It is when the sun falls and the moonlight chill rises that my chest closes and in that quiet my every breath becomes a rattle. This quiet rasping has become a lullaby to which Mother and Father listen nightly and in its rise and fall we hear a tale without need of lyric. I see the truth of it in Mother’s eyes and hear it in Father’s resigned voice. My face won’t feel warmth from the coming spring sun nor behold the bone white forest flush green once again as I had fourteen summers past.

The knowledge is as light a burden on my heart as the malady is hard; my beating centre totally and tightly enfurled by roots taken root quite some moons past. I ache to see my Mother’s face by moonlight which is fraught even in sleep. The slow death of her only daughter does not sit so light on her heart. It was maternal grief that drove her to seek cure and wore her ragged, down to bone, even while propelling her to village to town to city and then finally forest in this quest.

What she found, I do not know. I do know it was for naught. At first, she brought Healers who looked and left. Body depleted, it was only with my eyes that I followed these cold hands trace a path across my wasting form. As I became less, the visitors also became less. One kindly visitor had not the pureness of white Healer robes but a swathe of colour and patchwork. Stooped to almost to the earth and looking as old as it too, she was the first and last visitor to meet my eyes as she took stock of my condition. From my nest of damp blankets I saw the conclusion in her warm smile to me and in how she reached for Mother’s hand. They spoke outside in low tones. I did not strain to listen. Her knowing smile had been like a secret we both shared and I brought it to the front of my mind behind closed eyes. The crone left a stoppered sea-green bottle; the syrup was sweet and drew me into deep and long sleep.

In that sleep, I come to life. I dream I am a rabbit sleeping burrowed beneath a verdant forest. I am the fox running sleek and sure in the underbrush and the bird the swell of breeze. I am the formless wind and the morning sun. It is only with the growing quiet of my flesh that I began to hear the vital thrum of the forest. It is resting, biding its time. I think it waits for me. As I draw closer to wakefulness, at the end of my wild roaming dream, a girl walks to me. Framed by forest tableau, she is so far that I only see her black hair. It is grown long to the forest floor and does not move to the breath of wind. Birdcall and tree chatter fall silent as she approaches. I almost see the colour of her eyes before I wake. Each time she is closer, and each time I wake.

I sleep more and more presently. My waking hours are the cold blue of early dawn and Father’s eyes. Next to Mother, he sleeps with hands interlaced across his chest. As I watch his chest rise and fall deeply, I see the misshapen lump under his hands is Bear, the stuffed toy of my girlhood years. He breathes as easily as the tears that fall from closed eyes. My own tears well forth at the sight. They cannot know that my heart welcomes the end. I yearn to see the girl again. When I wake to each day of slow suffocation, my hands tingle and slowly subside. I am imagine the forest girl has been my bedside nurse and held them tight while I dream.

Tonight in the depths of sleep, I am the sun. My radiance pushes out out out and all around as easy as breathing. My fingers of light reach down into the soft brown and into the deep roots of the earth. As I turn to them, flowers open their face to me. The trees sway in slow dance as I breathe life into them. It is their song in my ears as I fill the sky with light that dances across pools of water and morning mist and the sun is a kaleidoscope now.

If I am the sun, she is the moon as she comes to me again, as she has before. She is suffused in silver light. My own rays wane before her brilliance. She walks to me closer and closer still.

I want to reach out, to touch her midnight hair but I am the sun and I am fading as she comes into glorious being. Fingers outstretched, she is almost upon me and I see in her eyes - the glitter of green sea. With a gasp, I wake to my bed.

I am not alone. My forest girl sits beside me and holds my hands tight and warm. She is looking into me with a knowing smile. I smile back. There is no sound, I find with relief I don’t need to breathe. All I see is green.

I take her hand and let her lead me into the forest.

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_“I don't need to breathe when you look at me, all I see is green And I think that we're in between everything I've seen In my dream…” bittersuite. _

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