Fairspell Meadow Free the ghost that haunts you.

He had meant to seek them out in the darkness, to hopefully reunite before they slept, but when he arrived they were coiled together in slumber and Mou could not - would not - bother them. There had been Maegi, coiled protectively around two bundles of red. Mou had not gotten too close in case they would wake. He lingered near, protective and silent, as the light greyed out and faded to darkness; when finally there was only the obscurity of the night he felt the brief chill of a sweeping winter wind, and withdrew from them. In the morning he would find them again, he thought. He would introduce himself, he would reunite with his beloved. Together they could be a family.

Mou did not know that his presence had made an impact. That his fleeting figure, ghostly white, caught in the corner of the boy's eye and drew him away from the warmth of his mother. While Mou had sought shelter for the night within the expanse of green, the child had been hunting for him - calling sleepily in to the darkness - but by the time the tiny spirit had fled and the body had frozen, Mou was fast asleep.

When the morning did come he woke to the sound of a deeply rooted turmoil made manifest as a shrieking voice, and it was a voice he knew. He was on his feet and racing close to where the family was nesting when he spotted them - Maegi hunkered low and sobbing, and one of the red bodies lively, but silent. He was confused; he did not notice that the family unit had moved away from the impressions in the grass where they had originally slept. To him, nothing had changed.

But there - beneath them both - one of the little red bodies. Cold.

The ghost swept towards them without a sound and soon dropped to the dirt beside Maegi, giving her a small distance in case he was not welcome but -- being present, being watchful, wishing he could do something to fix things, as always.