But it’s not a desolate landscape – silver shimmers with possibility and is the colour of slow moonlight on dark water, the slanted light of illumination piercing through a shadowed forest. Ideas crouch, giggling – they occasionally stick a foot out into the circle of hazy grey and admire their shiny buckled shoes, their elongated silhouettes. Mostly they play a frenzied game of tag and will stop every so often to tug my clothes and whisper in my ear. They think me a great, lumbering thing – such a human! – but clap their hands like proud parents when I correctly interpret one of their hushed communications. They also hand-on-hips scold when I get it wrong and disapproval makes me slink away for a while, but their wild games call to me from beyond the stream. I always turn my head and listen.
Can you hear them too?
 |
| Girl Beside A Stream, Arthur Rackham |
