(Story by Steven C Davis, image by Nimue Brown)

Little Tristania Moongloss thought she was a ghost.

Everywhere she went, whether it was those fog-shrouded streets she loved so well, or the fog-shrouded hillsides and even the fog-shrouded sea shores, no one ever saw her.

She would practice her dancing – particularly her pirouetting for she loved that – on every different kind of surface she could find. She was never shouted at for dancing on people’s roofs. Spoon-walkers skittered past her, even when she balanced a teaspoon on the end of her nose. She would stroke dogs, and caress the skinny rats that sometimes lived in stinky houses in Guttermore Lane, and they would all shift and whine and stare around as if they couldn’t see her.

Over time, little Tristania Moongloss did not grow up, though she grew colder and sadder. All she wanted was an audience, a friend, even a creature that would curl up beside her and give her warmth. She still performed, she still pirouetted and carried out her little dances, but they became fragmented, shorter, bitter; they left her feeling not so good as they once had.

At last, one day, little Tristania Moongloss lay down and died.

She rose the next day, truly, as a ghost.

People still paid her no heed, but now, at last, she could dance and pirouette upon the waves that battered the shore of Hopeless, Maine. She danced and pirouetted through the clouds, causing them to rain more, causing the fog and mist to fall heavier, to weave thicker.

She danced, and was happy, and the world ignored her for she was an orphan ghost.

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