MagicFailing

I saw magic once. Just once.
Growing up I heard tales of fairies and spectres that stalked the land at night, cursing people, sometimes blessing them, and what have you. I wanted to believe so badly they were real, that there was more, that the world wasn’t so empty. When I was a little girl, I spent hours every day looking for hag stones until finally finding one with a hole barely able to let light through. I carried it everywhere, peeking and hoping to glimpse the aether. Once, on some rocks, I caught a glimmer of light shaped like an animal, just for a moment. I kept going back to the same spot to look, until one day the hag stone broke, and I gave up on looking.
Then I saw it.
It was hidden away like a taboo secret whispered ear to ear, or a withered legend in a lost tongue.
A father was showing his daughter a piece of tangled grass. He cupped it in his hand, giving a shrewd glance to the surroundings while his girl only stared in anticipation. She was about my age, and her eyes were bright with curiosity. He opened his hands and the grass twirled away in a burst of sparkling dust, leaving so many colours I’d never seen before.
I watched from my hiding place in a bramble thicket, not daring to intrude, or let myself be known. They had something untouchable, something that couldn’t be believed if cradled between the fingers and inspected for the slightest flaw.
She gave chase through the trail with stretched arms, giggling and laughing until she ran out of breath. Then her da took her hand and they left, smiling all the way.
I never saw them again, but I kept their secret. It boiled in me for as long as a girl my size could take, until it burst out in an act of betrayal. But those I told said I was mistaken, that it must have been a dream, and to stop making up lies. Ever since, I kept a desire to know if it was real, to make sure it wasn’t all just a fantasy. That it could exist beyond the veil of secrecy.
That it wasn’t only a dream beyond grasp.