[Áine]
The woods are curiously still and silent. The noise of birdsong is muffled, as though it is something coming from far away. You follow a winding path underneath the pines. The woods did not look very big from the hill above Glenkildove, but once you are within them, they seem far more extensive. Try as you might to contain it, you begin to feel an inexplicable fear that you have somehow become lost in this forgotten corner of Ireland, that you could keep walking for weeks and see nothing but these pines all about you.
And then, abruptly, you emerge into the overcast, cloudy light of an Irish summer evening. You are at the far end of the glen. Beyond you rises a semi-sheer granite cliff. There is an opening in its side about halfway up, a black cave mouth, from which issues a little waterfall which crashes down the cliff face into a pool between two rocks at the bottom, its still waters constantly churned by the frothing, white-tinged waters descending from above. Between you and the cliff there is a grassy knoll, and on the grassy knoll, a circle of weather-beaten gray standing stones with a low, flat stone at its center.
Between the stones, looking at you curiously, there is a girl of your age. She is dressed in white and barefoot, with daisy chains knotted into her shoulder-length white-blonde hair. Her eyes are large, blue, and dreamy, and her fey, delicate face is marked by a fine spray of freckles.
"Hello," she says, curiously formal, as you approach her. "God be with you. I'm Áine." She pronounces it 'Awn-yuh.'
She looks at you.
"You're not from here, are you?"
"No. I'm looking for my friend Cormac. Have you seen him?"
"No. I'm Ewu Groghan. I'm from London."
"What makes you say that?"
"What are you doing here?"
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