text: It was a choked gasp. One through a stiffened throat and a quivering chin. Elsa knew she was too late. With desperate feet and clawed hands she pulled, hawling herself up the steepened slope. She begged, and begged. Still be there, she said. But she knew. Deep down she knew that she was too late. Her feet wept blood from the stabbing thorns and twigs that probed, burying deep into flesh. Her skirt flared, shredded strips whipping in the wind. The vegetation grasped, pulling her back but Elsa pushed and tugged forwards. No! She would shout,as her body twisted to the floor, from a stick that curled beneath her foot or a stone that thudded against her shin. No! No! No! All her life he had waited for her, all her life he would say ‘I love you’ and yet her heart never wavered. Not for him. Not then. For her infatuation stifled the love she could of had. This love. This love she now ran for, through the hedgerows, across the fields, because once more she had made him wait. How long, oh how long had he waited, she thought, as her muscles flared with fatigue and her lungs busted under breathlessness. Was it when we were kids, playing in the golden fields of hip high straw. When the wind whistled through leaves, whispering to us that spring was here. When we bathed in the warmth of a rich light with happy smiles and joyous laughs. Just three kids, playing in our golden days. ‘Did I not see’ she wheezed through lacking breath. ‘Did I not see a love when his eyes first met mine?’ At the age of eight, a little London girl, new to the Scottish wilderness. Morose from her parents loss. Fearful of new places. But Elsa stood as she was taught, tall, proud and with a smile. Always with a smile. With white stockings pulled to her knees, curled locks tied back in red ribbons and a flowered dress of white and out of place elegance. She remembered looking upon them both, two boys with dusty hair, and mud smeared faces. Ted looked on her, like a lion does his prey. To Ted, Elsa was posh and pompous, a girl who knew little of the highland ways, and had no place for these hills. Later his hands would grip at her waist. Later he would say ‘beautiful’ and ‘you are mine’ before his fist thumped back, and struck Elsa to the floor. He would say ‘love’, but he couldn’t love a London girl. One who he thought was not made for mountains. But Joe. It was Joe whose arms were open wide, even at that first sight, as Elsa stood, tall, proud and smiling. His eyes glimmered when they met hers. A glimmer that said ‘friend’, and made Elsa’s, then darkened soul, smile. ‘How his eyes gleamed’ Elsa thought. Maybe that was love? But how could she know? Or maybe it was later, when Elsa grew taller. When a child begins to realise that a girl cannot be friends with a boy. Especially two farm boys, rough in nature, cheeky in spirit, and wild with fun. ‘Playing out there with pigs and mud is no place for a young woman’ her Aunt had told her with a chilling inflection. Oh but how much Elsa loved to play. Ted and Joe, her best friends in this barren place. Friends who brought joy and laughter to a heart that ached for her parents. With age, Ted charmed the streets, with his handsome stature and amiable facade. His breath and being was worshiped by every woman, with whom he played for amusement. Even when Elsa wore his ring. On those dreary nights, when sleep escaped her with a spiralling mind, she lay waiting. With a bang of the door, and a new perfume linger, his body tumbled besides her nonexistence. Many of times Elsa would cry, and it was Joe that came. Dabbing a damp cloth over her bruised eye, and hugging an unloved body. Joe cared. Joe had always cared. But his charm did not cage Elsa’s obsession, an obsession for a man who cherished little and took a lot. An obsession for a man that Elsa could not have. ‘Stand on Ben A’an before midday and I shall stay’ were Joe’s final words, before his feet shifted and as the birds flew south, he was gone. Numb, Elsa stood. The orange glow of a new day cleaved into the room, where Ted lay in a liquor stench. With tearful eyes she looked up, through the glass window. Birds flocked, south they went. ‘Oh let me come with you’ she whispered, with watery melancholy. Just as the bird flaps its wings, Elsa picked up her skirt and ran. She ran through the frosty air, her breath casting clouds of steam in the calm serenity of dawn. Forwards she hurried, ‘let me fly next you, and leave this place. Let me choose you’. Rising on Ben A’an, a roof to her home, her silhouette was cast by the suns apricot glimmers. Mountains were her home. Nature was her freedom, in its purity of no judgement or time. Elsa stood and looked outward, hoping she stood in sight of a man that she loved. A man that she had always loved.