NEW: Home.

 

He stretched open his hand in front of him, fingers wide - like the points of a circle. He watched, disconnected, as his fingertips drifted in and out of focus, as the mist clenched hold of them, then let go again. His fingers crackled and spat with the contact, and he knew then that this was no ordinary mist of the moor, this was special - it was one of the mists that spiralled up from the faint circles that littered the moor, circles like the fingers of his outstretched hand - one and the same.

He had waited so long, a vigil that never seemed to end. A boy no longer, he was an old man now, and yet still he waited. He let his gaze shift, now intently, across the moor. The mist had taken on an unworldly tinge. It moved slowly towards a colour and substance that was beyond the normal, beyond the ordinary life he had lived, a life he had never got used to, had never called his own.

And then there was movement through the mist. Light steps, making no sound, passed through the wet heather and spiky grass. Small light limbed figures moved slowly towards him, surrounding him - as a circle, curiosity written on their sharp faces, caution in their bright golden eyes. They drifted in and out of the strange mist, but he knew them - Folk.

A delicate hand, long fingered, reached out and touched his own wide stretched fingers, slowly and deliberately - one by one. The mist intensified in colour and and thickness, he could see little, but felt - everything, everything that he had never been able to be, everything that he should have been. And fingertip to fingertip, he knew that he belonged, he too was Folk. Bright golden eyes smiled, and his own tired grey eyes smiled back. It was time to go home.