gambol
[ gam-buhl ]verb (used without object)
- to skip about, as in dancing or playing; frolic.
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The forest was deep and dark. Not the kind of place people often wander. Many a dark tale was set in the forest, which kept people away. Most of the time anyway. For if one was to gather their courage and venture in, they might come across a certain clearing. A near perfect circle devoid of tree and bush. A clearing where even the grass lays flat.
In this clearing, one can find people dancing. They laugh and dance to music only they can hear, with joy on their faces. Most would wonder why they dance in the middle of such an ominous forest, but their evident joy would soon banish such thoughts. Clearly they are dancing there because they want to.
Perhaps it is the lights that attract them and make the people want to dance there. For around the people are lights. Flittering, fluttering light that moves around the dancers. From the edge of the clearing, one would be hard pressed to find out the identity of those lights. Large fireflies, perhaps? They are much larger and brighter than normal specimens of that insect, but what else could they be?
The dancers seem to enjoy their presence, at least. They spin and twirl around the fluttering lights, as if each one was also a dancer. The lights move and spin around the humans in ways that a causal observer might find to be odd. Like the lights are as attracted to the people as the people are to the lights.
Maybe an observer would watch the dancer for a while before moving on, searching for the many mysteries of the forest. Maybe they will just watch for a while and then try and find their way home. Or perhaps they will be enraptured by the dance and move to join them. Should this last one be the case, the observer would surely move into the clearing and hear a faint melody. A melody that comes from nowhere and everywhere at once.
With this music in their ear, they would no doubt be caught up in the dance. They would start to dance and frolic and be lost in the pure joy of movement, just as the other dancers are. And it would be a glorious moment indeed.
But the new dancer would soon find something odd. The other dancer’s faces are locked in permanent grins, but their eyes show something else. Weariness. Anger. Hope. And above all, fear. To the new arrival, every laugh seems to hide a scream. He would then look to the fluttering lights and see not a large insect, but a tiny person.
A person with odd, distorted features and fine, gossamer wings. These tiny people twirl through the air in a dance all their own. They move both with the humans and the other small beings. And then the true nature of the dance would dawn upon the new dancer. And their face would no doubt show the same fear as the other humans.
For when one dances with fairies, one must be prepared to dance forever.
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Don't mess with fairies. They will wreck you.
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