IN THE DARK, Shea's cheeks were lined with shining rivers.

His little room had only one portal with which to invite in the moonlight: a large square formed from the cut logs, with a mesh-weave window pane Shea often left opened and to the side instead.

The celestial body projected shapes onto his wall with its ghostly glow, as if to cheer the sullen figure. In that chaotic geometry, Shea's mind recognized familiar silhouettes in the shadows or lights: forest beasts and impressionistic faces; and faces Shea immediately regretted that he noticed, which were too thin, and too tall. Too him.

The moon's puppets danced on while Shea watched, but his eyes were unfocused. He was perched on the sill like a bird asleep, and half-listened to the hushed yawning roar of the rain; it splattered high above against the distant leafy sky formed by the heads of the ancient giants. The resulting cool mist, which fell like stardust between the looming trunks, drifted in and wet Shea's naked flesh. If that bothered him—in the chill of that late hour—the youth did not let it show: the twilight passed him by, with Shea as still as a stone that gathered dew.

Shea thought of that long, handsome face with its eyes closed. Those hot lashes. Thin, wide lips, set as if with perpetual mirth. Did the stranger feel this mist on his golden flesh, right then? What was it that the elf imagined, as he gazed out into the same night?

The young human was surprised when he woke from an indeterminate slumber. He did not recall having had fallen asleep, nor had he any concept of how many hours were spent in what now seemed an empty dreamscape just behind his waking consciousness.

Reality dawned on Shea: dim daylight, and its earliest warmth. Yet it was as if he had not rested at all. His longing rumination from the previous night's more furtive hours crashed down once again, fresh. Shea's eyelids drooped; he craved sleep still, and yet knew that the spirits who governed that realm had barred his entry, for the moment.

The morning forest, with its beasts and birds and bugs and wisps, called to Shea, but his ears strained for another sound.

Shea committed to action—an action that he would have never conceived of, any day before that morning. Yet in that moment it seemed the only sensible course he could take.

He waited, and listened carefully. When Shea knew that his mother was wholly occupied by how she hanged their wet garments around the back of the cabin, he slipped from their shelter and into the trees.

What heinous rebellion.

For the first time, he had left without having told Mia where he was going. Or why.

Really, Shea did not know where. The why was just as mysterious. But he was pushed along, guided—somewhere—by an unseen force. Shea could only swim with the irresistible current, and hope.

So he wandered. At first, it was easy to simply spiral out of orbit: each and every step carried Shea away from the cabin, and that was enough. The further he went, the more his confidence grew that his mother had not detected his escape—and the more aimless his search became.

Would the gorgeous elf be down at the basin again? The boy heard no singing; how he strained to listen for it. He meandered as if navigated by air currents. There were hints of yesterday's melody in every sound, until the succeeding moments proved Shea a lovestruck fool. How cruel the breeze could be.

Shea calculated how much land the traveler could have covered after he had lounged by the lake all day long, before he would need to make camp for the night. The youth explored along a curve; he hoped that he might come across a firepit, or at least evidence of one. At any spot that appeared to hold promise, however, there was never any sign that another soul shared the forest with him; none of the tracks that Shea examined were made by a man.

At last, defeated and tired, hungry and thirsty, Shea ended up back at his cherished lake. There he found the same story: no footprints led away from the basin in any direction, and the location on the shore where he was positive the stranger had stretched out was entirely undisturbed.

Had Shea simply imagined it all?

Was the golden man just a dream?

No. . .

The frustrated young man sat by the lake's gently waving terminus and rested his hands on his knees. He hugged his legs tighter as his stomach growled; he had skipped breaking fast that morning, and now a painful tremor shook his gut.

His body was sore.

Even the sun's typically rejuvenating light seemed not so warm, or as soothing.

Yet he did not want to leave.

For a moment Shea pondered if he might be able to catch one of the fish deeper in the water. He could cook it over a fire, perhaps, and then continue his search after he ate.

Or, he could give up.

The abrupt thought caused his brow to furrow—and yet, if he returned to his mother, there would no doubt be food, and rest.

A fresh tear, a ray that streaked downward, wet Shea's cheek. He stared into the water's depths.

Shea stood; he turned in the direction of the cabin where his mother waited, no doubt aware, now, that Shea no longer slept, but was gone. He walked forward. Each step was worse than the one before it. There was real physical pain deep in the bones of his legs, and with every movement of muscle. Shea slowed, and slowed, like a ship abandoned by the wind, until he just stood still—his spirit still very much adrift.

Rooted as surely as the trees around him, to the shore, by his feet, Shea knew what it was to be truly paralyzed in a helpless fashion. Though his legs were steady, the rest of him shook; he sweat; his body demanded an answer from his mind. It asked him the same question, repeated: where are we going? And the often imperceptible mechanisms that ultimately ruled the locomotion of his skeletal frame—the body's fearful mob—refused him even one more step toward his mother's hut.

"Toward his mother's hut." That was not an acceptable answer.

Think it through, Shea pleaded with himself.

