Evening had taken much too long to arrive and now that it had once again, he had made the usual mad dash out of Spinner's End and into the open field that was his playground; a recently discovered one, anyway. Its main allure was the absence of his fighting parents and snobby neighbours that he'd had the ill fortune to know. But of course, his neighbours had made it very clear that they didn't like him any better.
As he sat on the soft grass, his back against the ancient tree he so often hung around, he heard a pattering of footsteps. Normally he would have moved off, but it sounded like children approaching this time. People his age!
He ducked down behind the ancient tree before the approaching children could see him and heard the sound of their backsides plop down onto the moist grass nearby. One of them let out a squeal of disgust at the mud. Poking his head around the tree a bit, he caught sight of two slight girls. They looked about nine or ten.
The girl on the left had eyes that sparkled with something. He didn't know what. Excitement?
She let out a cry of laughter at something the other girl said.
He couldn't stem the longing that seemed to come out of nowhere.
The girl beckoned the other to come closer to her. The other inched forward, curious. The girl unclenched her fist, revealing a blossom that sat in her palm. It seemed to glow, in the half-light.
He stuck his head as far out as possible from where he stood hidden, not wanting to miss anything.
"Look, the flower, Tuney!" the girl with the blossom said, jumping a bit.
The flower hovered glowing in the air above the two girls' heads for a moment before drifting down. His eyes never left the flower, even as it landed onto the soft patch of grass below and latched itself onto the earth: a new plant.
He took all this in from where he stood shaking with excitement. The girl who had laughed so sweetly was like him.