"Samhain Dreaming" by Lucy Fletcher

The dusk was quiet, calm and deceptively warm for the end of October, with only a faint errant breeze chilling those that were about. As the final golden rays of the sun left the sky and the vivid pinks and purples bled from the clouds that scuttled by, the breeze became more confident. As if it could almost sense it was no longer being watched by some gigantic guardian of people, it was now free to taunt and tarry where it would and where it wanted and would do both as it pleased for it obeyed nought but its own rules and own pleasure.

The small gathering paid the zephyr no heed, not even to draw their cloaks around themselves as they stood silently around a simple boulder, weary expectation surrounding them in the very air, the soil, even the rocks and trees that paid nearly timeless homage to the world and their element. Eventually the zephyr grew bored at the people who would not humour it and with one final saddened moan it travelled on, to find someone or something easier to annoy.

As if it had been the signal they had been waiting for the figures knelt upon the ground, heads bowed in respect for some unseen and unheard reason. Then they once again stood, drawing back the hoods of their cloaks so that each could be seen clearly.

The first thing noticeable was that they were all of pointed ear and of unearthly looks, the mark of the fey. They were tall and willowy, radiating an aura of sureness and nobility beyond what even the mightiest of kings could muster. Their features achingly perfect yet somehow feral, dangerous and above all, overwhelmingly compelling. Their long hair braided in many impossibly thin strands but shimmering silvery like moonlight upon a still lake, or flickering goldenly like a wild fire, some even had hair that seemed to be as dark as night, yet studded with the very stars that could be seen above.

Not a word was spoken but each seemed to know instinctively what the others were feeling and thinking. Maybe it was in the way each glanced casually around at the others with vivid blue, green, purple or more unusual coloured eyes. Or perhaps it was the languid and subtle way they shifted position in their endless wait.

Hours passed and still not one spoke or moved as a mortal would sense it. Some waited with arms at their sides, some with their arms crossed, not a few waited with a hand on the hilt of a wondrously ornate sword. The atmosphere growing more expectant and hopeful as time rolled over them, or perhaps flowed around them, like a river parts for a stone.

Then a sound is heard, a crack of a twig near to the forest clearing and the elven ones snap their heads around to where the noise was heard, the atmosphere broken in an instance. Then they begin to fade away, not disappearing or becoming transparent, but gradually as if they were never there at all.

From the direction of the snapping twig can now be heard the sounds of laughing and unnecessarily harsh and offensive voices.

"You know I've heard the stone used to be used for sacrifices. They would get a knife an-" The voice cut off by another.

"No way…. My granddad said that his granddad told him that it used to be where the elves would dance and sing, like a huge party or something…"

Then the first voice returned full of scorn and disbelief. "Yeah right…" A derivative snort, followed by accompanying giggles from some others eager to stay safely in their average perceptions and thoughts.

By the time the costumed forms of the unbelieving teenage trick or treaters enter the forest clearing, the fey have gone. The saddened and lonely cries of the brief autumn zephyr the only one to mourn what once was, and could have been, but a passing samhain dreaming.