Willow felt alone, apart but always and forever part of something bigger, older, much wiser than herself.Strange thing for a twelve year old girl she knew, the very idea of otherliness but it had always lived within her and gave her the reassuring sense that she was special.Standing outside of everything freed her gaze, even of herself and allowed her to see her existence as recurrent, emergent.There had always been a haltering stillness within her drawing her mind to her source, the tree.Willow was small for her age with chestnut brown hair catching up red glints of sunlight with eyes the colour of the tree whose name she bore.She was lean and agile although in almost everything she did she was nothing less than ponderous, sometimes even still. Her teachers often teased her that where she occasionally seemed alive it must have been through the inspiration visited on her in her lost world of daydreams.
It came to Willow that this stillness had its source in her spirit self which had existed within the tree for deep rooted ages.Movement was, had been always around her without the need for pursuit; stillness counterbalanced by the passing, swirling air shifting over the surface of everything and bringing everything within her grasp, scented, tasted even felt through the very pores of the bark and tongue-like leaves.Such ethereal wonderings fell to the back of her mind when play came to call and the stillness seen in school and quiet moments vanished like morning dew.“Will” loved to play above everything else in a world of adventure and self discovery.Four doors up from Will’s large suburban home lived a family full of mystery, energy and heroism; The Park family.This was a family of many children:of olive-skinned, brown-eyed, raven-haired beauties alive with a heady mix of Mediterranean charm and Irish vim.Where they’d emerged from Will couldn’t fathom, couldn’t unpick from half-whispered adult dissection, cared less only that they stay and soak everything in their wicked, gorgeous energy.
