A fog lay heavy on the old forest. It was midnight and the yellow wagon creaked and groaned as it inched along the rutted road. Light came from just a few places: the candle in the cast iron lantern hanging at the front of the wagon, the orange and red ember glow of Phoenix’s feathers, and the fireflies that flashed for a second in the fog and then vanished. Cricket looked out from his little window at the front of the wagon, and he pulled his tweed coat and rainbow-colored scarf tighter around him as the cold of the night set in. Cricket glanced over his shoulder and caught a glimpse of the outline of the sword that spoke to them in their dreams.
The lantern creaked as it swung, and Cricket looked back into the night.
‘The fireflies,’ whispered Phoenix, whose eyes glowed a mixture of purple, red, and orange.
‘What of them?’
‘They’ve stopped.’
Then their copper-colored horse, Charles, stopped abruptly, and the yellow wagon shuddered as it came to a halt.
‘What in the blazes – ‘ chirped Cricket.
‘Shh!’ Phoenix hissed. ‘Something approaches.’
There was no sound, and the lantern light stretched into the fog only a few feet. But Cricket could feel, in the way that the body knows before the mind does when terror is near, that something now stood very close. In the yellow lantern light Cricket saw a patch in the fog that was as dark as dark can be, and as soon as he saw it there came a voice, which was almost a whisper.
‘I know what it is you carry, and for whom you carry it.’ The voice sliced the air like a knife made of ice.
‘We carry nothing, for no-one,’ said Phoenix.
Then a slow, raspy chuckle.
‘Never fear,’ the shadow coughed. ‘I do not come for it. I am a friend. I come to tell you: continue into the wood, and the dark will devour the light in each of you.’
Then, swiftly, the fog shifted and the shadow vanished.
‘Well, then,’ said Cricket after a few moments. ‘That settles it. We absolutely must push on. Think of the story this will make for the paper, Phoenix!’
But Phoenix said nothing. He merely sat on his perch, which extended from the eve of the wagon roof, and gazed at the place where the shadow had been. ‘Most peculiar,’ he said at last. ‘It would appear our passenger has not been entirely honest with us. Right, we’ll shutter up behind that tree for the night. I have some questions for our passenger that need answers.’
The group pulled to the side of the road and parked the wagon behind an enormous black tree. They threw a thick woolen blanket over Charles, blew out the lantern light, and went inside and locked all the windows and doors tight. Phoenix lit the little pot belly stove in the wagon with a breath of fire, and Cricket went to his tiny typewriter and wrote a thought or two about what had just happened. Then the two settled in to bed, and their dreams took them.
Outside, Charles took shelter between the wagon and the giant tree, and he watched as the fog grew thicker, darker, and colder. 
#realhumanwriting