Birdie Who Was A lover Of Mossy Roots And Hidden Hollows

It was a particularly damp autumn afternoon and Birdie crept off to seek comfort in the soft and velvety roots of the old twisted oaks.
Birdie was a nervous child, a worrier and a nail chewer, for the comings and goings of everyday life were often just far too much to bear and so it was, that she found herself longing for the cool, dark hollows that one can only find in the very oldest of woods. With a hat pulled down way over her ears and a scarf wrapped around all the way up to her eyes, Birdie felt safe and snug for the walk across the town's grey and unwelcoming streets.
Between the honks of horns, the glaring of headlamps and the screams of excited children, Birdies nerves were really quite frazzled. "Not long now" she told herself and patted the pocket where she kept her torch and a well worn copy of Alice In Wonderland, she felt sure that she still had a boiled sweet or a sticky toffee or two in there as well.

Our jittery girl breathed sigh of relief to feel her feet sink into the soft, leaf covered soil of the darkening woodland. Others may fear to walk the woods in the fading light but not Birdie, she felt a certain comfort in the darkness, that kept her safe from prying eyes and besides, she had a torch.
You will recall, if you were paying attention, that this, was one of those very old woods. The kind where the fallen, crooked limbs of trees cleave to gaps in mossy boulders and then become quite green and velvety themselves. The kind of wood, where you can walk right into the hollow of a tree or nestle down to read a book in an armchair of roots and leaf mould. Birdie buttoned down the flap of her pocket in readiness for the series of tipply-bumbalegs she planned on doing over the fallen limb ahead of her. This was a most delightful part of the woods, an intricate course of unders and overs. a place, where if one was not entirely careful, the entire contents of a pocket could be lost, never to be seen again and Birdie's pocket contents were far too valuable to be so carelessly lost.

It had rained an awful lot that autumn and the ground was softer than usual, in fact small ravines had begun to open up where much of the earth between rocks had been washed clean away! Birdie was quite flushed from all her exertions and had loosened her scarf as she skipped along a large fallen trunk of a tree whose muddy roots shot up skywards. Double checking that her pocket was still full Birdie began to clamber up and over the humongous root ball, excited at the thought of a rain filled hollow to splash in. The tree trunk was slicker than she thought and as she climbed over, she slipped. A kindly root, however, caught hold of her scarf and she never hit the bottom.

The Governessa unwound Birdies scarf from the root and wrapped her in a soft, black travelling cloak, book and torch tucked under her arm. You know that dear Birdie would be very fond of her destination, deep under the roots of the old Willow tree.