The woman had always lived on the edge of things. Between worlds. One foot in the world of people and one in the world of earth and sky. For many years she balanced between them.

She loved people, but they could be difficult to be with and she struggled to understand so many things about them. She didn’t know the answers to any of the big questions, but she knew that she didn’t and that seemed to be something not altogether bad.
She wasn’t sure that some of them even had answers.
she walked alone each day with her thoughts and the sounds of birdsong and breezes. she was happy to be leaves and feathers, atoms and dust.

She knew the names of things and would murmur them as she passed. She knew she was utterly and wondrously insignificant in the scheme of things angd yet also a part of everything. Every tiny fly and wind blown blossom had its place and so did she.

As time went by she turned more and more to the quiet places. She pottered in her garden and watched the seasons change, the trees become misted with green, then emerald and shimmering in the wind, then flame fire bright then black bare bones against the grey sky again.. She watched the world turn and knew that change would continue. Because that is the nature of things.
She grew old in years and the birds became so bold around her she could almost touch them. She knew their names and their songs and they knew her song too.

She often stood so still in the morning air she could hear her own heart beating and feel the earths rhythm through her feet.
One day in May she stood in her wild garden, stretched out her fragile arms in the warm spring sunshine and waited. And the birds came. They sat light as feathered whispers along her arms and they perched on her wild head.
And she smiled to herself and thought, If only this moment could go on forever.
The people wondered in passing what had become of the woman who lived on the edge of things. They walked by the quiet place where she had once lived and saw nothing. Just trees. There might have been one more, but who counts trees?