Her nose is pink, her blonde hair frizzy and wild in the cold morning air, and her green eyes stare into the path before her.

Each step reveals more cool stone, perhaps the rock rises from the earth to guide her journey, or maybe it is the wind and the mist that draws her to her destination.

She is thankful either way.

The journey to her grandmothers’ village is long and tiring, but it is peaceful too. The mist is friendly to be, protective, like a mother’s love. She has grown up in this cold fog. She has danced in the muddy dirt and swam in its springs.

The world offers her small wonders, hidden treasures veiled in fog, magic tucked away waiting to be found.

She takes a step, and another.

The mist hides much of the land around her, and if she looks to deep into it her eyes begin to water.

But sometimes the peaks of hills and tall trees can be spotted. She knows they watch her, perhaps curious to what stories she has of her travels as she is of their old tales guarding these valleys and meadows.

She walks and walks, feels the crisp wind kiss her face and her feet ache. She sometimes must readjust the basket she hails on her back, and as she does so she admires the light refracting through the misty blanket around her.

And so she walks on and on, past old stones and rivers. Trees both young and old. Birds fly above and bugs crawl through mud and sodden grass.

And while Aoife walks she comes upon a tree, and it is a very interesting tree. It looks very old, with large gashes against its oak bark, but lush with leaves and small critters clambering about. Almost as interesting as all is the old man sitting beneath it, with an old wooly robe and a cane that seemed a hazard for too many splinters than was comfortable.

So Aoife sees the man and she stops.

“Hello stranger” she says, “are you well?”.

The stranger looks up at her with a warm smile.

“Quite my fair lass, I was simply admiring the memories carved into this old oak”, he pauses and reaches a wrinkled hand to feel the imperfections of the wood, “and those that have not yet been woven into it”.

Aoife hums, “I suppose here we are adding our chapters to its tale”.

The man does not look at her, but he smiles again and rubs the runs his fingers across the tufts of grass surrounding him.

“Would you share with me one of your own stories stranger?” Aoife asked after a moment.

“I am not sure I have many stories of my own young lass, I am a collector, I hold the lives of many”

“So they may live on” Aoife tilts her head, curious.

But the man shakes his head.

“I am an old man, I will not outlive these stories, but I will carry them with me, I will be buried with them, and they will then be held by the earth”

“That’s very interesting stranger” Aoife says after a moment, “I’m glad to have seen you”.

The man tilts his head to the side, almost as if considering something.

But then he smiles, he leans his head back and closes his eyes and says “and I you lass”.

Aoife takes a few steps back to the path, feels her feet sink slightly into the wet dirt, hears the squelch of it.

She reached the stone path, she can barely see the man but she makes a decision and calls out, “I’m off to see my grandmother, she’s a healer, I visit her at the end of all my journeys”.

There is no response, just wind and water.

“Goodbye stranger” she tells, and walks along the slippery stone path into the mist.