Connor scared her, talking like this.  Since when did Connor talk about watching fairies or stalking rabbits?  Was she dying?  Where was her mother?  Why wasn’t her mother here if she was dying?  Her head hurt, and the shivering of her body made it worse.  Everything hurt.  Thinking about rabbits and fairies hurt, too.  This sort of snowfall would kill huge numbers of the creatures.  Gloria couldn’t bear to think of how bad it might be at home, where the tree canopy wasn’t as thick as in the Forbidden Forest.  

“They lay eggs, with larvae,” she murmured, her words slurring slightly together.  “Like butterflies.”  The larvae were all manner of bright colors that made her so happy.  And then their little chrysalises later on, before their metamorphosis into the beautiful winged creatures.  But likely they would all be dead by spring, if spring ever came at all.  “Fairies attended my birth,” she added.  It seemed wrong that they should miss her death.  She nuzzled her face into his hand, leaning into the sleep that beckoned with hoped of relief from the pain in her chest.  “Mum can . . . tell you . . . all about it.”  



Gloria Watkins