Old Face

12.27.16 Shedding Red Serpent Wavespell

Once up on a mountain, in a place where fairies blew mist and fog over tree tops on balmy winter days when they wanted to come out unseen to dance and play, there lived Old Face. She looked out from a slope covered in honeysuckle and wild rose at the winding tree lined road below with yearning. Old Face was lonely and filled with an enormous sadness that grieved her. She watched and beheld people coming and going, fairy folk dancing and singing, but none stopped to say hello and sit awhile with Old Face. So she cried.

Old Face wept great rocks and stones that tumbled onto the road, and over time they crumbled, as did the slopes of her Old Face. Weather beaten and worn, they developed grooves and nooks and crannys as she aged. One day Old Face wept with such keening and heaving that from deep within her something came dislodged and fell out of one eye, followed by a huge rush of teardrops. They poured and spilled out onto the road below, flowing flowing raining. People stopped to see where the water came from, and they saw Old Face’s eye, gushing the sweetest water falling.

After that Old Face was never lonely nor did she want for company. Birds came a sipped from around her nooks and crannys, butterflies drank from her crevices, bear and deer came and quenched their thirst, fairies gathered one drop to mix into their potions, and humans filled up bottles from a pipe they pushed into her eye. Salamanders and frogs kept her frequent company and Old Face now wept great big tears that sprang forth forevermore to show her joy.