Shan­non stood atop the stack of rocks that marked the high­est point on the hill, sil­hou­et­ted in moon­light and unob­scured by the trees that shrouded the coun­try­side for miles around. Spin­ning sharply around and strik­ing a pose, he grinned and then burst into laugh­ter as he saw his two friends still strug­gling to climb through the thick bracken some thirty feet away from him.

“I win!” the boy shouted. “So I get to pick!”

Lore­lai and Han­nah looked up at him and started laugh­ing too as they sprinted up to where he stood.

The three laughed and gig­gled for some time, rev­el­ling in the exer­tion of the race and the beauty of the scenery spread out below them that was brightly lit still by the full moon.

A few min­utes later, sit­ting on the rock for a brief moment whilst they regained their breath, Han­nah asked the ques­tion that both girls had been wondering.

“So, where’re we going?”

Shan­non paused for a sec­ond, then gig­gled. “I dunno. Don’t mind. Let’s take a chance, go some­where new!”

“Yeah!” Lore­lai and Han­nah cheered.

“Well then, let’s get going! The adults’ll start to won­der where we’ve got­ten to if we hang around too long!”

“Right.”

They stood up as high as they could, bal­anced on top of the rocky out­crop, held each oth­ers’ hands, and wished.

“I wish we were some­where new!” they cho­rused. “I wish we were some­where new! I wish we were some­where new-”

The chil­dren shone brighter and more sil­very than the moon for a tiny frac­tion of a sec­ond before scat­ter­ing into tiny par­ti­cles of light and rush­ing up into the cloud­less sky.

“-new!”

Crunch.

Rus­tle. Rustle.

A bush just inside the clump of trees pro­duced first a pur­ple feath­ered hat, then at a dif­fer­ent point a mop of curly hair, and finally three sets of inquis­i­tive eyes peered out from behind the mass of twigs and dry leaves into which they’d just been uncer­e­mo­ni­ously dumped.

“Hey, this place smells weird!” Han­nah said. “Hey, you too, this-”

Lore­lai shushed her and motioned for the three of them to duck. Just a few sec­onds after they did so, two fig­ures walked past the bush, so wrapped up in their own whis­pered con­ver­sa­tion and their look­ing into each oth­ers’ eyes that they failed to notice their watch­ers. The watch­ers noticed them, though, and more besides — the world pos­i­tively rip­pled as they walked by.

Lore­lai heard every word of their con­ver­sa­tion, and blushed. The other two, both three years her junior, looked con­fused and whis­pered to her.

“What’re they?” Han­nah asked.

“Humans,” Lore­lai replied.

“Do they all smell like that?”

“Not all of them. Some of them do, though. They say that humans like other humans more when they spray these strange liq­uid chem­i­cal things on themselves.”

“Weird!” Shan­non interrupted.

“Shhh!” Lore­lai put her index fin­ger to his lips. “You don’t want them to hear us, do you?”

“Why not?” Shan­non replied in more hushed tones. “We could have some fun with them!”

“They’re hav­ing enough fun already, we shouldn’t interrupt.”

“That’s fun, for them?”

“That’s love, for them.”

“Oh.” Shan­non and Han­nah were quiet for a moment.

“Does the world always rip­ple like that, when peo­ple are in love?”

“Usu­ally,” Lore­lai replied.

The colour­ful fluc­tu­a­tions in the grass dimin­ished as the two humans walked on, and even­tu­ally all was back to what might pass for nor­mal again.

“Shall we get out of this bush?” Han­nah finally asked.

“What bush?” Lore­lai asked, and the three of them were crouch­ing on bare ground. Always had been. There hadn’t been a bush, in fact.

“What? Hey, that’s not fair!” Shan­non declared, stamp­ing his foot.

Lore­lai gig­gled. “Sorry.”

The bush was back, and had never dis­ap­peared in the first place.

“But…” Han­nah mum­bled. “You’re not… Are you allowed to do that?”

The older girl laughed again. “No. But I thought it’d be fun. After all, there’s no adults around to tell us what to do, right?”

“Yeah, you’re right! Hey, wouldn’t this tree look bet­ter with flowers?”

“Yeah!” Shan­non replied.

For a while noth­ing changed, until Lore­lai grinned and relaxed and flower after flower bloomed from the dying leaves and damp branches of the tree.

“I think it should have stars too!” Shan­non exclaimed, and stream after stream of glit­ter­ing stars wound their way up and down the trunk.

They played with the tree for hours, although it felt like barely a few min­utes for them. The pure exu­ber­ance in Shan­non and Hannah’s hearts didn’t just dec­o­rate and redec­o­rate their tree, it brought colour and life to every­thing that they set their eyes on. As Lore­lai sat back and watched, the moon and the stars became brighter, the sky darker and frostier, the grass wet­ter and more vibrant, the copse of trees larger and deeper and the trees them­selves taller, and by the time they had fin­ished they had a rapt audi­ence of squir­rels and mice as well.

The two younger chil­dren went to sit with Lore­lai and mar­vel at the beauty that they’d cre­ated. It was a won­der­ful sight – and that it had been cre­ated so eas­ily! It was true what the elders and the wildlings said, the human world really was so easy to change!

Han­nah and Shan­non were busy whis­per­ing to each other of their plans to come back here more often when, for a short but stomach-turningly intense moment, the world felt like it fell through and down into some­thing else.

The three of them opened their eyes slowly, and instinc­tively felt what was hap­pen­ing. Their works, the changes that their hearts and minds had woven into the fab­ric of the world, were being unrav­elled. In the dis­tance, but head­ing slowly towards them, a sin­gle fig­ure walked. But as he walked, the world coa­lesced around him, became nor­mal, became unen­chanted, became boring.

Shan­non felt sick.

“Lore­lai?” he asked through the hands that cov­ered his mouth. “What’s that? Why does it hurt?”

Lore­lai shuddered.

“That’s… That’s a human too.”

“But… weren’t those other humans pretty and shiny?”

“Not all humans are nice. Some are bor­ing, apa­thetic, closed-minded.”

“They’re scary!”

“Yeah,” Han­nah chimed in. “Let’s get out of here!”

Lore­lai nod­ded to both of them, and they ran over to the tree they’d dec­o­rated. As the sec­onds passed and the human made his way closer, its dec­o­ra­tion faded and dis­solved. There should be enough time, she thought, just enough…

They reached the tree and held each oth­ers’ hands in a cir­cle around it. With all the willpower she could muster, Lore­lai willed the tree to keep being colour­ful, to keep enough imag­i­na­tion and magic alive for just a few sec­onds, while they chanted their wish…

“I wish we were home again! I wish we were home again! I wish we were home again-”

Glit­ter sparkled in the dark­ness as their forms turned to sil­ver dust which dis­si­pated along with the rest of the tree’s ornaments.

The man who brought the mun­dane world with him came around the cor­ner of the wood, and saw the tree – com­pletely nor­mal. His walk con­tin­ued, obliv­i­ous to what had hap­pened there that night.

The three chil­dren sat, recov­er­ing their breath, on an out­crop of rock atop a forested hill. A wel­com­ing for­est; a pretty and colour­ful for­est; the for­est they called home.

They each looked into each oth­ers’ eyes, and shared each oth­ers’ relief that they had made it. And, as Lore­lai made her slow way back down the over­grown hill­side, Han­nah and Shan­non vowed that they’d go back.

Every year.

After all, despite its dan­gers, the human world was so much fun!