Moonsteps on the waves.

The young woman wandered out from the cave where her family dwelt. Walking in Morning to midday to be by the sea. She longed for the sight and sound of the waves crashing against the rocks. Her blond hair, dirty an frazzled, and dirt on her face, she still looked beautiful with gentle features underneath her animal skins.
As she walked She walked to the cliffs looking out on the horizon to the far away land where the water met the sky.
She had told her father she would meet up with him later but she decided in stead to continue her walk by the sea. Walking and walking she walked for hours, the animals watched her unafraid the preadtors untempted to take her for food. as dusk came she saw figures in the haze. Ghosts and spirits, human animal, and elemental.
She spoke to them, and they spoke to her.
Conversing with the trees, the spirits of the rocks, and the oceans waves surrounded to her speaking with her as she walked until the moon rose high. Then a turtle Spirit called out to her from the palace steps of the moon.
It beckoned for her to come closer, to travel along the moonbeams to the moon palace.

"But how can I reach the Moon beams when they are so far away?" she said.
And the turtle told her to step on the shimmiering reflections of moonlight on the ocean.

"But I am so high up?" she said looking down from the cliff.

The turtle told her that she merely had to step forward and she would ride the winds lightly down, tip toeing onto the light like white dandelion seeds dancing on the wind. And this she did stepping forward and plunging into the icy waters from such a height, was knocked unconscious, the cold soon stoppping her heart and the ocean stealing away the heat of her body, life dissapating through the vastness.

And her spirit splashed through the water looking at the turtle that had tricked her and ran over the relected light towards the moon beams. But run as far as she could into the watery night she could see she would get no closer to the moon beams to walk to the moon and that her spirit would be lost in the darkness forever. She had already lost her life.

So the spirit of the girl turned back to the cliffs walking slowly terrified of what she now saw to be the tremendous power of the ocean, and reaching the rocks, souught refuge wthin the cliff itself. Sobbing, the crash of the waves on the rocks outside comforted her.

A New Beginning.

When Dawn came she decided not to return to the others though she knew they looked for her. She could not bear to see their sorrow because of her death. She was a spirit now and would have to live among them. And she did, learning the ways of the other rocks and wave sprits and plants that grew out of the side of the cliff. She took in the spirit of the sun and soon found her way up the cliff and among the tree spirits who had conversed with her when she was alive.

"What happened to your body?"
And she explained. They wept for her that her life had been tricked away, and inivted her into their circle, and let her into a seed to grow into a sappling and a tree herself. She lived as the other tree spirits among the forest.