider thread. The ground lurches.
Dog is drunk on scents, running jagged. Low-bellied badgers have been here, dragging paths through the crop rows, waistcoat pockets full of cobs. Fox prints ford the stream. For all its fine feathers, a pheasant has a slattern’s shriek. I daydream a house woven from the plants in the centre of the tallest deepest rows, a secret house that sways with the wayward breeze, where I sit with my legs dangling and my hair all tangles and wild sparks in my wide wide eyes. 


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