At the highest point of the mountain she appears, coming into existence as subtly as dawn, drawing her first breath as the edge of the sun sinks below the horizon. She stretches, the trees around her swaying in counterpoint, a strange half-dance shared by blood and breath, bark and bough. When the riot of colors captured in the sunset have faded into dusk, she walks.

She is barefoot and her long black hair loosely braided, hundreds of flowers tucked between the strands to send a floral cascade down her back. She wears ragged once-blue jeans and a t-shirt that might once have been red; now both are bleached by wind and rain, sun and sand, to mere echoes of color. Before this, she wore a dress, before that a tunic and leggings of hand-stitched leather, before that merely cobwebs and seaweed. Appearance does not concern her; she thinks of only one thing. She walks.

Down the mountain, down and down until she reaches a road. As always there is a moment's hesitation, a wild thing's instinctive fear of something unnatural, out of place... it lasts only a second, and then she is moving down the road one graceful step at a time. Along the road, then, and still further down until there are cross streets, lights, strange scents and noises. Through the streets of the town she walks.

Her path takes her back and forth through the town, up one street and down another, a pattern she could walk in her sleep. She passes by each house where someone sleeps and dreams of her or her kind, and blows each in turn a kiss. She pauses outside the bedrooms of young lovers, hesitates near the window of a sick child, smiles unseen at friends gathered around a table. To each of them, to any who could believe in her, she wishes a bit of her luck, the luck of the land. Then, before she is seen, before she forgets herself and what she is, she walks on.

Late, so late it has become early, with dawn already lightening the sky, she ends her journey. She smiles, shucking off the clothing she'd magicked up, letting it turn to pine needles and seafoam. Naked, she steps forward, arms extended to greet the lover she can only join at dawn. Into the waves, into the embrace of the Sea, she walks.