He could turn left, and explore further beyond the rough circles that he had charted along the woods that morning. Perhaps he had missed something. From what he knew of that part of the endless forest, there were plenty of nooks that were ideal for a camp. He had not checked them all. With his gut as his navigator, that was the area where Shea thought the elf was most likely to be still.

Or he could turn right, and direct his hunt toward territory not yet scoured. The lake grew a small tail in the form of a thin ribbon of river, which carved a narrow canyon through the trunks—it wound deeply, out of sight. It was likely enough that the traveler wanted to be near a supply of water, after all.

But how could Shea be sure? He had failed to find the elf all of that morning, and now the day's light waned. Every moment wasted meant another step taken by the golden man—away from him. How would Shea ever catch him?

Did he not see: this resplendent being was far too magnificent for a wretch such as Shea.

The blunt thought struck him like a phantasmal open palm summoned by his own rogue mind. Shea stung in the moments after.

He was unworthy of the elf. It was so clear. He knew this as fact, completely.

Whyever would the spirits who tended fates' strings have reunited that lovely elf and this lowly human?

Shea should be happy for his short time cozied up to a star. To have glimpsed heaven. That he experienced nirvana's divine atmosphere with his living flesh, and knew paradise's scent.

Shea's rebellious body clamored for action.

His bowing consciousness was caught in a loop.

And hopelessness, dressed as an axe-wielding executioner, cleaved Shea's sanity in half, right down the middle.

The youth shook, painfully tense, body and mind, unable to carry on, sure to fall at any second. . .

When along came a melody at long last, which reduced Shea's impossible catalog of decisions down to an effortless single choice.

He only had to listen.

A reedy clarion note called from somewhere behind him, followed with a sharp rise, ended by a withering fall.

Instantly, Shea's revolting form relaxed. He fell as the note fell, with exhaustion, with relief, on his knees, on the soft land. All of his pain left him, even his physical hurts.

The wasted youth's head swiveled, homed in on the windy tune. The rest of his body followed in tow, and he crawled in the direction of that soulful sound. Shea descended into the basin, and scuttled around the lake. He was like a beetle that creeped along under the sun's gaze, over rocks drenched by its faint red light.

He crawled until he believed his legs could carry him; Shea stood at the edge of the thicket, and peered into the depths from where the song that beckoned him originated.

The trees before him were closer together, the spaces between them full of gloom. It struck Shea that this was a part of the forest where he did not often explore, if for no other reason than his natural habits had rarely led him here. That Shea did not come this way was apparent in the smallest details: a little more underbrush; a little more growth; more wild life. More shade.

There was a chillier air where Shea slipped in between the trunks, its familiar sweetness now cut with the kind of bitter, primordial rot that was only attracted to forsaken spaces.

The song continued to lead Shea through that peculiar stretch of wood. The notes that guided him grew in power as he neared their source. Closer than Shea would have ever expected to find one, he came upon a lavish structure in a small clearing that he did not know existed.

The abode was unlike anything Shea had seen before, vivid in its color scheme, with soft walls and a sloped roof hung from a central pole; the front flap was pulled open and allowed Shea to peer into the cozy interior: pillows were heaped all around a cookfire at the space's center—an aroma of crisped rabbit meat perked Shea's nose. Shea watched the smoke drift out from a small hole at the top of the tent. How curious it was to him that he had not detected the smoke in the air until then, and he studied the structure with wondering, glittering eyes.

Like his cherished basin, this tent sat there in a rare clearing; in its own ruby sunbeam.

Embroiled so in his thoughts, Shea nearly missed how the handsome stranger sat out in front of his marquee tent in clear view, and played his long flute. The next soulful tone the instrument produced nearly spurred Shea's heart to race toward fatal pounding. The youth gasped louder than he would have liked; he ducked, in a panic, behind the nearest trunk.

When only music followed his outburst, Shea peered around the bark that obscured him.

The lean elf's eyes were closed. He appeared utterly relaxed as he unleashed each unhurried call.

Shea bit his lip; he gazed the man all over: the elf was shirtless, and wore billowing pants that were a multitude of thick bands of marvelous color—red, orange, yellow, green, blue; Shea lost track—and the moccasins Shea was now familiar with, and so enamored by. The elf's long hair was pulled into a single thick braid, which draped over the front of his shoulder and the curves of his muscular, vibrantly tattooed chest.

The human closed his own eyes as he listened to a particularly long and forceful note, held by the stranger. It faded downward into nothingness, and was followed by nothingness.

The ambience of the forest crept back in where the tune had retreated, and Shea again discerned the distant leaves that rustled high overhead with each gust of wind. The steady bwop-bwop-bwop of the dripping forest still soaked from the night's rain. Calls of creatures that flew and that scurried. But the music did not return.

Slowly, Shea opened his eyes. His eyelids continued to widen: the stranger stared in his direction. The boy's breath caught in his throat. Perhaps the elf did not see him; perhaps there was something nearby Shea—an interesting bird, say—and that was instead what had captivated the traveler's gaze. Yet those steady, sharp eyes never wandered away from Shea's hiding place.

"Hello there," the elf hailed. "You can come join me, if you like."