Marie Little

Day weaves through trees, wind calls in circles like an incantation. I see you: your Hunter wellies, your waxed jacket, your flask of warm pretence. You trail your shampooed dog through centuries of forest. You never see me.

Today you have a child in tow, pink and glossy as a cake. The dog pulls as you close on me, sniffs like a truffle-pig, scrats at bark. I hold my breath. I watch as the earth tells the dog, who tells the child, who picks up the talisman, presses its feather to her face, then slips it silently into her pocket.

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This story won 1st Prize in the October 2021 Monthly Micro Competition.

About the author: Marie lives near fields and writes in the shed. She has short fiction featured or forthcoming in: The Birdseed, Catatonic Daughters, The Cabinet of Heed, Re-Side, Sledgehammer, Gastropoda, Free Flash Fiction and more.