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So it was upon them at last, the spookiest night of the year, the night around which so many legends circulated. She had loved that night since she was a small child. She liked dressing up, and walking from door to door, friendly people smiling at her, with eyes twinkling with delight. Time had passed too quickly, she was older now, she could no longer do the things she had done as a chlid.
Yet she still liked to walk the streets on that night, being careful to have at her a bag of sweets that she would present to the children she met disguised as ghosts, or elves, or hobbits. She smiled to herself, imaginining how delighted these children would be, and how they would run to their mothers to tell them of the kind young lady that had given them candy because she had liked their costume. She even fancied she could hear such a child, talking quickly somewhere near her:
"And, Mum, do you know what she said? She said I was the prettiest Elf-maiden she had ever seen!"
She shook her head. In but a few years they would forget her, and would laugh at the way they use to wander the streets disguised as fairy-tale characters. Or else, they would become like her. Constantly dreaming, longing for a past that was so distant that the people around her had ceised believing in it.
When she was a child, she would tell anyone she met while trick-or-treating that she was an elf princess and that her name was Darlariel. And now, each Halloween night she walked the streets again as Darlariel. She thought-and she sometimes felt ashamed to admit this- that on one such night she would encounter a sign from the world in which she still whole-heartedly believed. Maybe she would run into a real Hobbit, or a real elf or ...or even...But what was the use of expresing such desire? Her mind told her clearly that it would not come true. And yet, her heart made her walk the streets at night, ever waiting for something to happen.
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