There once was a man and woman who lived in a large manor in the northern 
most parts of New York. They had a little girl, who liked to venture out 
into the woodlin marsh near their home. The girl was of slight frame and 
of delicate disposition, her hair was a pale yellow and her eyes were warm 
amber brown. She was quiet and thoughtful, filled with a burning desire to 
explore... to discover the hidden beauty...

	The neighbors said she was a strange child but her family was 
wealthy enough to allow their children a certain amount of eccentricity. 
The man and the woman loved their child but often found themselves caught 
up in the social niceties of high society and the management of their 
wealth.

	So the girl would wander far and deep into the wood with out their 
knowledge, searching for hidden places and secret treasures, returning 
with mushrooms of amber and mauve, a patch of deep brown moss, a bone from 
an owl pellet and an odd black stone. She would put them in a box in her 
room, they were her treasures. 

	It was said that the man and the woman once loved each other and 
some say they still did for that was how they portrayed themselves to the 
rest of the world. They would go to parties together hand in hand smiling 
and laughing at each other's jokes, but at home they were distant and 
seldom spoke. The man would travel for work and leave for weeks at a time, 
while the woman spent her time meeting with charity organizations. Their 
lives continued on and the small things slipped through the cracks. No one 
noticed, but the girl who never missed anything, who gathered those things 
of value that others over looked. 

The morning passes to midday and then the day passes away as dusk creeps 
into the world. 
She was tiptoeing along the forest path when she saw the face floating in 
a clear patch of water. Empty blue eyes stared up from the shallow water, 
the face was smooth white, though the child's lips were blue-gray, and she 
new there was no life in this image.  But it was beautiful in its 
stillness and remembrance of life. She gathered flowers and placed them in 
the water beside the empty vessel, she floated small white flowers on the 
water surface and watched them drift across the child's face.  The child 
blew tiny bubbles that floated to the surface; his hair was dark and long 
swirling about his face with the slow movement of the water. 

The girl tried to tell the man about the child but he said he was busy but 
that someday he would go with the girl and see it. The girl tried to tell 
the woman but she said that she did not have time to walk about in the 
woods. The girl tried to tell the pretty girl who lived down the street 
but the pretty girl said that she saw not such thing in the water; she 
said that the girl was lying and making up things. The pretty girl was no 
longer pretty, she was growing old and the girl thought that she was sad 
to look upon.  

In the summer of her 10th year the girl's grandfather who visited every 
year had come to stay with them. The grandfather showed up and as they 
often did he took her for a walk in the woods. She showed him all the 
things she had discovered during the spring, the empty bear's den, the 
fallen oak tree, and the abandoned beaver's dam and then at last she 
showed him the child in the pond. The grandfather had been stunned at 
first but the girl took this to be a good thing.

The grandfather then turned to the girl and asked a rather odd question 
"Do you know that child?"  The girl shrugged and said "no. I found him 
here." He nodded and looked at the child again and then looked at her and 
smiled. "I had not been sure until now, but now I am quite certain, you 
have changed. Have you discovered anything else this past year?" She then 
explained about all the secret passageways she had discovered in her 
house, and that she had found doors that seemed to lead to nowhere. He 
only smiled at her and then said "no one has come and talked to you about 
this?" she shrugged. "They are to busy doing important things, they have 
not even noticed that my hair has turned black" the girl murmured. "And no 
one else really comes here to visit me...." The grandfather blinked again 
and smiled, "well perhaps that it for the best." 

A year later a young man maybe 18 years old showed up at the house to 
tutor the girl. He said that he had worked for her grandfather and was 
tutor her. His name was Darren  and he was tall and slim with sunken in 
cheeks and dark hair.  The young man taught the girl about many things 
including why no one else could see the child that had been in the pond.  

Playtime was drawing to an end as the sun set, the fading light painted 
the sky in the memory of a time gone by. 

When the grandfather died leaving all his possession to the girl, she was 
startled out of her childhood, she was 14 years old, although most thought 
she looked nine or ten. It's hard to say what exactly caused the change. 
Perhaps it was the myriad of people explaining what she now owned, or 
maybe it was the long lists of things she was now responsible for, the 
lives that would depend upon her, it could have been the long trip south 
to Tennessee. But most likely it was the idea that her life was not her 
own anymore. She had been like the a dragon fly in the reeds, flying about 
on air currents with out a care, but to see what was around the next river 
bend, now she felt the weight pulling her down. 

In the span of a week her little wings which had allowed her to flutter 
about as a child had grown to twice their size. And she used them to fly 
away from the responsibility that was being tied to her. She grew taller 
and stronger and tried to fly higher and higher but no matter how far she 
flew the weight always brought her back down and back to the manor. To the 
starttlement of the few that knew her she changed in the span of month 
from a little wide eyed nine year old to a tall lithe 16 year old and 
physically the girl hasn't aged since.  

She remembered arriving at the hotel that she would have to take care of 
and that Darren had been with her, he handed her an old heavy key and 
asked to unlock the front door. The key had been impossibly dense in her 
had and seemed to burn her slightly but she took it and inserted the key. 
She heard the hotel ask her what her name was, so she spoke it aloud 
"Deirdre Davenrow", but the key would not turn. Then the young man had 
turned to her and said softly in her ear, "you must give tell it your real 
name, the one your grandfather called you." She blinked confused and 
embarrassed, how had the young man know that her grandfather had called 
her by a different name? The girl spoke it softly to the door, "Dara."  
The key turned and the doors swung open and she heard the building say to 
her " Welcome home." 

Things change, and the girl named Deirdre, and called Dara by some, found 
that this weight was more it had been, it was a puzzle, a secret within a 
mystery within a conundrum, shrouded in a mist and sparkling with life. It 
was a challenge waiting to be met, a question with a million answers 
waiting to be found. Including a note her grandfather had left for her, 
she couldn't remember reading it before and thought it strange that she 
should find it now, having overlooked it even thought it was right in 
front of her the entire time. 

It said "It is not difficult to be alive, nor is it hard to live a long 
life. What is difficult, is to remember the beauty and happiness in the 
world and forget the rest, it is even more difficult to share it with 
others. I give you what remains of my life in hopes that you will turn it 
into your own, you who were always able to discover beauty and were brave 
enough to try and share it with those who did not understand what they had 
over looked." She folded the note carefully and placed it in her pocket 
and walked down stairs to join the oath circle.

The sun was long gone from the sky, but the moon was just beginning its 
journey across the starry sky. So much to explore, so much to see, so much 
beauty hiding, waiting to be found.