the litle elf & a fancy hat

The little elf was feeling weary. She had roamed the earth in search of her twin soul, kicking the dust into little spirals as she went along. Peeping beneath stones, shaking the spores off ferns, asking the water nymphs for a ride on the surface of little ponds, all in vain. She had come closer to the edge of the Great Desert of All Deserts, but its sheer size and scape exhausted her. He could never be here, she reasoned as she walked away. Her twin soul would love the element of water as much as she did. Perhaps he was waiting at the mangrove estuaries that lay to the west or the ghoulish ravines in the east, where the force of water cut through the stubbornest rock. The elf turned her back to the Great Desert of All Deserts, where only the leaves are thick and full of moisture. The light was folding into itself and the sun had resumed its journey to the Other Lands.

The elf walked in the direction of the coastal mangroves. Twilight was not far away and the elf wanted to stop for a while, but her lithe feet could not. As if by magik, a large red flower dropped into her path from an ancient climber; the elf so tired that she walked into it like a particle walks into a black hole. It was an unusual flower - scarlet blushed with fuchsia, with a vertical line of yellow that turned caerulean blue near the centre, where the anthers rise. The elf lay inside the flower for a few minutes, gazing at the mismatched hues. Fresh pollen dust brushed her face like a soporific agent and she fell asleep.

At dawn, the littlest bits of dew made their way to her eyelids, as cool as floral waters that have been distilled for hours. A hint of orange blossom, balanced by vetiver and the scent of middle earth smelt like a well-rounded perfume that the elf could almost taste, with her eyes. She fluttered her lids, opened her vision-pools and looked at the sky, as clouds beautifully diffused the not-quite-there light.

The clouds moved slowly and with great precision, despite their amorphousness. They looked solid, felt as liquid does on her eyes, felt as light as air and were yet-quite-there. If it were winter, thought the elf, this dew would be frost and i would have become an ice princess. This origin of a thought was enough to shake the elf into the obvious realm of that-which-we-see and she scrambled out of the petals of the large red flower, that had faded into a shade of brick, yielding its pigment to the mud where it had drawn nourishment from, not so long ago.

A few furlongs ahead was a sturdy plant with silky hairs on its succulent leaves. The elf stuck her tongue on the leaf tips, drinking in the first drops of dew that were descending to the top layer of fluffy, fertile soil.

The elf meandered for a bit, looking for her twin soul. What would he be like, she wondered. She knew his eyes shone like new glass-blown beads, that his heart was as pure as the once-was-carbon of a diamond, that his soul was wild and free, much like the dandelions that soared with the wind that dictated their destiny. She hoped he would wear a fancy hat, have a twinkle in his eye and tell jokes that the fairies would repeat to the nature spirits, when the moon was in the sky. Maybe he would drink mead with her, as they sat in an abandoned circle in the heart of the woodland, gazing at the orbits of fellow planets.

Somewhere, in the Great Desert of All Deserts was an elf, walking the regs and skipping over sand dunes, his eyes choked with the finest dust. He knew he had to cross the desert to find his calling, for he smelt orange blossom, sacred vetiver roots and wet earth even in his dreams. He did not wear a fancy hat. In fact, he did not possess a fancy hat. But his heart was as pure as the past of a diamond.