The perfect place

I took her hand as we came to the perfect place.
We’d always just walked past or come to keep watch while others rolled there. This time she led me over the style and into the beautiful field. I held her face in my gaze so that I’d never forget it. Her face was tattooed with freckles, her lips anxious. Occasionally I could glimpse her ivory-white teeth, biting at her lips or finger.
She held my hand firmly but she led the way, she showed me where we were going, and as we waded like refugees amongst the long grasses I was burning inside.
That afternoon was filled with exclamations. I told her I loved her for the first and the twenty-first time. She left strange marks on my body that I did well to conceal.
We were hidden there, that day in the meadow, rolling and grasping, and crushing all the insects around us.
I like to imagine we’d stayed there, quite hidden, forever.

The summer meadow

And in a minute, the mists came down on the summer meadow and frightened the bees away.
Condensing across the countryside, the thick blight rolled in with the grace of a ghost, hanging upon trees, lush in their rich summer hues. Everything in the meadow drank greedily then of the hovering water.
Luke was in the field, sitting there, crying amongst the long grass. Three strange children stood over him. They’d come as soon as the mist – they seemed to effervesce into life – and there they were standing over my cousin.
The whole family were searching for Luke. He hadn’t come in for his supper, but I knew he’d be right where I left him, still crying. And so he was but, as I stood at the meadow's edges and watched him, in rolled the mist and then the children.
These children were grave things and almost green in complexion, it appeared. They seemed to rise from the meadow itself, as blades of grass or willow stalks, and when they were upon him he stopped crying and I couldn’t see him anymore.
I shouted then, at these children and vaulted the gate, tearing through the field towards Luke. The three children merely glanced at me before dissolving back into the ground, draining away like meltwater.
When I came to the spot where Luke had been I could find no trace of his body. There was just a hollow, where the reeds and grasses were broken, where Luke had sat alone for an hour and cried.
Ice shards pricked my spine as I stood in that cursed meadow, and I ran in terror back to the humid garden and to my family. I stood still, on the full lawn, readying my mind with words; preparing the explanation that would tear all our worlds apart.