A bed of grass, a soft green pillow... the resting place.

In a warm, sunny place, deep in the forest, there is a meadow. A place where no person has ever been or will ever be, secluded and impossible to find. Where the sky is clear and flowers bloom, in season and out of season for there are no seasons here. Wildflowers of every kind, dandelions, forget me nots, button weed, clovers, and primroses, untouched by man or the harsh realities of life, and shielded, always shielded by tall, strong trees.

The weather never varies, never a chance of rain or cold, a kind of constant balance between summer heat and spring growth. Where the days are always bright, but the ground is always moist and everything is round with new life.

Always on the cusp of moving forward but never quite able to tip the scales enough for things to achieve momentum. But then never wanting to because things are perfect and beautiful the way they are. The way they were.

Peace flows through the air and ruffles the grass, turning the clearing into a big green ocean with splashes of colour everywhere you look. The trees move in the same rhythm as the grass and they all get caught up in a wild dance with no defined movement but it's all beautiful, just the same.

Here it is restful and quiet, but never is it silent.

Always and forever is there the sound of mockingjays, twittering out a mournful tune, it's as sweet as it is sad and always it's the same. The same soft lullaby, singing the world to sleep. Just one tune, one song, because it's all they know.

Never changing is this place, though the years wear away and time takes its toll on all other things, this meadow is left alone, an island in the rivers of time, solid and unmoveable. Sacred to those who know of its existence and something no one would dare to harm, not anymore.

In this meadow, under a willow sit two little girls, in pretty blue dresses. Two small opposites, one is as dark as the other is light and both are as unchanging as this secret place.

These two children are as different as two children get, one lives for trees and the sound of bird song while the other lives for flowers and lost lullabies. One lived only to fight (however forced it might have been) the other only to heal. But both were the same, the same innocence, the same sweetness, the same vision of a better world, a growing world that could never be.

Despite having shared the meadow for many years passed and many years yet, these children never had a chance to meet though they played together always, unencumbered, in this endless place.

They ran and laughed as children do, they made flower chains and hung them from the trees and from each other. They talked quietly in the shade, sharing giggles and secrets. Smiles that would never be forgotten lit their happy faces and their eyes were as bright as the sun shining above them.

In that eternal meadow they did things they never had a chance to do. Though they never got to grow old or have children of their own, they got to live.

Here, in this place, they are protected, secure, untouchable, like they should have been before.

In this meadow, under a willow, in the forest they never saw, in this fantasy, in this mind, in this land that almost was, both of them, the song that was never sung and the rose that never bloomed, they never died, they lived.