Ralph and the Pixie

Despite the assurances of the Healers, Deborah did not feel cured of the poison in her system, but rather changed, in some fundamental way that somehow eluded her perception. As the wagon carrying her companions and herself plunged into the darkness of the forest trail, she found that she could see small shapes flitting from tree to tree like shadows. She would have assumed that her eyes were playing tricks on her, had not the dim shapes had voices. Their words, like their appearance, seemed to hover on the edge of her awareness, but no clear words or appearance could she make out; they seemed little more substantial than the air itself.

Yet something in Deborah found itself responding, something indistinguishable from the poison laying quiescent in her veins, or some nameless, irremediable longing, which goaded an habitual bitterness within her, a hatred of the pain she bore, always, and an angry, impatient desire for surcease.

She saw that the others were as blind to her private darkness as to that which surrounded them, and this realization made her feel isolated, hurt, and angry. But these were feelings that had pervaded her life since childhood, and she turned aside from them, looking instead into the surrounding darkness, as though groping blindly for answers.

As the wagon neared the end of the trail through the deep wood, the shadows and voices vanished as though they had never been, and Deborah felt suddenly as though she had just been roused from some dark dream, only to find herself in a wakeful state of unreality. Before them lay a wide lake, bathed in an eldritch light. Lily pads glowed green on its surface, phosphorescent sparkles glittered and shone in its depths, and the surrounding forest caught this aura as though bathed in moon glow.