“The flowers were dry and cold, they needed sunlight and water. In the darkness she looked over a field of flowers all crying out to her ‘help us’ she ran from flower to flower and tried to sooth their pain and worries, suddenly she heard a scream…” Rhiannon awoke sitting up straight in her bed, she was sweating and realised that the scream had been her own. Kevin was next to her and had been awoken by her screaming, he held her in his arms and rocked her like a baby. She realised with a shock that she loved him. Never before had she felt so safe and secure with someone and he seemed to feel exactly what she needed. His lips found hers and with a burning heat he kissed all her sorrow away. That night Kevin taught her how to make love, and she took it in like she would do with water after having been in the dessert. His love quenched her thirst and fed her hunger. Only leaving her wanting more and when they finally went back to sleep, she had only dreams of pink clouds.
When she woke up the next morning he still had his arms firmly around her and was deep asleep. Sunlight was coming trough the window and playing a shadow game on his beautiful face. She wormed out of his embrace and decided to take a walk in the first rays of morning sun. She got dressed quietly and left the house.
Rhiannon was walking though the forest and was simply enjoying the trees. “This world wasn’t so bad” she thought, “This is quite pretty, really pretty actually.” When she was walking along she let her hands slide over the stems of the trees she passed. Every now and than she stopped to pick up some leaves and held them close to her nose, she wanted to take this beautiful thing in as much as possible. She was walking down a path that was surrounded by trees, the sun was playing with the leaves and they formed a green roof above her head that left darker green shadows on the ground before her. She let her mind wonder to what happened the night before; she had never experienced or felt anything like that before. Well sure she had met other men, but with Kevin this seemed so perfectly different, so whole. She was walking on pink clouds, and it took her a moment to get back to earth and see that she had arrived at a clearing in the forest.
In the middle of this clearing she saw a very high tree. It was a beautiful tree and Rhiannon walked over to touch it. It felt warm and seemed to vibrate in the morning sun. The tree was so big that she couldn’t even put her arms around it. She stood there happily hugging the tree for a while. When she heard a noise coming from above. She looked up: “RAM, BAM, CLATTER, RAM, ROOTSH…..BAFF” The noise had come from something falling out of the tree on top of her head, knocking her to the ground. She shook her head and realised that whatever fell on top of her was alive. She looked at it and asked: “Are you ok?”
“I will be if you just shut up for a minute!” was the grumpy reply. Rhiannon studied the animal. It looked like a Koala bear, only it had the tale and snout of a pig, the colourful wings of a butterfly and its body was furry with black and white stripes like a zebra. Altogether it formed an adoring picture, if it would have been made into a stuffed animal she was sure that kids all over the world would love it for its high cuddling factor.
“What are you looking at?” the animal spat out the words at her, as if she was the weird item in this conversation. “Oh, I’m so sorry,” Rhiannon apologised “I didn’t mean to insult you, but I have never seen….” Rhiannon thought for a moment to find the right words here “…a being like you. May I ask of what race you are?”
“What I am, What I am? I am Trey and I am a quafter” And as if that said it all, it turned its head and stood up; shaking its whole body the way dogs do when they come out of the shower. “Don’t you know anything, you silly little girl” it continued in the same patronising tone of voice. Rhiannon was looking at the pompous quafter and had difficulties holding back her laughter “I’m sorry but I am new around here and I don’t really know what a quafter is.” Trey looked down at here, for she was still on the ground, and zoomed in on her head “hmm, yes it’s true I haven’t seen your face before. Ok, listen carefully because I hate repeating myself. You’ve heard of a shape shifter? An animal that can change his shapes at will? I can change into four different shapes, you see quatro and shape shifter makes a quafter.”
Rhiannon took in the information for a minute, and than asked: “But why are you four animals at once?”
The quafter suddenly shy, stared at the ground blushingly and with one of its paws it was twisting a whole in the grass “I erm, I kind of erm, like experimenting and erm, it kind of went just an teensy bit wrong last time, so I’m stuck until I find a way to get unstuck.” The quafter was still looking at its paws and the whole in the grass had gotten deeper with each word he had said.
“Oh well, I really like this combination.” Rhiannon said wholeheartedly. The quafter looked up at her face and saw that she was sincere, a big grin appeared on it’s pigs snout “I like you” it said “I don’t care where you come from, but I like you.” He sat himself down next to Rhiannon “But just out of curiosity, who are you? Where do you come from?”
“My name is Rhiannon and when I was little I lived in the house at the edge of the forest together with my grandmother, I have only just discovered that I am an elf, well partly anyways. My friend Kevin took me here to meet the king, my grandfather.”
Trey’s mouth dropped open, “Do you mean to tell me that you are The Rhiannon? The granddaughter of Rórdán the king?”
“I guess I am, my grandmother told me this, but I’m just Rhiannon”
Trey stood up and bowed so deep that his pony ears touched the ground, “I am so sorry for my rudeness your majesty, I hope you will forgive me?”
Rhiannon could do nothing but laugh “As I said, I am just Rhiannon. Tell you what, from now on I will call you Trey, if you will call me Rhiannon?”
Trey closed one eye while he was thinking about it, then his whole snout turned into a big grin “Deal!” he said and they shaked paw and hand on it.
I hope this is the way I am supposed to do this. if not please let me know
