[Fairleaf]

The weather had made a marked change since yesterday. Warmth and light had graced the Inn for a day of celebration, and now the darker elements crowded in, eager to restore the balance in some way. ‘No shadow without light somewhere,’ her mother had taught her. To which her granny would sometimes mutter, as if in invocation

Leaf and petal
Stem and root
From the killing darkness
That sweeps from the East

Warm Winds of the West, preserve us!

She’d kept both thoughts in her heart, knowing that the assurance of hope in her mother’s words was all the more precious in the light of her granny’s experiences.

Fairleaf shook the shadowy thoughts from her with a twitch and tremble of her limbs in the chilly wind. It was only a rainstorm that was boiling up in the dark clouds that moved nearer the town where the Inn stood. The trees would welcome the drink as would the gardens. Still, those new plantings she had seen near the house at the edge of the grounds would be beat down by the fat drops of rain that were sure to fall. Their roots had not yet time to anchor firmly in the loose soil. They would be washed out.

Amid the cover of the trees that here and there lined the edges of the Inn property, Fairleaf moved as quickly as she might toward the little garden. Most of the inhabitants of the Inn had already sought shelter within. If any saw her it would only be some brief shadow just beyond the thick leafed beeches. She chuckled at the thought as she strode along, wondering if a glimpse of her would conjure stories of some old boggart and keep prying eyes well away from her and her intended business.