She was born in a land of myth and legends,
a tiny isle adrift in the misty seas of the north.

Among its green glens, thatch roofed cottages, and jagged gray coasts, her shy brown eyes could be found, from an early age, prying secrets
from the ancient landscape.

Cast aside by the adults, she spent lonesome hours turning stones in the garden or on the beach searching for the other children.

There were none.

In the entire kingdom,
perhaps in the entire world,
she was the only little girl.

The children had vanished long ago.

All had been ignored, sent out to play,
and spoken to from behind news papers until at last, in response to that silent request of all adults,
they had disappeared entirely.

When they were all gone,
none, other than her, noticed their absence.

None, other than her, in all of the realm,
searched for them.

Little Kyriel’s eyes grew keen
from their constant searching.
She began to see the patterns inside of things.

One day as she sifted
through the ashes of a fire
left by vagrants
in a gutted house near the woods,
she discovered a live coal
still smoldering.

With her stick, she poked at it
until her eyes discerned its hidden nature.

"A dragon!"
she cried in disbelief.

"Dragon!"
And thus she called it out of hiding.

The dragon became her constant companion.
She was surprised that no one noticed him,
but then people seldom noticed her anymore.
With the dragon she discussed
the disappearance of the other children.
He was not at all surprised
that the grown ups had banished them all
with the  careless black magick of distraction.

"It happened to my people
a long, long time ago, you know."  He said,
"The dragons all disappeared
long before the children did."

He explained that most of the dragons
had opted to leave and visit other lands
rather than live in the exile of invisibility.
"I suppose that’s what most of the children have done too. It’s not much fun when nobody sees you. They’ve probably gone somewhere else,
where they’ll be noticed."

Kyriel began to day dream of traveling to far off lands.
She and Dragon spent contented afternoons
imagining wonderful and strange new places.

It happened that one evening
when she returned home for bed
her parents could no longer see or hear her.

Try as she might
to ask her mother for supper,
Mother went right on sewing
as if no one were there.

"It’s happened."

She told Dragon when she found him
at the gutted house near the woods.
A single tear rolled down her dirty little cheek
leaving a clean line.

"They can’t see me at all anymore."

Dragon held her and comforted her.

"If you like," he said,
"I will carry you to a far away place."

Kyriel sniffed and nodded.

Dragon kept his promise and delivered Kyriel
to a strange hot land far from the misty seas of the north.
Here he set her down and wished her well.

Kyriel returned to her old lonesome pastime
of turning up stones.

This time, however, she began to arrange them
after turning them up,
forming magnificent labyrinths and circles of stone.

As the years passed she grew craftier and craftier in wielding the element of earth.
She fashioned magickal pictures made of glass.

Creatures came from far and wide
to visit her mysterious stone structures
and to collect the multicolored glass artifacts
prepared by her loving hand.

They invited her to place her artifacts
in their gathering places.

She wondered if any of them
had once been invisible children.

Kyriel continued to study
the patterns inside of things.

After many years of careful observation
she began to make sense
of the many interconnected patterns.

They formed a subtle world
hidden within the land in which she dwelt.

One night as Kyriel walked
under the twinkling stars
marveling over this disguised realm,
she made out a familiar form.

"Dragon!"
she cried in sheer joy,
and he emerged from a bit of volcanic rock
that had lined the path.

"I am so glad to see you!"
They embraced tearfully.

When Kyriel looked away
she discovered that they were standing once again
in the gutted house by the edge of the woods
near a pile of ash left from a fire
once tended by vagrants.

"We’re back!",
she said gleefully
examining the stick held
in her now tiny hand.

"We’ve always been here.,"
Dragon explained.

Kyriel nodded. It made sense to her.

This was the world she could see
in the patterns of the stones in her Labyrinth
in that other place where she lived.

She knew that she could be
in many invisible worlds simultaneously,
and that she could inhabit a variety of shapes.

"Dragon,"
she said,
" I would like to be a star."

"You already are."
Dragon said,
"You just haven’t noticed yet."

Kyriel, who was born in a land of myths and legends, did become a star eventually.
If you look into the night sky you might see her winking at  you from Orion’s belt.
You might find her under a stone, or in a gutted house on the edge of the woods sifting through ash.
You might find her anywhere,
a specter traveling in the patterns of the invisible, ever absent to the distracted eye,
always present.