You are running, your little legs pumping harder than they usually do, the ground of the forest bouncing beneath your feet. You don’t notice the way the roots or how the branches above rattle faintly in the breeze.

You are too busy pretending you’re being chased by what you don’t even know. Maybe wolves or maybe nothing at all.

That’s how you play, without thought, with more speed than thought. You laugh aloud at nothing, breathing heavily in the cool air, and then you hit something that isn’t a tree.

You crash into a knee and rebound slightly, and for a moment, you just blink up. The figure towering above you turns, and before your silly, child-sized brain has even put together that it’s a person, she smiles.

She bends slightly, her heavy hair shifting like a dark curtain, and her hand comes down—large but gentle—resting on your head as though it belongs there.

“Well, hello there. Aren’t you a curious one, darting about like a little fox cub?”

She lowers herself slightly so her face isn’t so far above yours, and the folds of her dress spill neatly against her boots.

“My name is Mary, and who might you be, all the way out here?”