Speck

There was once an old, haunted place in the woods where bad things used to happen. It was on a cold autumn day visiting this old woods that a ghost stepped out of the forest, a ghost black and soft and warm. The ghost of soot, ashes made life.

The sprite was alive in a way that few living things ever truly are, she brightened the world with her every breath.

But her breaths were to be numbered.

One day the dragons noticed a tiny lump in the soot of the sprite, and the doctor was sent for. The doctor shrugged his sagging shoulders and paid the tiny lump little mind. He was tired, and lazy, and careless, and he scarcely looked at all. Surely, he said, it was nothing. He did not try to see what the lump was, or what might be inside it.

Months passed, and one day the little sprite seemed even more faded than ever. More lumps were starting to come. A different doctor was sent for this time, and they discovered to the horror of all that what had seemed of no consequence before was of the ultimate consequence now. The lump that had formed within the soot was a hard and horrible thing, and it had spread its terrible taint all through her. The lumps crowded the air out of her chest, and filled her lungs with dust. So complete was the contamination that nothing could be done but to set her free from her pains.

She was scarcely through her seventh summer when the sprite became a ghost once more, ashes made life now becoming ashes of death. All that remains of the soot sprite now sits in a little green box. The ashes are soft, but not as soft as she was.

The dragons who held her dear are stained by her loss, and wracked with wondering what may have been if the first doctor had truly looked. If the lump could have been plucked from her then, before it became many.

Sometimes late at night, they can still taste the smoke of her life, bitter with memories poisoned in tragedy.