for FFS#81 (sorted by Jim), which is:

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On that day, there, amidst a clearing in the dark woods, stood …

the statuesque figure of Dana, goddess to all the schoolchildren of the village. Tall, fair of skin and eyes, with hair as dark as a deep winter storm, she was a boon to the eye and the ear. To hear her sing was to listen to a choir of angels, and to watch her dance was to know all things of grace in physical form.

Ms Dana D. Milos, a fresh graduate from the city university who took her first trainee assignment in our small town and brightened the life of every man, woman and child. She gave us a moment, a special moment, that defined us.

Until that day, when she returned to the world she belonged.

The clearing in the woods was a known place, somewhere the children were warned against, where adults didn’t linger despite the best foraging spots. Magic and grace are not always safe, and the unexpected is the best that can be expected.

The people of the village called it the God’s Eye, the clearing that rose direct to the light of heaven, and called only those with a pure heart and soul. We stood outside the boundary of the clearing, and we watched as Dana stepped into the very centre, both feet within the fairy ring, arms raised to the sky, face bathed in the radiance of the sun.

Muttered voices in prayer, children crying, and the harsh keening of loss that followed the miracle are the things we remember, not the disappearance. We remember, but do not speak of it, nor of her. Little things remind us … a clear note on a still day, a child’s painting that brings luminescence to the eye, a sound of ruffled wing feathers.

For a moment in time, we were blessed by an angel, but everyone knows angels cannot linger long with mere mortals.

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