Wildflower Fields

The open field lies flat under a pallid dawn sky, its knee-high grasses parted by the tent ropes of two campers. Crushed wildflowers release a green perfume on the cooling night air, their blooms bent and slick with dew that soaks boots and trousers alike. At the field’s center, twin standing stones—gray slate veined faintly with crimson—rise from the earth as if born overnight. Their surfaces gleam with submerged light that pulses once when Pat’s fingers brush the rock, igniting the air with the scent of old iron and burning wax. Beyond the tent, the meadow shelves gently downward toward a mist-veiled horizon where no landmarks remain, the silence broken only by the rustle of wind through brittle stems and the distant chant that Vivien Fay’s ritual planted in the land itself.