Don’t you dare lose that magic in your heart young sprite. Don’t ever stop running barefoot in the fields, climbing trees, reading old fairy stories, don’t lost that childhood whimsy and innocence, and ease of belief! Don’t let yourself be so clouded in the mechanics and machinery that is every day life that you lose that wild spirit and wonderful wicked mischievousness. Don’t lose your spontaneity and sense of adventure. One day when your old and your body fails you, it will be the sparkle in your eye, and the grin on your face, knowing you didn’t live just a life, you lived the most wild and extravagant one of all.

The world is quiet in the early dawn, the moss green colour of a worn pack contrasts with the snow, white like birch. The path turns, obscuring a tavern, made of time weathered spruce logs, the windows reflect the wispy pink clouds - of a cold winter day. The traveller leaves, seeking new things in the old world, next night is a new tavern, and if none is to be found they shall spend the night beneath the stars. The keeper of a home for weary strangers stands by the gate, and watches as the traveller sets off into obscurity - nameless, yet cared for, if for just a night

Oh to be a gremlin child again. Covered in grass stains and grazes, hair unbrushed with daisies in the knots, no concept of my own physicality, half way up a tree and eating an apple around my missing tooth. To be unabashedly ugly, to be unashamedly hungry, to be healthy and hearty and lean and covered in bruises and full of love and sun warmed strawberries. To feel time stretch forever, only flying when I fall into books. To love summer once more, and her insects and sweat.

Oh to travel by horseback with saddlebags full of supplies hidden under my cloak, not having a destination other than the direction I set off in, breathing in the clean air free of the town I left