"Look outside, Mama." The little child pulled back from the window to stare earnestly at where her mother sat on the woven rocking chair, the spinning wheel clacking merrily away, in rhythm to the crackling glow of the fire. "What is it, darling?" she murmured without looking up.
"The Elves."
The woman paused her work to stand up and join her daughter at the window. Outside, the lowering clouds swirled, a long silver curtain that wrapped loose tendrils everywhere, and yet to the child's eyes, it seemed ethereal and beautiful, though the woman saw nothing but damp chill. "What of the Elves?" she asked, stroking the wild chestnut curls of her daughter.
"Don't you know the old saying, Mama? The Elves are dancing in the mist."
The housewife stopped her caresses, her brow furrowed. "Who told you that nonsense?"
"Grandmama." said the girl, with the sweet obliviousness of the very young. "She told me that."
The mother shook her head in despair. "You should not listen to such foolishness. It would be wise not to fill your head with that."
"Oh, but I believe it, Mama. It isn't nonsense." said the child, her round eyes solemn. "I know that once upon a time, Elves did dance in the mist. Once, long before we came."
The woman sighed, resting her elbows on the sill. A faint sprinkling of rain whispered past her face, to be drowned in the fog. "No, child. No."
"How do you know?" the girl demanded. "You weren't there!"
The good wife sighed long-sufferingly, but her daughter's words relit a long-buried spark of curiosity when she too had dreamed of other peoples, a race fairer and wiser. "Maybe." she began hesitantly. "But the Elves-if there ever were any-left long, long ago."
The girl's eyes lit up with a wild delight. "When was that, Mama?!"
"Sometime long ago." said the mother, searching through her mind. "Maybe in the Third Age...I don't know."
The child's face fell. "So there are no more hereabouts? Where did they go?"
"Away in the mist; over great waters." said the woman with a sigh, quoting an old proverb that she hardly knew.
"In the mist... Maybe some got lost. Do you think so, Mama? Maybe some got lost, and they still dance here."
The woman gave a little laugh. "Maybe, little heart. Maybe so."
The mist whispered, a thick curtain paling where the moonbeams filtered through, a deep grey close to the dew-drenched ground. The grass was dark and laden with raindrops. The air was damp, with a blanketed chill.
And so it went where the wind pulled. But sometimes it shifted, undulating slowly when the air was still.
AN~The Elves are dancing in the mist is an old Scandinavian proverb, referring to the ethereal beauty of Elven Kind.